France vs America: who’s got it right about retirement?
Watching the street protests against raising the retirement age in France this week, I’ve felt oddly torn. All those students and workers look so glamorous in their intensity, so stylishly 1968-and-manning-the-barricades. As doomsayers in Britain increasingly predict wars between the generations, it’s hard to imagine young people here standing up for their elders in the [...]
The comfort of strangers
Gillian had a house; Neil needed somewhere to live. Gillian was worried about being alone and the responsibility of keeping things working; Neil was largely retired, and could fix leaking taps. Gillian is 88, Neil 61, and they found each other through Homeshare, one of several local authority experiments to see whether people with space [...]
Choirs go global
This week I attended an extraordinary international singalong in which two choirs of older people, one in Melbourne, the other in Amsterdam, sang to each other as if they were in the same room. I was in London, and I felt I was there (wherever ‘there’ was) too. The event was made possible by video [...]
Inventing a new phase of life
It was a huge treat to meet Marc Freedman this week when he was in London. At Agebomb’s event at NESTA, he talked about the paradox that longer lives – which are obviously a good thing – are also widely seen as a social disaster. In the US, as well as here, there are plenty [...]
The joy of reading aloud
‘If we all read aloud each day, the world would be a better place,’ Philip Pullman has said. He’s preaching to the converted, as far as I am concerned: my 10 year-old and I studiously ignore the fact he can read perfectly well by himself in order to go on working happily through books together [...]
Music making intense experiences for people with dementia
On a day when it has been reported that if Alzheimer’s were a company, it would be bigger than Wal-Mart, I’ve been to Wigmore Hall to look at a scheme that seems to be improving the lives of people with dementia and those who care for them. Music for Life is hardly on a scale [...]
The secret of youth: flares and orange carpet
And lo, Liz arose from her wheelchair and walked, and it was all down to the swirly-patterned wallpaper. The BBC’s The Young Ones concluded last night with the housemates undergoing a series of tests which purported to show pretending you are living in 1975 can make you fitter, better at remembering things and generally more [...]
Falling apart, stylishly
‘I like being old at least as much as I liked being middle aged and a good deal more than I liked being young,’ Jane Miller writes on the first page of Crazy Age. It is an encouraging start, promising a thoughtful, individual and particular take on ageing. A former English teacher and professor at the [...]
Come to our ‘what is the point of retirement?’ event
Here is the invitation to Agebomb’s NESTA event on October 5th. Please do sign up!
If not for old people, we wouldn’t have society at all, says Minister
Last night I went to see David Willetts speak about his book The Pinch and the ideas behind it, courtesy of Policy Exchange. Willetts is always an interesting politician – thoughtful rather than ideological, and exhibiting a fascination with the detail of demographics that is both impressive and slightly exhausting. The evening really came alive [...]