Friday 25th May

In one’s fifties the thought of being sixty fills one with dread; after all being fifty is hardly old, but the idea of reaching three score and more has a chastening and chilling effect.  One’s working life must surely be drawing to a close, and for so many of us, our work defines us.  The thought of the desert of retirement looms, and double edged sword as it might be, as much as one may hate working, the thought of nothing to do with one’s life is also oppressive.   And you finally realise that actually, you do not really matter that much anymore.  Oh, you may become a target for the advertisers of Tena-pads and mobility scooters and equity release, but is it only our money that has any value now.   But mostly one’s sixties is the decade of lost hopes.  All through those angst-filled teenage years, the relationship filled twenties and thirties, the family creating forties and the quietly confident fifties there was always a future, or a feeling that one still had the time to do things.  And that any changes would be positive, that was the thing, one felt positive about the future, mainly because there was one.  Now that one is well into one’s sixties one realizes that those hopes have faded, one is facing a future of more or less the same thing from now on.  Most of us by this time have found our niche, our little crack in the wall, into which we wedge our not-so-skinny arses, and can at least face the world with some sort of confidence.  But that niche is also a trap, one cannot dare to leave it, as, if we do, we may never find it and comfort again.  So we soldier on, plodding away the years, and telling everyone, at least everyone younger than ourselves, that we have never been happier.  By the time we are in our seventies, no-one expects much of us, and in our eighties we are marveled at for not actually dying.  But in our sixties we finally understand that this is more or less it, no more great achievements, no more to be achieved, just a question of trying to hang onto what you may have for as long as possible during the decade of lost hopes.