tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:32:16 +0000http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/ageing.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)Blogger98125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-7072713582426091472Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:13:00 +00002008-07-02T10:32:16.953+02:00We were unable to attend the funeral of an old friend, but visited his wife recently. She told us about an event that had clearly been full of joyful memories, the sadness mixed with celebration. The last ten years or so of Kenneth’s life were marked by poor health and five of those years he was confined to a wheelchair. Much of that time he stayed in the house, visited by the members of his http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2008/07/lonely-men.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-675727333607946157Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:45:00 +00002008-06-23T17:52:08.449+02:00Research is the primary discipline of the U.S.A. Institute of Ageing, communicating with the public and the caring professions its ultimate aim. I have been looking at a summary of their recent study released last month by the American Journal of Public Health which suggests that an active social life may keep memory loss at bay. I would have thought that was rather obvious. There is a lot of http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2008/06/research-confirms-reality.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-7818023838892087854Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:11:00 +00002008-06-09T11:36:03.651+02:00Henry William Allingham celebrated his 112th birthday a few days ago, and there has been a lot of coverage in the media to mark the event. As the years have passed Allingham has himself become a celebrity. He is the oldest surviving member of the British armed forces and holds the record for being Europe's oldest living man as well as being the joint second-oldest living man in the world. In Junehttp://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2008/06/oldest-man-in-britain.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-3279221459766755663Fri, 30 May 2008 11:00:00 +00002008-05-31T15:22:53.321+02:00The physical signs of ageing are a problem, but it’s even more of a problem to know who to share them with. The doctor of course. She or he confirms your suspicions (and your research on the inter-net) that you have arteriosclerosis in the knees or rheumatism in your joints, painful feet after walking only a short distance, or whatever, and that it is all to do with getting older. You may go to ahttp://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2008/05/who-do-you-tell.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-5760935462127306975Fri, 23 May 2008 14:32:00 +00002008-05-31T15:27:44.028+02:00I have been reading two autobiographical books. One is by an old college friend. He sets out in some detail the course of a ministry that took him out of traditional church responsibilities into various forms of community care. The other book is by an ex colleague, an Anglican priest, who reflects on his eleven years in the East End of London, which marked the end of his full time ministry. http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2008/05/what-has-it-all-been-about.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-5420162063530146330Fri, 16 May 2008 09:34:00 +00002008-05-16T11:38:09.127+02:00A strange word and a teaser for our Spanish translator no doubt, but one that is used to describe the role of a retired Methodist minister, of which I am one. My dictionary defines its meaning as one who is a substitute or extra worker. That's a bit how it feels. Apparently in the theatrical world it’s someone who has a walking-on part but no lines to speak. We don’t have much walking on to do, http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2008/05/supernumerary.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-6033434264220945459Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:03:00 +00002008-04-24T14:09:01.397+02:00I visited Mrs B. the other day. She had celebrated her birthday earlier in the week. She is now one hundred years old. Neat and tidy, welcoming me into her room in an Elderly People’s Home, she said her birthday had been marvellous. She had sat in a corner and members of the family had come one by one to talk with her. She had been tired at the end of it. They had made a big thing of it in the http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2008/04/new-friend.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-3582758374786859154Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:34:00 +00002008-04-01T22:28:29.599+02:00My eldest grandson was talking about his school work in a critical year of his education. He said, ‘have you studied the Second World War?’ ‘I was there!’ I said; ‘I don’t need to study it’. I was wrong, of course, and he was right to ask the question. Living is not the same as studying. History must always try to take a distant view of events. As a boy moving from childhood to adolescence, I http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2008/04/living-and-studying.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-3832877162373334131Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:07:00 +00002008-03-24T13:11:42.550+01:00The pianist Alfred Brendel , who is also a poet and an essayist and reputed to have a wonderful sense of humour, has for a long time been one of my heroes. I have heard him play in Concert several times, and have one of his recordings of Mozart concertos together with an album of the Schubert sonatas. He was the first person to record all of Beethoven’s piano works and is currently making a worldhttp://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2008/03/new-perspective.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-1074637954475358595Sun, 09 Mar 2008 15:03:00 +00002008-04-29T14:56:12.271+02:00It was my seventy seventh birthday on Tuesday. Children are often asked if they feel ‘different’ on their birthday and the answer tends to be in the negative, but rapidly advancing years are a sobering experience, and on Tuesday I did feel a bit different; there were kind family and friends around helping it to be so. It was a mixture of three emotions : nostalgic reflection, limited expectation http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2008/03/signifcent-day.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-6931767951404360512Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:47:00 +00002008-03-06T14:48:35.589+01:00One of the hardest things about getting older is having to come to terms with the inescapable physical changes that the years inflict on you. There will be all sorts of medical explanations to do with physical deterioration, brain cells coming to the end of their time, bones getting weaker; but the visible effects of ageing can be depressing (if they are your own) and surprising when you see how http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2008/03/ageing-and-change.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-2492353825818334880Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:24:00 +00002008-01-30T13:29:17.176+01:00‘The University of The Third Age’ sounds more mind-stretching than it really is. It’s a national organisation in the U.K. and although each branch is answerable to the parent body, local groups do as they wish. In Bath we have a monthly meeting for everyone with a visiting lecturer, and more than thirty seminars meet fortnightly for particular studies. The group I belong to study European issues http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2008/01/stereotyping-serniors.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-5601776740109783530Sun, 20 Jan 2008 13:10:00 +00002008-01-21T14:02:27.868+01:00When you move to a new place you have to learn a new local language. It can be more complicated in areas where there is a strong regional tradition. Used to greeting people with ‘hello’, ‘good morning’, sometimes adding a ‘how are you?’, we quickly discovered when we moved to Bath that in our neighbourhood people use a distinctive phrase, which is more a greeting than an inquiry about someone’s http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2008/01/orl-right.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-4441076637127592414Sun, 13 Jan 2008 17:43:00 +00002008-01-13T18:46:22.572+01:00The debate in the U.K. about public care and respect for older people is growing, and I wonder if it could become so significant a campaign that one day it might change public perceptions. I hope so. Before I retired part of my job involved visiting people in local authority care homes, some of which treated the elderly with a rough kindness that was never very far from contempt, and where the http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2008/01/age-discrimination.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-4707515956532191307Thu, 03 Jan 2008 12:29:00 +00002008-01-03T18:50:15.498+01:00This Christmas we have heard from many friends around the country. One of the letters begins ‘‘I realise that I have always started with an apology for this type of letter. I think its time I stopped apologising – it’s this or nothing!' Its true that they have become a bit of a joke, often full of intimate details about a family’s activities during the previous year. One newspaper columnist asks http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2008/01/annual-christmas-letter.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-934241832710766280Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:28:00 +00002007-12-18T18:30:08.544+01:00It’s nearly Christmas and people in town are still rushing around shopping as if their lives (and their relationships) depended on buying the right presents and supplying vast quantities of food and drink that would normally last more than a week, but seasonal gluttony demands shall be consumed in a couple of days. Just now my wife and I are living less by routine than by the discipline of ‘’http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2007/12/time-like-everything-else-is-relative.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-428823382301740015Fri, 07 Dec 2007 18:06:00 +00002007-12-07T19:07:39.184+01:00The results of a recent poll reported in The Guardian are disturbing. Apparently 40% of Britons fear being lonely in old age. Two thirds of the adult population are ‘frightened’ by the prospect of having to move into care homes. More than 90% said they knew they could not survive on the state pension and would need to rely on savings. 55% of people didn’t believe that older people in Britain arehttp://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2007/12/afraid.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-2095251692982799745Sat, 24 Nov 2007 11:45:00 +00002007-11-24T12:50:49.135+01:00Is looking after vulnerable older people or people with disabilities a political priority, at least in the U.K.? It would seem not. Perhaps Spain is better at caring for people who may be losing their ability to manage their lives without the help of others. The director general of Age Concern has recently said that chronic under-funding of home care services means people are being deprived of http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2007/11/when-help-is-needed.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-8662465099831180264Mon, 12 Nov 2007 17:56:00 +00002007-11-12T18:59:47.998+01:00Truth about ouselves can be a nuisance for older people and it can be easier to fantasise that we are younger than we are. Getting a balance between mental attitude and physical reality is of course important, as we’ve said before. There is a sense in which we need to defy the ageing process, and shake our fist at it. But scientists say that every time a cell multiplies to make two new cells, http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2007/11/cells-with-longer-lives.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-1314423213631083264Sat, 10 Nov 2007 09:42:00 +00002007-11-20T12:38:58.431+01:00Forgetfulness is everyone’s problem, but as we have said it can be acutely so for people as they get older. For some time I have had difficulties with names, able sometimes to remember a first but not the second one, and vice versa. There are various stratagems for dealing with this, sometimes with and often without success! At home we try and use each other’s memory store and together can often http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2007/11/that-elusive-word.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-5972727604902296810Sun, 14 Oct 2007 15:10:00 +00002007-10-14T17:13:01.018+02:00These postings have been going on now for two years and there have been nearly 80 of them. We started off with a sort of ABC of medical problems connected to ageing and then moved off in several different directions. I wrote more personally sometimes than may have been helpful, but I am often writing about things from first hand experience and I wanted to deal with real issues, emotional, medicalhttp://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2007/10/second-anniversary.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-2580521903669311971Fri, 05 Oct 2007 10:44:00 +00002007-10-08T12:02:44.638+02:00Staying with our Anglo-Spanish family, near to Alicante, I walk along the beach. At the weekends there would be a procession – the paseo – of people doing the same, a dedicated routine. Now on this Autumn morning there are only a few of us and whilst there are one or two families with small children, most of us are older people, some very old indeed. I flash my professional smile once or twice http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2007/10/boredom-and-ageing.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-6181906096335787104Sat, 29 Sep 2007 13:41:00 +00002008-02-07T15:02:36.908+01:00I’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 http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2007/09/retirement.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-4951703559578761033Sat, 22 Sep 2007 17:11:00 +00002007-09-22T19:14:01.125+02:00I 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 http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2007/09/encounter.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17986131.post-5280190606876208595Tue, 11 Sep 2007 13:54:00 +00002007-09-12T22:26:08.846+02:00In 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 http://www.euroresidentes.com/Blogs/ageing/2007/09/technology-for-older-people.htmnoreply@blogger.com (Euroresidentes)