There has been a great deal of media fuss around the TV journalist and presenter, Joan Bakewell. Now a Labour peer and always a controversialist, she was appointed in 2008 by Harriet Harman to be the Voice for Older People. After two years she left the role, feeling that for such an important social need a person should have more power to do the job properly. Once called the \u2018thinking man\u2019s crumpet\u2019 (a description she loathed) she is now in the public eye because she has just had her eightieth birthday. I saw her recently on the ironic TV programme \u2018Have I Got News for You\u2019, and she gave short shrift to the suggestion from her fellow panellists that older people get more support than they should. She has had the final accolade of a TV interview with David Frost, himself no chicken. <\/p>\n
\nThe Guardian invited some of its journalists to comment on how old they feel. Katherine Whitehorn who is 85 said that she had plainly passed the crucial moment when you try to pretend you aren\u2019t old and start cashing in on it instead; \u2018I feel old when I need to hold on to handrails, sit down for a coffee I don\u2019t really need for the sake of sitting down.\u2019\u2026 Lucy Mangan at 39 says that she is biased of course, \u2018but being naturally middle-aged seems to me the best of both worlds.\u2019 Tim Dowling who is 49 says you can do anything you want at 50, except cool\u2019. ..Michelle Hanson at 70 says that in dim lighting, fully clothed and just after a visit to the hairdresser, and if I remember to stand up nice and straight, I\u2019m 40 again. In the cold with the bed socks on, I\u2019m an old lady.\u2019<\/p>\n
Readers of the Guardian took the theme as a challenge and wrote in to tell of their own experience. \u2018My grandmother is in her 80\u2019s and doesn\u2019t know how to behave, she knows she\u2019s supposed to be \u2018old\u2019 but her body is not really giving out and her mind isn\u2019t either, so I suspect she\u2019s playing the part of an \u2018oldie\u2019 instead of being one\u2019\u2026\u2019I still feel 25 internally \u2013 although I am 57 in reality\u2019\u2026\u2019Now at 62 and with time to do what I want, I feel I can be a bit irresponsible for the first time\u2019\u2026Most people of just about any age after 30 all think they look younger than they are and it is a kind of delusion, because you can\u2019t really see yourself properly\u2019.<\/p>\n
Did Margaret Thatcher, for thirteen years prime minister, who has died and whose funeral took place yesterday, think of herself \u2018properly\u2019? More to the point, did we? There has been has been an extraordinary (and for me, inappropriate) attention to her legacy as prime minister. The media has become obsessive in their enthusiasm and some of us who disproved of her devotion to privilege, have done the same. But her legacy, we are told by the current prime minister,\u2019 lives on\u2019. More sense comes from Roger Law in The Guardian today: ‘The current blitzkrieg of eulogies to the Thatcher years is driven by a nostalgia without memory\u2019<\/p>\n
Bryan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There has been a great deal of media fuss around the TV journalist and presenter, Joan Bakewell. Now a Labour peer and always a controversialist, she was appointed in 2008 by Harriet Harman to be the Voice for Older People. After two years she left the role, feeling that for such an important social need a person should have more power to do the job properly. Once called the \u2018thinking man\u2019s crumpet\u2019 (a description she loathed) she is now in the public eye because she has just had her eightieth birthday. I saw her recently on the ironic TV programme <\/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-665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"yoast_head":"\n