Retirement

I’ve lots of plans, with things to do and organisations to join, said a friend as he neared retirement.It was to be a great new experience and one he was keenly anticipating. We have a neighbour in the same position and he too, a very practical man, has lots of ideas of rooms he is going to decorate and the work he is going to do in the garden. A natural activist, it will be hard for him to do nothing, although doing nothing could be the new skill of the retired! People who haven’t seen me for a while ask the inevitable question, what are you doing now you are retired? I fumble for a convincing answer, itemising my few commitments as though they were embarrassingly meagre. It’s as if I feel I have to justify not being at work anymore, which is crazy. Retirement is the gift of a new life. You are the same person but you now live in a different space.

I am a member of a small seminar group connected to the University of the Third Age, and Europe is our subject. There are never more than a dozen of us, and we contribute papers on a variety of subjects. Meeting for just an hour and a half, there is always time for discussion which sometimes can get quite heated. Like most older people we maintain the conventions of politeness, but sometimes tempers can flare and the mildest of us can take umbrage at an opinion we strongly disagree with. But we don’t part with ill feelings towards each other. When the subject lacks dynamism, heads have been known to nod. With ages ranging from upper seventies to mid eighties, that should surprise no one.

We cover most political opinions, read different news papers, but come not only with up to date knowledge of contemporary news but with a great deal of valuable experience. At one time and in a different culture, a long and eventful life would have had close attention and respect from younger people. This was how the mysteries of life were handed down to the next generation.

Today it’s not like that at all. Young people often manage amazingly well on their own, and their world is very different from the one that formed us. But the young and the old have something to share and something to gain. It’s good to do some thinking with a group of people of your own generation, but being caught in an ageist intellectual trap could be dangerously near to talking to yourself.

B.R.

An Encounter

I got – or am in the process of getting – a new Credit card. It would be to my advantage I was told by the chatty young lady on the other end of the phone, as it would allow delay in payment for up to 28 days, whereas, because I was three days late in my last payment I had had to pay interest on the whole month’s total. It would take, she said, just five minutes for me to answer one or two simple questions. After a long pause the lady from the call centre said her computer was giving her trouble and she would have to call me back. She did, and her questions began, mostly they covered information she already must have had access to, for as I told her (it was one of the questions) I had been a bank customer for fifteen years or so.

She spoke very quickly indeed and although I haven’t got into the hearing aid phase yet, at times it was impossible to get the detail of what she was saying. But I got the gist. She laughed when I said she had clearly done all this before. ‘I know it by heart; but I have to do it’ she said, which of course was true – we were entangled in a web of bureaucracy. It was when she asked me what my gross income was that I began to approach the grumpy old man stage , partly because I didn’t know and partly because the English don’t discuss such things and most of all because ‘gross’ is the last word to describe it. ‘Never mind’, she said, ‘I can work it out from your records’. And she did, totting up the state and work pensions, and telling me what it was, which as I say isn’t much. Probably her income is twice mine and I felt at some disadvantage.

Earlier my new friend had said that I was protected by the Data Protection Act, but I began to feel very unprotected, as question followed question – especially when I stumbled over remembering my wife’s date of birth and had to seek her out to have it confirmed. The exercise emphasised how little privacy there is in modern society. Whilst slightly interested in this new card (‘do you want the black or white version?’), I began to feel not only that I was being sold a new plastic toy but that I had sold myself in the process. In about a month, apparently, the fruit of our phone dialogue will arrive in the form of a document which I have to sign.

But there was a happy ending. I pointed out that my payment cheque had been delayed because at the time I posted it there was a postal strike. ‘Have we waived an interest payment recently?’ I was asked. I was sure that no such waiving had taken place. So I am £8 in pocket but otherwise a little discomforted by the experience.

B.R.

Technology for Older People

In the last posting we repeated the story of a 95 year old Spanish surfer: a sign that ageing doesn’t mean we are as clueless in the face of the technological revolution as some imagine. However, conscious of the effortless wizardry of the young, one is hardly brimful with confidence about the gadgetry world we now live in. When I plucked up courage and bought my first (and only) mobile phone I had no hesitation in asking for something cheap and something simple. Courteously but with a faint whiff of superiority the assistant responded accordingly.

A recent article in the Guardian newspaper argues that the technologies a lot of older people really need are much more basic. ‘If you’ve ever tried to open a jar when it hurts your hands to squeeze the sides, you know the problem someone with arthritis has’. So there is this new term -Assistive Technology - which has a dual purpose. First, to make existing technology more workable for older people. Secondly, to give practical support for older people which can ease the difficulty of performing what at one time were easy tasks.

Already older people and those with disabilities in the U.K are able to look after themselves in their own homes longer than otherwise might be possible, with help from Social Services and the National Health Service. The Audit Commission have recently issued a report which confirms this. ‘New assistive technology can play a vital role in supporting the ways in which millions of older or disabled people can maintain or regain their independence. It also has the potential to modernise the way in which many aspects of health and social care are currently delivered...’ So Assistive Technology is a new name for an established system, but, through under-funding, one which doesn’t always work and which needs to be developed.

The British charity Help the Aged has made assistive technology one of their concerns. Similarly The New Technology in Elderly Care Project (NTEC) is evaluating new technology aids and devices for older people who live in the community, in hospitals, residential and nursing homes - such as video monitoring systems, electronic tagging, electronic tracking, bed monitors and fall detectors.

Lots of organizations seem to be talking about this. They need to collaborate so that the situation of people living longer can be met, before it arrives.

B.R.

Still Campaigning

Maria Amelia Lopez became a socialist when she was 16 and was fined for not showing support for the Franco regime. ‘I must be the oldest socialist activist in Spain’ she says. But her campaigning days are not over. Her grandson, Daniel with whom she lives, taught her how to navigate the internet after she had pestered him to download the biographies of poets and politicians. Daniel created a blog for her and the result has been a partnership in which she dictates the words and he does the typing. There has been an enormous response – so many people write to me she says that I can’t hope to reply to them all. Her grandson complains that he can’t spend all his time typing. When it is more than Daniel can manage friends or hotel cleaners in Brazil have given a hand. ‘I love you’ said one Brazilian hotel worker who was drafted in to help.

Most of her readers live in Spain and South America, though there have been hits from places as varied as Nigeria, Alaska, Australia and China. I’m not important’, she says. Her readers might not agree, for she has some pointed advice and opinions to share. ‘Old people need to wake up a bit. Get your act together …..Scientists and inventors should try to create something to help the workers rather than inventing cannons and machines that kill and destroy….There is nothing better than exercising the brain….I’ve read Jesus’ life and I know he wasn’t interested in luxury……I used to be shy about saying things, but now I am old I am a lot more direct.’

Senora Lopez’s blog has reached the eyes of Spain’s P.M., Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. A letter from his office said ‘may you keep going for a long time’. ‘I hope he governs for a long time’, she says,’ because he is a true patriot’. And of herself she says, ‘I am not cultured enough for a prime minister to be writing to me. I am just a little old lady’. Her dislikes include daytime pill-popping, crude language and telephone companies that are slow to install broadband. Her main loves are poetry, politics, childhood memories, her native region of Galicia, the workers. She disapproves of old people’s homes 'where their clients are drugged so that they spend their final days snoozing quietly in front of the television'.

Maria Amelia Lopez is 95.

B.R.

Information from The Guardian, September 1st, with thanks. amis95.blogspot.com is Maria's website.