Elderly Athletes

Most Mondays and Wednesdays I attend a cardiac rehabilitation class held in the Sports Department of a local school. There are about a hundred members and on each of the five sessions every week about twenty of us go through what has become a familiar routine. For the first twenty minutes we walk around the perimeter of the gym, called by our instructor to exercise our arms and legs, sometimes stopping and stretching muscles in a variety of positions, reverting to our perambulations before being released to use the several machines available as we work on our own. The final twenty minutes we are usually lying on mats for another sequence of movements.

Almost all of us are men and we have suffered some form of heart illness, responding to the suggestion of the local hospital that we should join a group that has now existed for over twenty years, the brain child of a nurse in the cardiac wards, whose commitment remains an inspiration to us. She is one of the instructors all of whom have a medical background. There is always a fibrillator on hand in case someone over exerts themselves and suffers a heart arrest. But in my experience that has never happened.

Six of us are over eighty and I am ambitious to join them one day. We are a
friendly lot. We talk a great deal to each other- sometime so loudly that we can’t hear what we are being told to do. It’s a social occasion and whilst it’s important for us to know that our colleagues are well – raising the question has more meaning to it than the mere formality than is normal amongst friends.

In another part of the complex there is a serious gang of body-builders, and we have to walk through their room to get to our own. They smile on us in a kindly way and certainly we lack their serious dedication. Compared to their youthfulness we must look a funny lot. But unlike them we are not into muscular perfection, but have the more critical purpose of protecting our lives, after nearly losing them.

This has become a regular discipline for me, and I go to our sessions with reluctance sometimes, but always come home feeling better for it. And at the same time feeling rather pleased with myself : for getting there and doing what all of us should do as we get older, namely looking after ourselves.

Never much of an athlete, in my old age I have by necessity, become one!

Bryan

A Voice of Older People

Broadcaster and writer, Dame Joan Bakewell, has been appointed as a champion of the elderly by the government’s Minister for Women, Harriet Harman, who says that the 75-year-old has agreed to be a Voice of Older People, and will act as an "independent and informed advocate" on older people's issues. Her role will apparently include raising the profile of age equality issues and encouraging public debate around age discrimination laws. She will be invited to give her views on key policy developments and to speak at government events. This is all part of the government’s plans announced last June to bring new legislation to Parliament to spread equality and fair treatment throughout the community. The outlawing of ageism is to be a central part of the new bill.

Writing in today’s Guardian, Joan Bakewell says that after her 70th birthday she began to think as never before about the consequences of getting older and the changes of life-style it involves. She reflects on the increasing number of older people in society, as we often do in these postings. ‘Society will have to make a major psychological adjustment….for example older people can work willingly and effectively, but not for so many hours. Employers will need to accommodate shorter shifts, easier roles….those who have occupied top jobs will have to renegotiate lesser roles.’ She points out that the old are ‘shouldering much of the work of carers in our community: grannies care for grandchildren so that mothers can work; people in their sixties look after their parents and suggests tax breaks for the carers.

Gordon Lishman, Age Concern Director, has said ‘Joan Bakewell offers a formidable set of skills, proven commitment and real passion.’ More realistically perhaps Paul Cann, director of policy at Help the Aged, has said that she has played a fundamental role in breaking down gender barriers in the past – ‘we hope that in this new role, she can help break down the barriers to equality so many older people face.’

I confess to being a bit sceptical about it all. Bakewell is quite as much a journalist as a campaigner and the two are not necessarily compatible. And governments are very good at ignoring independent voices. However : Welcome to our blogs, Dame Joan!!

Bryan

'Them and Us'

It must always have been so, but the gap between the generations, especially between the quite young and the very old, is for me a constant sadness. There are all sorts of rational causes to do with it : education, family values, the immense effect of the media, social background ( how can us older people not be careful about money and waste when we grew up in the harsh years of war when everything was in short supply? ). The glamour of youth and the grunts of old age are a gulf it is very difficult to bridge. Culture and ambition divides us and older people can be highly critical of the young, whom often we don’t understand, and the young I imagine are happy to notice us if necessary but to manage very well without us. And both reactions are sad.

Yesterday there was a seismic shift in the world when Barrack Obama became the President-elect of the U.S.A. It was for my wife and I who had been following closely the campaigns of the two rival candidates, a wonderful moment when Obama spoke so eloquently to that huge Chicago audience. It had seemed that all the way the result could have gone either way until at last the polls turned into votes. Obama is where he is because of his own gravitas and a brilliant campaign team. But for another reason too.

More young people voted than ever before in American history. Voting ceased to be merely a generational thing. There had been more applicatants for voting rights than ever before, many of them from black and young people. If I was an American in my late 70’s I would today be thanking the young of the U.S.A. for coming to the rescue of us older ones. And I would be giving all I could to justifying and upholding their optimism and hope. For they helped to clinch the election, or even decided it.

So, the gap can sometimes be bridged! All of us need each other and on this occasion young people were the cavalry coming to our rescue.

Bryan

..Oh! in the blog of October 11 I said that these postings were apolitical. Just this once, changed my mind!