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 [...]
In praise of aimless learning
I dreaded retiring from work in 1992. I felt there would be no structure to my week. Fine for a holiday, but I worried about waking on a Monday morning every day of the year wondering, “what can I do this week?” Being retired can be a burden. There is too often a feeling of [...]
Rock’n'roll to age by
When I was young, one night a week my father would tuck himself away in our recently built, paper-thin extension, and listen to an hour of big band music to recapture his youth. I was told not to interrupt his reverie. That was the music he liked as he got old, music that made him [...]
Agebomb to hold an event with Nesta in early October
Excellent news: the splendid Marc Freedman will be visiting London from San Francisco for two days in early October and has agreed to be the keynote speaker at an Agebomb event on the new old age, to be held in conjunction with Nesta on the morning of Tuesday October 5. We will be looking at [...]
Playing for grownups
The first seniors’ playground in London opened three months ago to quite a lot of hoopla and, yesterday, I went along to Hyde Park see how it’s going. The nearby tennis courts were full, a mother and adolescent son were playing mini golf through the rose bushes, there were queues for the table tennis at [...]
The small society
I met the redoubtable Dorothy Runnicles at a conference a couple of months ago and have just read the report she published in February this year on voluntary groups run by and for older people. Her findings are encouraging – suggesting that there is far more community involvement than anyone officially knows anything about – [...]
Me and my grey hair
I have dyed my hair since I was in my thirties and no longer have the faintest idea what colour it is. If I thought there were any chance it might be sexy, smooth and stylish, the sort of white hair you see occasionally on very elegant women, I’d leave it alone; but not being [...]