Ageing and zeal as the alphabet ends

Richard Hoggart is an honoured name in British social history. His book ‘The Uses of Literacy’ published in 1960 was a pioneering work examining how the mass media changed the lives and values of the English working class. Mixing personal memoir with social history and contemporary critique, Hoggart's approach to cultural analysis didn’t hide behind a mask of objective social scientific jargon. For some years he was in adult education, teaching English around North Yorkshire and has always been near to the people. The same was true when for some years he was a professor at Birmingham University. When the book was first published in 1960, The Guardian critic called it ‘an exquisitely drawn picture of the urban working-class life in which the author grew up’. The book has been republished many times, most recently in 1997.

Hoggart is now in his eighties and has just published ‘Promises to Keep’ in which he reflects on the issues still important to him, but also ruminates on the perils and pleasures of old age, as we have been doing. He quotes Tolstoy who once noted in his diary that ‘old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man’. ‘It steals up’, writes Hoggart, ‘like a burglar in stockinged feet, but with a cosh. Some of us take the pension but ignore the indicated age and suddenly realise, perhaps at 80, that we have become old, as my wife and I did’. He goes on to say how grateful he is to have a wife and children and the ‘intangible bonds of mutual affection’ between them.

Writing about the signs of being old, he says how it becomes noticeable in restaurants when the waiter presents the bill ‘to one who is a generation back, no doubt thinking ‘that the old man is obviously being taken out for a treat. You restore your pride, if it really needs restoring’, he says, ‘by insisting on paying the bill. A strange little dance’.

Perhaps in these blogs we too have been sending out signs as well as simple information. I hope they have been helpful and not over-anxious. There is some comfort in knowing that age is something that cannot be stopped, needs to be endured, is our common inheritance, has to be understood, and lived out with zeal. It is rather like the coda of a great symphony, summing up and rephrasing all the tunes and traumas of our life. It is to be welcomed rather than feared.

A few more thoughts and information, less frequently, in the future. And your own?

Go well and keep well.

Bryan

Ageing and You Yourself

We are near to the end of this modest attempt to recognise that all of us get old, and we have explored some of the ways in which we can cope with its inevitability. We were saying at one point that we hardly recognise the person we have become as we look in the mirror and no longer see the face that once we had. O.K., we can’t do anything about that but we CAN tell ourselves that we are still the person we have always been. You are still you yourself.

We kid ourselves that’s it is not so. Forgetting a name? Well, perhaps that’s nothing new – you’ve always had that problem! Fingers slipping onto the wrong keys on the computer? Again – that may be nothing new, you may never have been digitally agile! Puffing a bit as you climb a hill? – since when have you been an antelope! Mispronouncing words? – malapropisms have long been your trademark! Have to use the spell-check a lot when you are using this amazing machine? Be honest, you were never that good at spelling. Parking the car takes longer than it used to? Yes, but three-point turns were never your speciality.

Ageing emphasises existing characteristics and they mark us out as the person we are and will always be, rather than replacing us with a new persona. The story may be different and the pace of our life has changed and you are not as mentally quick as you once were; it’s a new scenario, but the drama of your life remains. This old person is the same one that you have been living with all these years.

We have been reviewing a process not a transmogrification! You are not as beautiful as you once were perhaps: shrunken a little perhaps, and lined. It feels sometimes that you are a stranger to yourself and perhaps to others too. People who haven’t seen you for a while can’t hide their surprise. It happened to me recently. After some years of not seeing each other, we met with a very dear friend and she exclaimed, ‘you don’t look the same’. ‘Of course not I thought. But it’s still me’.

And so it is.

Bryan

Ageing and the ' X files'

I was talking to an elderly friend and he was saying that his loss of memory frightened him, especially as he was now so vague about the present yet mentally alert about the distant past. That past can be a pest, and from its deep reservoir all sorts of memories can surface; some of them very unwelcome indeed.

Most of us haven’t lived blameless lives and many things that we have done or not done make us unhappy or even ashamed. And they are not easily buried. They can pop up without warning and often from way back, especially in the night when we are least able to resist them. These are the ‘X files’ that won’t go away.

When you are younger the sheer business of your days, the responsibilities that surrounded you and the necessity to get on with your life, help to suppress the murkier or distressing bits and pieces of your past. When younger the opportunities you failed to meet, the people you upset, the personal weaknesses that you never shared with anyone – they can more easily be thrust aside, as you move on to the next thing. But that very special gift of old age which is time to reflect, brings to mind the very things you would like to forget or do something about, but for the fact that it is now too late.

I had offended a member of the organisation for which I worked. I can’t remember what it was about, but one day on the square of the estate where I lived, she loudly upbraided me. ‘You are very, very rude’ she shouted. I got the anger but resisted the charge. I still think about it. I can remember the look on her face. Then I thought she was wrong; now I suspect she was right. Such memories and many worse sometimes rise to the surface, and can spoil our days.

I gather that in some areas of church life, the confessional still has a place. Perhaps the idea is helpful to all of us, and if its not forgiveness we are in need of, certainly a sense of perspective about past failures would help us with the X moments. Few of us are natural villains but all of us can laugh at ourselves sometimes, grieve a little perhaps, confess our follies to ourselves, and then allow the past to rest, as we move on. The future may have a limited horizon for us, but it still beckons and belongs to us.

Bryan

Ageing and the Wobblies

For older people there are moments when the ground shifts under your feet, equilibrium is suspended and incipient panic takes over. We don’t have that many securities left and when the wobblies happen, it feels that you are in danger of losing even them…

Losing face, perhaps. That shouldn’t matter I suppose but in the company of the strong it’s no fun to suddenly feel that you have made a fool of yourself by saying the wrong thing or by pretending to a knowledge that you haven’t got and being found out…

Or losing control of a situation, watching a conversation that you initiated or structured falling to pieces as people move away or find it hard to hide their boredom, or even marginalise you as they change the subject. It shouldn’t matter, and we should take it as it comes (or goes), but somehow as you get older it’s harder to cope with…

Or even losing control of yourself – that tetchiness we’ve already identified as some people’s problem, and you get really angry over something that may not matter that much…

Or losing touch, as you find yourself in a group talking about things way beyond your comprehension. Do you admit to ignorance? – ‘I have no idea what you are talking about’ – or do you smile in an intelligent way and leave others to do the talking, hoping that the subject will change very soon…?

And than, losing out - literally, by not being invited to an event which you thought was very much your scene, or emotionally by not being consulted about some occasion of which you are expected to be a passive part, but in which you haven’t been involved at the planning stage…

What to do about the wobblies? Not to mind them too much. Accepting situations you can’t change. Trying to get back to where you were. Picking yourself up and comforting yourself- you’ll manage better next time. And then remembering what an extraordinarily bright person you once were – or thought you were!

Bryan

Ageing and Vitamins

I have been reading ‘The Complete ‘Ask Dr. Weil’’ published in 2002. He answers a lot of the questions we ask about health (hence the title!) and here are some of the vitamins he refers to.

‘B-12’ helps regenerate red blood cells and has been linked to protection against heart disease and memory loss. It is believed to revive people who have been partying with alcohol and to revitalise women during menstruation. Amounts higher than 6 micrograms daily can be harmful. You can get B-12 from eating such things as liver, pork, milk and eggs; Vegans, therefore, may be at risk of deficiency.

‘C’ we get from fruit and vegetables and need more of it when exposed to toxins, infection or chronic illness. It is thought that vitamin C strengthens blood vessels and connective tissue with a lower risk of a heart attack and the alleviation of asthma. There are arguments about how much to take and in what form. Weil says keep off chewable tablets which are packed with sugar.

‘D’ isn’t mentioned in this particular book, but it increases calcium absorption by as much as 30 to 80 percent. The Osteoporosis Society of Canada recommends that adults over 50 should receive 800 IUs. Foods such as margarine, eggs, chicken liver, salmon, sardines, herring, mackerel and fish oils all contain small amounts. Most multi-vitamins provide 400 IUs of vitamin D3.

‘E’ , like vitamin C, is an antioxidant and together the two can block chemical reactions that create free radicals, which can damage DNA and promote a variety of degenerative changes in cells. Selenium is a trace mineral with antioxidant and anti- cancer properties. Taken with vitamin E they facilitate each other’s absorption.

Whilst Dr. Weil says that it’s better to take your ‘vitamin cocktail’ in stages throughout the day, he is not opposed to taking your daily requirement all at once in one capsule, pill, or tablet, preferably after the biggest meal of the day. I have seen plenty of warnings about overdosing on vitamins, so we need to make our own decisions based on information and medical advice. A regular dose of multi-vitamins and minerals is a good idea for older people, taken at regular times and with fruit juice or water, not coffee or tea as they can hinder absorption. But go carefully.

Bryan

Ageing ain't funny

For many of us there are quite a few things that cease to be funny as you get older. If you have a sprained ankle or are waiting for a hip replacement or are having to walk slowly because of an attack of angina or have one of your dizzy spells and stumble, jokes about disablement are as unfunny as you can get. Able to grin and bear it when things are hard going is one thing, laughing about them is another. Slap-stick comedy is the anaesthetising of mishaps by turning them into humour, but we are no Laurel and Hardy, encountering too many such incidents to find them funny. At least at the time. With ingenuity we might just be able to make them amusing when we tell others about them. But jokes about Zimmer frames are out.

Forgetting where you last left your glasses, weary of sorting out what food you can manage and what now disagrees with you, trying to remember someone’s name, making shopping lists and then losing them, unable to recall something which apparently you were told seconds before, sorting out the change in your purse and in the process dropping it, missing a step on the stairs, asking for the TV volume to be turned up so that you can hear it and then for it to be turned down because its too loud. Such is life. I suppose it is quite funny, but more for others than for yourself.

The really unfunny thing which may still be amusing to others because to laugh at it keeps the thought of it at bay, is the ending of life, for each day we older people are nearer to that than we have ever been before. Some people are very good at preparing for death and in an age of faith perhaps it was easier than it is now. You believed you knew where you were going and you settled your mind – your soul - on that. Whoever we are and whatever our tradition, we hold to life as long as we can, but have private thoughts about dying that perhaps we need to talk to others about, and that doesn’t happen very easily in our culture. Or do we just ignore it? Some people perhaps may cope doing that. But not to laugh about it. Jokes about funerals, coffins falling off hearses, burying the wrong body : they are really, really unfunny.

Bryan

Ageing and Tetchiness

My wife suggested this one. I wish I didn’t know why. Perhaps I am an isolated example and in this case the particular cannot be transposed to the general, but I think I may not be alone on this one. The issue that annoys us may be trivial, but behind it there may have been a build up of some frustration or stress that is latent but waiting for an opportunity to explode. And for this otherwise friendly and naturally forgiving person - as I fantasise that I am – the volcano blows its top and suddenly I become a tail lashing and teeth gnashing tiger. Or something like that.

My father was a kind and courteous man - a true gentleman, people said. He found it difficult to make up his mind on controversial issues because, as once he told me, he could always see every point of view. One day we went into a shop together, and I was aware that he was nursing some grievance. I can’t remember what it was all about, but my father – this quiet, good man -was suddenly extremely angry with the assistant who had failed him in some way. I wondered at the time why he was behaving so uncharacteristically. Now I know. It was tetchiness, and in this matter at least it seems I sometimes follow in my father’s untypical footsteps.

It is usually very ordinary and mundane things that triggers anger in the elderly. It can be to do with the fact of age – someone perhaps treat you in a patronising way and instead of smiling with resignation as you might normally do, you tell them – forcibly – how you feel. I recognise the same tetchiness in people of any age, but especially the young. Again – it can build up slowly. Your parents or teachers have been nagging at you over all sorts of things so that you begin to feel got at from every direction until an opportunity presents itself for grottiness or a major grump, and you let rip.

Perhaps this is another connecting link between the young and the old. Seven or seventy and you are affected by the same syndrome. What’s to be done about it? Self-control of course; some understanding people around you who are good at forgiving; the ability to forgive yourself if necessary.

But blowing your top in certain circumstances can be rather fun. And at least you get noticed.

Bryan