tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:48:46 +0000http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/ageing.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)Blogger145125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-391447025519003428Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:51:00 +00002009-11-15T12:40:28.340+01:00I have never been reluctant to share my opinions with people – often positive but sometimes negative ones, ranging from politics, the shape of society, the state of the church, music and the arts. Kind friends and tolerant family have mostly listened to them sympathetically whilst reserving the right to disagree. But I find as I grow older, I am more easily irritated and get even angry about all http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/11/patience-or-lack-of-it.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-2317181954436037406Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:57:00 +00002009-11-13T11:59:58.882+01:00The fear that older people have of ending their lives in a Care Home was brought into vivid relief yesterday when a government report on the use of ant-psychotic drugs for the elderly was published. Apparently as many as 144,000 people suffering from dementia are routinely being given such drugs unnecessarily. The Report claims that such excessive use causes an estimated 1,800 deaths each year, http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/11/caring-for-elderly.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-151129880740372598Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:26:00 +00002009-11-11T17:47:32.266+01:00Today is Armistice Day, so named to commemorate the ending of hostilities prior to a peace settlement, as the 19145-18 War between Germany and Great Britain drew to its end. I grew up during a time when the memory of that appalling conflict and the slaughtering of young lives was still fresh in people’s minds. My father served in the Royal Navy and his ship was torpedoed in the N. Atlantic. Only http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/11/november-11th.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-5010118734164989425Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:09:00 +00002009-11-01T13:15:58.549+01:00We saw the Pixar animation/Disney film, ‘UP’ last week. It tells the story of a love affair between the cautious Carl and his adventurous tomboy wife Ellie, whose great but unfulfilled ambition was to go to Paradise Falls in South America. Carl makes a living selling toy balloons and Ellie works in the local zoo. They grow old together in the ramshackle house where they first met. They save moneyhttp://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/11/upand-up.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-1098466615414605751Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:54:00 +00002009-11-15T12:48:46.623+01:00My eleven year old grandson and I were having a quiet moment together. We’d talked about school, the family, football. He moticed the ‘liver spots’ on the back of my hands and realised that all he knew of me was as an old man, and that that couldn’t be the whole of my story. He had never seen me young! So he asked his question. Imagination was a help –‘so you used to have hair and it was black?’ http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/10/what-did-you-look-like-when-you-were.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-6951507652262611525Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:44:00 +00002009-10-19T12:06:26.665+02:00Another sign of ageing this morning, when at the local hospital I got fitted with my new hearing aids.The family had been pointing out in mostly kind ways that I wasn’t able always to follow conversations as I used to. Asking people to repeat what they have said can be very annoying and having the TV on too loudly is, understandably, very unwelcome. I had got used to looking attentive and http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/09/another-milestone.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-8672271475055988872Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:19:00 +00002009-09-12T09:49:32.679+02:00I mentioned (last November) that most weeks I go to cardiac rehabilitation sessions. At each of the four weekly sessions, there are about twenty or so older men and two or three women who have been through some sort of critical heart trouble. It is a mildly athletic occasion, but also a social one. We talk. Often we talk about our ailments in response to the repeated question, ’how are you?’ http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/09/arthritis.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-2819111947932259905Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:35:00 +00002009-09-08T20:53:59.497+02:00I have been visiting old friends recently – in Northampton, Birkenhead, Sheffield and Exeter; catching up on their news and sharing some of my own. J.P. e- mailed afterwards : ‘ though it may be a couple of years since we last talked, the conversation seemed to pick up where we left off’. It was like that for me all the time. There were new things to learn, family and work developments to hear http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/09/continuity.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-3229478325101445199Tue, 04 Aug 2009 08:40:00 +00002009-08-04T10:42:51.531+02:00We are just back from spending a few days at our second family base in St. Juan, Alicante. The weather has been as hot and clear as apparently it has been cold and wet in the U.K. Spain’s holiday month coincided with our flight home, but even so the expansive and daily cleaned beaches were already full of holiday makers, each group or couple plotting out their territory with towels spread out http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/08/beach-scene.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-8111240529770977481Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:04:00 +00002009-07-26T22:09:35.973+02:00.... who is aged 76 is a prolific, popular and critically acclaimed author of fiction for both children and adults. Quoted in today’s ‘Observer, she says that chronologies irritate her. ‘There is no chronology inside my head… The pack of cards I carry around is forever shuffled and re-shuffled; there is no sequence, everything happens at once’.The thoughts she has given to one of her characters http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/07/penelope-lively.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-2096742517814445389Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:24:00 +00002009-10-19T12:10:07.744+02:00The U.S. Census Bureau has published a comprehensive report, ‘’Ageing World : 2008’ *which suggests that within 10 years older people will outnumber children for the first time. It forecasts that over the next 30 years the number of over-65’s is expected to almost double from 506M in 2001 to 1.3B.They have come up with some astonishing statistics, such as the number of people over 65 throughout http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/07/bigger-picture.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-1585740526138783196Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:55:00 +00002009-07-21T11:56:53.709+02:00Younger people must be fed up with us older ones – certainly if they listen to the U.K. radio and buy newspapers. There was an excellent article in The Guardian a few days ago about Care homes. The author made the mistake of stating that old people go to such homes ‘to die’. There is a chorus of protests about that slick simplicity in the paper today. One writer says people go to care homes to behttp://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/07/longetivity-is-in-news.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-6424892010461943216Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:48:00 +00002009-07-15T10:34:27.741+02:00Getting older brings a variety of frustrations. In the mornings it takes longer to get yourself ready for the day. Clothes once slipped on in a moment have to be engineered onto your body, laces on your shoes take longer to get tied, its not so easy to find the gap in your jacket to put your arm through. It can involve a lot of hopping about before the process is completed. And then you go from http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/07/being-kind-to-yourself.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-977683433892045633Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:28:00 +00002009-07-09T17:36:05.343+02:00It’s something few of us want and many of us dread : to leave your own home and in the company of other older people to be cared for by people paid to do the job But sometimes it has to happen. It is estimated that in the next twenty years there will be twice the number of people living who are over eighty five years old, many of whom may not be able to look after themselves. It was announced http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/07/care-homes-for-elderly.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-6910082251161245902Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:22:00 +00002009-06-21T13:31:46.097+02:00I find as I get older that I get tetchy very easily. Often a fairly trivial thing may happen, which gets me overly irritated, cross, complaining. It often happens when I watch TV, especially those documentaries where the presenter seems more interested in projecting themselves than in the subject of the programme. It doesn’t make it any easier for me when, looking over their shoulder at the http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/06/is-it-just-male-condition.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-748203497486237522Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:03:00 +00002009-06-21T13:28:49.459+02:00…so says the actress Isabella Rossellini in response to a new book. ’50 is the New Fifty’ by the journalist Suzanne Braun Levine. ‘To listen to the society we live in’, says Levine, ‘you would think that you have to stay young – and look young – to be happy. And we literally buy into that message, spending millions on age-defying cosmetics, surgery, drugs…We live in a society that is very ageist.http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/06/most-free-creative-and-rewarding-time.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-3509070749582345335Mon, 18 May 2009 11:20:00 +00002009-05-18T13:49:44.056+02:00We met again a few days ago. The oldest of us eighty five, the rest catching up fast. In the 1950’s we had been college students and this bi-annual meeting is an attempt to keep in touch. We meet in a Catholic monastery where everyone else seems old as well. One of us introduced his experience as a trustee of a small charity in Africa. He told us at some length about his recent visit there, and http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/05/dance-of-dinosaurs.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-6086764709505671101Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:36:00 +00002009-04-23T19:54:22.817+02:00It was announced by the government’s Minister for Women, Harriet Harman, last Autumn that the broadcaster and writer Dame Joan Bakewell had agreed to be a Voice of Older People, acting as an "independent and informed advocate" on older people's issues. As a seventy five year old herself, her role would be to raise the profile of age equality issues and encourage public debate around age http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/04/silent-voice.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-6968005200225781930Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:10:00 +00002009-04-21T10:29:12.762+02:00….but I miss Him’. So begins Julian Barnes' recent book ‘Nothing to be Afraid Of’ which I am now reading. Influenced by his admiration for the French pastoral writer Jules Renard, the book is an uncompromising look at the inevitability of death, a subject which in these postings we have evaded until now. Barnes insists that his book is not an autobiography but instead a tapestry of memory and http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/04/i-dont-believe-in-god.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-1067785453727614383Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:36:00 +00002009-04-08T18:41:43.722+02:00I’m concerned that these postings shouldn't be inappropriately down-beat. Its true that tracking the process of getting older can be dispiriting and especially so if you want to be honest as I do, and as many others do who bring to the attention of a wider audience the perils and pitfalls of ageing. However, there are many good things about getting older. And of those surely having lost of good http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/04/no-gloom.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-3163704899228092669Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:20:00 +00002009-07-15T10:40:21.755+02:00…said one of my nearest and dearest. She went on, ‘you’ve been saying that you are old for years and now it’s true’. The plain message which if not stated but certainly hinted at, was that there should be no more talk about being old. Does that imply 'old' is an estate, a condition that can be defined, immutable, a goal which I had now reached. ‘Talk about something else’ was the hidden inferencehttp://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/03/but-you-are-old.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-4952202095800969631Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:52:00 +00002009-03-18T16:00:44.219+01:00Publisher, novelist and literary editor Diana Athill has worked closely with many authors, including Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Mordecai Richler, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Rhys, and V.S. Naipaul as well as writing many books of her own. She has recently published what she says is her last book, ‘Somewhere Towards the End’, and appropriately for someone in her early nineties, the bookhttp://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/03/just-doodling-about.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-4531789679410059463Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:04:00 +00002009-03-12T19:10:35.089+01:00This is the title of a new book by the journalist Irma Kurtz who has been an agony aunt on the magazine ‘Cosmopolitan’ for 36 years. I am grateful to R.R. for drawing my attention to an interview with the author in a recent edition of’ The Times’ of London.Kurtz says, ‘we really are pioneers. This generation of old people, there's never been anything like us before. We live in the present. It hashttp://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/03/about-time-growing-old-disgracefully.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-6995260816742634500Tue, 03 Mar 2009 09:37:00 +00002009-03-03T10:45:58.233+01:00Last year a 98 year old woman in the UK wrote to her bank manager thus….I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I endeavoured to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three 'nanoseconds' must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honour it. I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my Pension,http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/03/senior-citizen-hits-back.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-7273052614316748716Mon, 23 Feb 2009 12:35:00 +00002009-02-23T16:04:55.682+01:00…is an experience not to be recommended, but which frequently affects older people between the ages of 40 and 60, most often men, particularly those who are overweight or have a diet that is high in protein. During the 17th to 19th centuries the links with rich living were a target for laughter, caricature and cartoons. The great Dr Johnson suffered acutely from it. Even the public perception of http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2009/02/gout.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)2