I am 63, only a few years away from retirement age, which for me will be 67, unless the government pushes it up again. Yet, after a lifetime of running, I can outrun many people half my age. Well, maybe. Anyway, despite getting tired more often than I once did, I am very lucky – I can still combine a part time job, with dozens of hours of writing every week, and I still have a lot of time for family, fighting fascists, and reading. I read a lot, I’ll come back to that. If I remember.
When I was around 40, I overheard a conversation in a small shop, between two teenage girls. One said to the other: “I know who you mean. Oh, he’s pure ancient. How old d’ye think he is?” My ears became suddenly alert, as I waited for the answer, expecting anything from 40 to what I thought of then as ‘ancient’ – over 60. The answer, squeaked loudly in teenage certainty was: “30”. I was shocked – unknown to me, I’d been ancient for ten years. I had a steep flight of stairs to go up on my way home, and I wondered if I’d cope with the climb.
Age is weird. I recall waking up one morning as a teenager and I was taller than my older sister. It can’t have happened overnight but it seemed like that. And throughout my life I have had the feeling – I am much older in years, in numbers, than I feel. (Unless I count times like the night I decided to walk back from Arbroath to Dundee, a few years ago, underestimating the time it would take. Think of pitch-black darkness and feeling that every step you are 102, and you’ll get the idea.) But mostly, I don’t feel hugely different to when I was ‘young’.
Of course, what we think we can do and what we can do may be two very different things, and our age comes into play. Mentally and physically, we may slow down, and there’s no maybe about it as the years pass by – I probably won’t outrun anyone in 10 years (I’m being optimistic making it a whole decade). So, what’s the title of this little piece really about? Isn’t it true that we become older and we become ‘old’? Am I just quibbling or waffling about words?
Much as I enjoy a bout of quibbling or waffling, from time to time, as long as I can remember what I’m quibbling and waffling about, my title refers to something real. It is, to some extent, up to all of us to decide how much we can still pursue our hopes and dreams, as we get older. I have known 30-year-old workers, who once thought about going to university or college, and studying science or art, but they did not try, because it was too hard to give up wages to live off toast and many people think they are not ‘good enough’ to pursue a dream. How many budding football players, musicians, singers, actors – feel they become ‘too old’ to succeed at an early age? It’s not that studying or striving to be creative are the only good options. Working at most jobs and looking after your family are activities worthy of respect. But why do so many of us feel ‘old’ or ‘too old’ when all that’s happened is we got older?
I read a lot. Did I mention that? Oh yes, I did, I remember. And one of the very healthy aspects of reading, especially if It’s wide reading about a lot of different lives and subjects, is – you get an idea that we all matter and we all have great potential throughout our lives. If a man drives a train for decades, that’s many thousands of moments of experience I’d love to read about, but how many retired train drivers are encouraged to write or tell their stories? Or – nurses, or North Sea oil workers, cleaners, shop workers, men and women who were once slaves to drugs but who survived and have worlds to share.
Several years ago, I interviewed an old man. Oops. Okay, an older man, even older than I am now, in fact much older. Anyway, he was a firefighter before he retired. I interviewed him in a sheltered housing complex, for the Dundee Oral History Project. He spoke slowly but clearly, and his eyes became much brighter as soon as he spoke about learning how to fight fires, holding on to a large hose, and being sent down into a smoke billowing hold of a ship to fight a fire at Dundee docks, in the 1940s. And he had many stories. It was more gripping listening to him than watching any movie I’ve ever watched.
I suppose what we mean, at least sometimes, when we refer to someone as ‘old’, rather than ‘older’ is that they have entered some faraway zone or become very different to the rest of us.
Sometimes, I have read about projects where schoolchildren visit a sheltered housing complex and they sit and talk with residents, and after everyone gets over initial awkwardness or shyness, then the conversations flow. And both the older and the younger folk are able to share stories from what are normally different planets. The older – but not too old to be interesting; and the younger, but no longer the scary myths of the tabloid press. Perhaps, it’s just my sentimentality as I get older, but I love to see things like that.
I am older, we are all always older. Sometimes, I’ve felt sad and felt that I am ‘too old’ to do this or that. I surprised myself a few months ago thinking I was too old to run up a steep hill near my home, and then I did it, several times. I must remember to keep doing things like that. And I may feel ‘old’ at times, and that’s okay as long as it doesn’t stop me from feeling ‘too old’. I am writing a lot, and that may lead – who knows where, and every story and essay makes me feel I have kept a bit of my youth alive in my mind. There’s some of my childhood there too, and I am grateful for that energy, as I need it to keep moving towards getting a book into print. And I am thinking of maybe studying for a second university degree. And in a few days, I will attend my 50th anti-fascist demonstration in just 2 years – and most of those were in the last few months.
Yeah. Older, not old.
HARVEY DUKE 