Emma Soames But despite all this, I now believe that we make the greatest changes in how we live towards the end of our lives, the last third, when the dust has settled on those momentous moments, when the children have grown up and we are contemplating a way of life that is not utterly focused on work and family.
In recent research that Saga conducted with Populus, it is confirmed that the number of people living to 100 will grow enormously between now and the middle of this century. Currently only one in 40 of us clocks up a century, but by 2060 one in eightof us will live to 100, which means that a staggering 300,000 people will blow out 100 candles. The research threw up some interesting reasons why.
Growth in longevity is partly the result of the huge improvements in medicine and public health of the postwar years, and the baby boomers are the first generation to live their entire lives under these benign conditions, with the added bonus of no national call to arms.
The figures also reflect something else – the great changes that those of us in our fifties and sixties are making for ourselves. We are not only much more knowledgeable about our health, we are also actively doing things to maintain it. Do you know any of your contemporaries who isn’t swallowing a combination of supplements every day? Meanwhile nearly half of us are taking more exercise than we have ever done before – be it climbing mountains, going to the gym, or running.
This is detailed proof of what I have long suspected: that we are ageing in a way dramatically different from that of our parents and grandparents, who generally speaking took to their armchairs and slippers on retirement and died shortly thereafter. But at 65 thousands of us are still looking at 20 or even 30 years of active life.
Living well is of enormous importance to this generation and, probably because we are more aware of our own mortality at this mature age, we really are prepared to improve our chances of warding off many preventable aspects of ageing. So never let anyone say that the old become stuck in their ways. We don’t stand still for long enough for that to happen.
I am sorry that Joan Bakewell has decided to step down from the post of Voice for Older People. She certainly had considerable impact and showed how greatly this job needs doing. Window dressing it is not. With her background in the media, she gave an articulate voice to many of the problems and predicaments that beset people growing older in this country. She listened to thousands of older people and spoke out unblinkingly about concerns like hygiene standards in hospitals and the closure of public lavatories.
She was particularly good on the need for regulation of standards in care homes and on age discrimination – long a bugbear of this magazine and indeed of anyone over 50 with a job and some energy. Given her work in raising the spectre of ageism and the recent passing of the Equality Bill, there are grounds for optimism that older people will no longer be regarded as something “other”, and that attitudes to them at work will change with the widely anticipated end of the default retirement age.
Dame Joan believes we now need a Commissioner for Older People – a paid professional with a remit to promote and protect the interests of this demographic. But I don’t see someone as feisty and glamorous as Joanna Lumley slogging off to a tower-block office every day. Also, the role would require a salary and a secretariat at a time when government should be saving, not spending money.
Dame Joan cunningly refused to be paid for doing the job, which gave her independence and respect, on the part of both government and her constituency, that no civil servant could be expected to maintain. But whatever the job is called, and whether paid or voluntary, older people have benefited greatly from it and it mustn’t be allowed to disappear.
I went to see how Hair, the musical, stood up to the test of time in the new production in London. Forty years ago, I found it thrilling and spot on the zeitgeist. Now the plot feels very weak and the entire package rather pointless, although the songs are still anthemic and wonderful.
The piece which has its finger on the zeitgeist now is Jerusalem, the play by Jez Butterworth. It portrays brilliantly the mood of a generation now in its world-weary twenties. Catch it if you can.