Penelope Lively is a well known novelist and short story author, she has written many books for adults but also for children. Her latest is called \u2018Ammonites and leaping Fish : A life in Time\u2019. Extracts from it are published in today\u2019s \u2018Observer\u2019. She is 80 and the book is about being old. She writes \u2018our experience is one unknown to most of humanity over time. We are the pioneers, as an established social group gobbling up benefits and giving grief to government agencies\u2026By 2030 there will be 4M people over the age of 80 in the U.K.<\/p>\n
Her spirit is still \u2018game for experience, anything on offer, but the body most definitely is not…my mind seems to be holding out \u2026Over the last years I have had surgery and treatment for breast cancer; hips and knees are holding out so far but my back gave in long ago: I have been in intermittent pain for 15 years \u2013 discomfort tipping into real pain. My sight is dodgy \u2013myopic macular degeneration, which may get worse\u2026.as for the rest of my continuing ailments, they seem more or less par for the course for an 80 year old ; of those I know in my age group, most can chalk up a few, or more, with only one or two that I can think of maddeningly unscathed.\u2019<\/p>\n
The body may decline, may seem a dismal reflection of what went before, but the mind has a healthy continuity, and some kind of inbuilt fidelity to itself, a coherence over time\u2026attitudes and opinions may change, but most people, it seems retrain an essential persona, a caste of mind, a trademark footprint\u2026.You get used to it\u2026acceptance has set in\u2019, age \u2018 has crept up on you, which is just as well, because the alternative \u2013 perpetual rage and resentment \u2013 would not help matters\u2019.<\/p>\n
If being old \u2018sounds a pretty pallid sort of place, I can refute that. I am as alive to the world as I have ever been\u2026I revel in the spring sunshine, and the cream and purple hellebore in the garden\u2026the sound of a beloved voice on the phone brings a surge of pleasure. With those old consuming vigours now muted, something else comes into its own\u2026 Spring was never so vibrant; autumn never so richly gold. People are of an abiding interest \u2013 observed in the street or overheard on a bus. The small pleasures have bloomed into points of relish in the day \u2013 food, opening the newspaper (new minted just for me), a shower, the comfort of bed. It is almost like some kind of end-game salute to the intensity of childhood experience, when the world was new.\u2019<\/p>\n
B.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Penelope Lively is a well known novelist and short story author, she has written many books for adults but also for children. Her latest is called \u2018Ammonites and leaping Fish : A life in Time\u2019. Extracts from it are published in today\u2019s \u2018Observer\u2019. She is 80 and the book is about being old. She writes \u2018our experience is one unknown to most of humanity over time. We are the pioneers, as an established social group gobbling up benefits and giving grief to government agencies\u2026By 2030 there will be 4M people over the age of 80 in the U.K. Her spirit <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"yoast_head":"\n