I don’t wake up every morning rejoicing at being 40 winks
closer to old age as I adjust my hairnet (no need for curlers, have you seen my
hair?) and sip the tea brought to me via the Teasmaid. But I’ll take the lines
that could fill an A4 ruled notebook and accept these legs won’t run forever, or
that one day I’ll lock up my bike for the last time (just as long as it’s when
I’m a hundred plus a few years, please) in exchange for a touch of longevity
with a few of my marbles, friends and family by my side.
As well as a positive, go-getting outlook.
For that is what I have decided really keeps you ‘young’. This
is what I’ve learnt from the people who I think ‘do old age really well’.
There’s my 83 year old neighbour who is, to all intents and purposes, the
church manager. Regularly she walks the mile to church at sun rise, to open up,
sort out flowers, hymn books and harvest festivals, and then she stays to do
the clearing up afterwards. The secret to happy ageing she says?
Have something to do.
Then there are the ‘widowed shoppers’ I met in Leeds. I
wrote [here] about their shopping list of red knee length leather boots and their disdain
for the idea of a new man in their lives because ‘he’d be old,’ stated with an
appropriate grimace. And their advice for happy old age?
Get out of the house.
Today I’d like you to meet Ruby. This 86 year old lady is a
member of a group of writers who are all quite inspirational in themselves. The
eight members met on a course years ago, set up their own group and have been
meeting once a fortnight ever since. They’re written screen plays and short
stories, some of which they’ve published in two anthologies. The second would
make a great stocking filler and you can buy it here.
The group have now decided that they shall each write a
novel – in a year – and that’s where I come in as tutor.
Ruby is the oldest of the group by quite a few years but
only in a cellular way. Her mind is as flexible and vibrant as the rest of
them, and is certainly no less energetic than mine. And thus she doesn’t seem a
moment ‘older’. In the latest session we were talking about character and I’d decided
to do a personality questionnaire with the group. I asked them to answer the questions
first for themselves and then ask the same of their characters. It’s a
light-hearted way of ascertaining whether our characters are sufficiently
different in personality and behaviour to the rest of the cast and, just as importantly,
sufficiently different in character to the author because it’s easy to fall
into the trap of creating a cast of, ‘mini me-s’. I’d been in two minds whether
to conduct the session in this way. Personality quizzes and psychology are
really the stuff of my generation and younger, something of an alien concept to
some older than me. But I forged ahead – with an escape route if necessary.
There were no tears, an element of bemusement at times, perhaps, but no crossed arms and head shaking. Still, I asked how everyone felt about the session. Ruby said that she'd found it fascinating and admitted that at the beginning she hadn't thought she'd get to grips with any of it but she had, and more's the point, she'd enjoyed it.
More’s the point, it never occurred to her not to give it a
go. She wanted to see what it was all about.
And then she gave me some flowers, sweet peas, smelling
wonderful, hand-picked from her garden, which she opens up to visitors a few
times a year. She caters for them, too, three course lunches apparently. Of
course she does!
Ruby is an inspiration to me. It isn’t her health so much,
even though I’m sure she looks after herself but there’s also a huge element of
luck and genetics involved in that, it’s more her drive, energy and can-do
attitude. She, too, gets out the house
and she, too, has something to do. Forget surgery and hair dye, a sunny, can-do, not
going to be beaten kind of outlook is how you defy ‘old age’, I reckon.
