Turning 60

In February, I turned 60. 

I can clearly recall feeling slightly depressed when I reached the milestone of 40. Once you're 40, you can't pretend to be anything other than middle-aged. It may well be only early middle-age but there it is, an inescapable finale to the remnants of youth. Or so I thought at the time. This turned out to be utter tosh, and the cliché which insists that you're as old as you feel is a cliché for a good reason: it's true.

So, my 40th birthday was 20 years ago already. Yes, even my mathematical skills, as dire as they are, can manage that much "mental arithmetic" as it used to be called in school. School - now that was even longer ago... Can you credit that in the final year of junior school our teacher insisted that we, her pupils, all learn to write with a dip pen? No, not an ink pen fitted with ink cartridges; they were too modern for her tastes. Her choice of pen had a scratchy metal nib fixed to a stick, which had to be physically dipped into an ink well. Our wooden school desks were sufficiently ancient to have been designed with these Bakelite-lined indentations as a standard feature. Goodness knows why she felt mastery of the dip pen a necessary life skill. Biros had long been in common usage, (except she always insisted we call these ball pens, as "Biro is a mere brand name").

Reminiscence comes with the territory of getting older. We become a living repository of little stories, memories of times good or gosh awful, of decisions made, of roads taken or not taken. My only real regret is that I  never learned to drive. It's a practical skill that would be useful as I fancy owning an RV. At weekends, I'd bundle my dogs, food supplies and art gear into this vehicle-of-freedom and zoom off to picturesque Wales or Cumbria, or who knows where. I also fancy the idea of owning a narrowboat but, having looked into it properly, I've discovered that they cost as much to run as a house, with the added disadvantage that they decline in value. Plus I'd probably crash the thing constantly, the last thing I steered having been the geriatric bicycle ridden in my teens.

So, yes, here I am at 60. And actually it feels really good. 

I can now travel off-peak for free on buses, trains and the one remaining ferry anywhere within Merseyside. I can now have free prescriptions. I have been sent a little plastic pot and a tiny spatula as the NHS wanted to test for bowel cancer now I've reached the age when things can start to conk out. The test proved negative. The pamphlet informed me the test is to be repeated every two years until I'm 75, at which point the medics will lose interest. Why? 75 isn't that old these-days, not now so many people are living to 100 and beyond, so why will they give up at that point? 

Hell, 75's only 15 years off... Wow. It only seems a short while ago that, aged around 12, I listened enthralled to Led Zeppelin for the first time; or since I bought my very first 7" vinyl single, David Bowie's "Sound and Vision". Most of the musical heroes of my youth are in their 80's now, or older; and David, of course, passed away in 2016. There I go, reminiscing again, as if all the good stuff is behind me, which is truly not my belief.

I look forward to so much: retiring in seven years, and consequently being able to spend more time on my art and writing; to building a pond; to getting this 127 year-old house decorated; travelling; re-reading favourite books and discovering new favourites; playing with my dogs... The list goes on.

Here's a lovely article penned by a lady in her 9th decade. And another article here by a man in his 60's. Interestingly, both say that tranquillity, family, meaningful friendships and their personal interests progressively became more important as the years ticked by. Neither talk about money or career status, which I think is telling. I remember talking with an elderly friend of mine, who was in his 90's, and he said that once a person's retired, "No-one gives a hill of beans for what job you used to do. What matters is the person that you now are." I also met a guy who was 100 years old, who walked spritely with a cane, and who did voluntary work for Meals On Wheels three times a week, as he laughingly phrased it, "for the old people."