On my 20th birthday, I locked myself in the bathroom of my bungalow in Billericay and cried. Having achieved my dream – becoming a published writer – at the tender age of 17, I thought it was all downhill from there. Yes, some of this had to do with marrying the first man I had sex with; the idea that I was only ever meant to do the deed with him alone appalled me beyond words. But there was also a general feeling that my value was in some way intrinsically bound up with my extreme youth.
Fast-forward to the day I turned 60, when I woke up in an Art Deco flat with the sea at the bottom of the street, married to a man (third time lucky) who could still make me laugh after a quarter of a century. After some years in the wilderness (albeit a very luxurious wilderness, having been living the high life for a decade due to selling my house to a developer for a lot of money) I had a newspaper column and a book contract. You bet I felt smug.
As I contemplate the trail leading into the unknown forest of senescence, I feel perkier than I have at any point since the turn of the century
By the end of that year, I’d lost my book contract and my column and was effectively a pariah, having committed the very senior crime of misbehaving on Twitter rather in the manner of a drunk and disorderly OAP in charge of a rogue vehicle. But – like a catchy song with a false ending – yesterday I celebrated the birthday which the Beatles saw as the number epitomising old age: 64. Not only am I unbothered by what I lost, but as I contemplate the trail leading into the unknown forest of senescence, I feel perkier than I have at any point since the turn of the century.
I’m far from unique in becoming happier with age. The ‘happiness curve’ is the popular term given to the 2008 University of Warwick/Dartmouth College survey of two million people in 80 nations which found a consistent pattern following a U-shaped curve, with happiness higher towards the start and end of our lives. One of the survey’s directors, Professor Andrew Oswald, put it plainly: ‘By the time you are 70, if you are still physically fit then on average you are as happy and mentally healthy as a 20-year-old.’
Though one size doesn’t fit all – I am a wicked old lady whose morals may not suit many – these are things you might consider trying if attempting to relocate your mojo:
- Cull your friends. Hearing the same people say the same things over and over is very wearing. When I became a pariah I lost a proportion of my friends involuntarily, but they were generally the kind you don’t notice are gone until a third party tells you the glad tidings. The pleasure of my own company during lockdown gave me the initiative to lop off yet more, leaving a lovely space for new ones who ‘spark joy’, to quote Marie Kondo on household items.
- Volunteer. A cliche, but there really is nothing like it. When I gave up cocaine in 2015, I started work at the local Mind shop; I’ve never missed drugs, but if I couldn’t volunteer I’d be bereft. As there’s a severe volunteer shortage, that’s unlikely.
- Be a believer. I can’t help laughing at all those atheists who are so scared of death. If you can’t believe in a religion, be a Stoic: as with the getting of faith, a real life-changer. When I look back at the awful person I was five years ago, I can barely recognise the screeching, squawking, pound-shop diva as the lovely serene me of today.
- Don’t identify as young. It’s lovely to feel full of the joys of spring when you’re over 60 and thus in the winter of your life: 0-20 spring, 20-40 summer, 40-60 autumn. But it shouldn’t necessarily follow that one feels the need to pose on Instagram with one’s clothes off, as Madonna did last year. And now she’s had to cancel her world tour because she’s done herself a mischief!
- Lose that weight now. As your body seizes up from ‘wear and tear’ you won’t get many more chances – do you really want to be winched out of your flat when you die? I’ve been as thin as a rake and as fat as Jabba the Hutt and, though I was happy as both, they are equally dangerous as we age. Those of us with zero willpower have never had it so good; I can take the lowest dose of those new-fangled semaglutides on a Monday and still be looking at cakes in patisseries as dispassionately as if they were boxes of birdseed on a Friday.
- Never care what people think of you. On the contrary, when criticised you should laugh in their faces and offer them more fuel. The freed-slave philosopher Epictetus said: ‘If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you, but answer: “He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone”.’ To see ourselves as others see us – while taking into consideration that their observation may be clouded by envy or other impairments – and not to care is far more likely to bring happiness than the desire to be validated by strangers.
- Don’t ever envy the young – especially not now. They have far less sex and make far less money than we did when we were hard-bodied, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young things – no wonder they’re depressed.
- Don’t be romantic. ‘The One’ rarely exists – ‘The Queue’ is far more prevalent. Most of us have it away with the people we find attractive until we find one we prefer – or until no one else wants us any more. We all lose our charms in the end, so if you don’t want to be single, pin a decent one down by the autumn of your days or you’re liable to find that that the cupboard is bare. But if you miss the love-boat, don’t be too bothered; there’s nothing wrong with being single – or so I’m told.
- Be a bit reckless – it can keep you true to yourself. The recklessness which made me lose my column and my book contract is one of the things which keeps me so lively; looking at some of the pathetic PR puff pieces many of my successful rivals write, I’d rather give up, stack shelves and thus do something more useful and thrilling for a living.
That’s about it; as I’ve said, once you hit 60, you’re in the winter of your life, despite feel-good platitudes about ‘golden agers’. Death will probably be your next really big life-event, unless you’re Mary Wesley whose first novel was published when she was 71. That winter might be short or it might be long, but by making it there, you’ve achieved a thing which practically no one did 100 years ago, while a 60-year-old today can easy be looking at another couple of decades to grow older disgracefully in.
Whether a SKI (Spending Kids Inheritance), a YOLOAP (You Only Live Once Old Age Pensioner – mine) or just a regular Silver Surfer (like the lovely old lady I heard on the bus telling her friend on the phone ‘Wrap up warm and meet me at the cyber-cafe!’) the beautiful Camus quote – ‘In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer’ – is ours. Find your invincible summer and no matter what the duration of the final season, we’ll rock up to heaven – where feet never swell and no one makes noises when sitting down/standing up – with a smile on our wrinkly old phizogs.
Julie Burchill and Daniel Raven’s play Awful People – about sex, race, class and the generation gap – plays on Brighton Pier on 22 September; tickets here.
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