Age doesn’t tell you anything
One of the many lessons ageing populations are starting to teach us is that age is a rubbish way of categorising people. Advertisers have been obsessed for years with selling to an 18-49 or 25-54 demographic and, partly as a result, we are stuck with the idea that people over the age of 50 or [...]
The Big Society is alive and well…in Kerala
David Cameron’s idea of the Big Society seems destined for a life as troubled as its long-lost older sibling the Third Way. At its worst, the Big Society could be a flimsy fig leaf designed to cover up some of the worst consequences of deep cuts in public services. Charity, local volunteering, philanthropy, at least [...]
Where are the clothes for older women?
I have a feeling that this may seem rather frivolous when compared to the problems that many older people experience. I celebrated my eightieth birthday last year and it seems that clothing stores are not in the least interested in the growing number of women who, although elderly, don’t wish to look dowdy. I am [...]
The exciting and previously unknown ageing brain
The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain, by Barbara Strauch, Viking, US $26.95 Some of us (I am speaking personally here) have been afflicted for our entire lives with the habit of running eagerly upstairs to get something, arriving in the bedroom and completely forgetting why we’re there. Some of us (me again) arrive at [...]
If you can breathe, you can sing
One resident no longer speaks, but he still sings. Another’s memory loss and condition mean that he can no longer read. But he has been singing since he was a child and knows how to harmonise and sustain a note; he is one of the finest singers in the choir. Both men are members of [...]
‘Mad professor’ tackles social care
When I get out my camera to take his photograph, Heinz Wolff says: ‘I have three faces,’ and demonstrates: ‘Mad professor [glasses on forehead], slightly less mad professor [glasses on nose] and normal [no glasses].’ We decide to go for mad professor.
Shocking photographs of beautiful women
Some are famous beauties. Their faces are characterful, fascinating, vivid. Yet the effect of these pictures is shocking, because the women are old. Infinite Variety is an exhibition of photographs of older women – some famous, some not – put together by the actor Harriet Walter and currently showing at the National Theatre. The idea [...]
What if users’ reviews of care homes were available online?
In the four years since Patient Opinion launched with the proposition that ‘your story can change the NHS,’ its website has become an indispensable arm of the health service. With 400 opinions posted a month and half a million page views, it’s the fastest, most effective way to register a complaint or offer praise. Patient [...]
When is a radio not a radio? When it tells people how you’re feeling
It looks like a radio. (A rather nice one.) It plays radio stations. But this is not just a radio, this is a Buddy radio – the latest idea in social networking, designed to connect people who are frail and vulnerable to those who care about them. I heard about Buddy from the dynamic Adil [...]