I used to hate it when contemporaries would say: ‘At our age…’ This observation always preceded some gloomy admission – that they could no longer dance the night away, get a good night’s sleep, enjoy sex, get a man to look at them twice or perform a Downward Dog without doing their back in.
But then I was in my sixties and real old age hadn’t started to strike. There’s a wonderful golden period, in my experience, between 60 and 70 when you’ve goes the old phrase, and in one’s sixties we and we , as it were. Being able to do mostly everything but without the disadvantage of inexperience, the world seems our oyster. But after 70 – but maybe I’m an early maturer – sometimes it does feel as if there are clouds on the horizon.
