We have now entered the New Year in which we know that everybody, with the exception of those who have not yet been born (like our future king or queen), will be one year older by the end of it. I have already passed that milestone this week, which means that I will be 73 for the rest of the year and will only achieve 74 in the fateful year of Scotland’s vote on independence. Still, 73 is quite old enough. It is an age at which it has become difficult to look far into the future with great confidence and one begins to narrow one’s horizons a little. There are things now that I am starting to rule out — going to China, for example, or learning to play Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 on the piano.
On the other hand, I have a sporting chance of living for a while longer. Unlike the too many friends who have been struck down by serious disease, I am in reasonably good health, except for coughing and wheezing too much, and my life expectancy should in theory be fairly good. It may not be so, of course, and even if it is, there is the risk that I may live on as something of a wreck. An international survey last month, which found that men and women worldwide are living respectively 11 or 12 years longer than they were 40 years ago, also found that their health wasn’t keeping pace with their longevity. For every extra five years they might hope to live, they could only expect to avoid illness or disability for under four of them.
That said, it is possibly better to be old than young. The future is not looking bright. No one but an incurable optimist would anticipate any great progress this year towards peace in the Middle East, towards economic recovery in Europe, or even towards reform of America’s gun laws. The English countryside will doubtless continue to be desecrated by wind farms, while the world will get hotter nevertheless. Prospects for mankind are not good. But the old, with only limited time ahead of them, need not worry too much. For their own limited futures may be quite promising. Silvio Berlusconi, who is 76, may look forward not only to marrying a 27-year-old glamour girl but even, perhaps, to making an improbable political comeback as Italy’s next prime minister. And he is not alone among oldies with hope in their hearts.
The most remarkable example was offered a couple of weeks ago by a 100-year-old called Walter James, who wrote an article in the Sunday Times about what it was like to be a centenarian. It would be nice to know more about Mr James. He tells us he went to a grammar school and thence to Keble College, Oxford, but almost nothing of what he has done in the many decades since to make himself look today almost as good in his photograph as Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, who is an extremely youthful 89. He writes that ‘people will be astonished or horrified at how much alcohol I put away’, but it turns out that he has kept to the same ‘strict, if large, ration’ for many years. ‘For lunch I have 90 ml of dry sherry followed by a 330ml bottle of Peroni beer. At dinner my 90ml of whisky or gin is followed by 250ml of red wine,’ he says.
Not understanding about metric measurements, I don’t know whether or not that is a large amount to drink; but one of Mr James’s strengths would seem to be his ‘strict’ self-control; no binge drinker he. He still drives, shops, cooks, reads on his Kindle, and scans the internet on his computer, and his mind is still very sharp. He confesses to frailties such as impaired balance and ‘fear of toppling over’, but these are ones that I, though 27 years younger, already share; I get it especially on my stepladder when changing light bulbs in the ceiling.
Mr James also laments that, while he can remember most things that happened in the past, ‘the feelings, the sensations that accompanied a happening are irrecoverable’. It is, for example, only in his nocturnal dreams that he can recover the feelings of what it was like to be in love; ‘the wild excitements, the ecstasy of returned love, the kisses and embraces, all come back to me as they once were’. He also looks forward to future events, such as visits from friends or members of his family, with ‘less relish’ than he used to. But the wonderful thing is that he looks forward to anything at all. ‘I look to my future, if not with confidence, at least with hope,’ he writes. And that is really quite something at 100 years old.
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