Quite a lot of us here have aches and twinges. I’ve had people offer to tie my shoelaces so I didn’t have to bend.
The clincher though came this week I received an invitation to a 60th birthday party lovely I hear you say (I’ve put my hearing aids in) what’s wrong with that? It’s from someone I used to babysit (childsit properly).
Is there something that tells you times wingéd chariot is on its way?
Enlarged prostate — confirmed following a doctor’s finger up the back passage (the procedure itself made me feel old).
When people start offering you their seat on a train or bus.
I still offer my seat up and I’m 65
I am reasonably fit and really don’t need anyone offering me their seat. However, I have learnt to accept the proffered seat as this is easier than having a “Thanks, but no thanks”/ “But I insist….” conversation on moving public transport.
Pardon?
When your son is 46 and your daughter is 43.
When you don’t fall over, you have a fall.
When you have to have a medical every year or they’ll take your driving licence away. (This may be Oz only.)
When people on social media ask who remembers Led Zeppelin.
When you have grandchildren.
When you have great-grandchildren…good grief!
I love my granddaughters but my god it reminds you why you have children when you’re younger. We are currently looking after ours (6 and almost 3) for a few days while my eldest and his wife are at a wedding and we are both absolutely knackered at the end of every day.
I know the feeling. We pick our four year old granddaughter up from nursery every Thursday at 11.30, and she gets picked up about 6pm. I slump in my armchair, and can’t function for at least an hour. In the school holidays we often look after my two grandsons as well, aged 9 and 6. At the end of those days we are both physically exhausted, and we are both reasonably fit and healthy.
When you stop planning for the future and just make the most of today.
When a good night’s sleep doesn’t involve a trip to the toilet.
When no one gives a flying one about the music you like any more.
When you stop buying green bananas.
@Gary If I was drinking coffee when I read that it would have gone all over the place.
Yes I’ve a bottle of tabasco I think will outlive me.
Our son has gone through our spirits cabinet and cautioned against significant further investment.
People who appear to be in their early fifties calling me ‘young man’.
That and numerous ailments despite keeping myself fit and generally trying to be healthy.
Once when I was on my social work placement fifteen years ago, I got a lift from a colleague. A song from 1984 came on the radio (can’t remember which one). Colleague said “Oh, that’s the year I was born”…my reply was “Oh, I graduated that year”. Have never felt so old, and that was then!
A fellow social worker here – 30 years qualified this year and looking towards retirement. For a number of years now I’ve been working with teenage offenders, some of whose parents I worked with when they were teenage offenders. Depressing!
@Bamber that reminds me of when I went for a vasectomy. It was my first ever medical procedure and I nervously asked the surgeon how long he had been doing vasectomies. ‘Put it this way, I have gotten to the stage where I have now done vasectomies on Grandfathers, sons and grandsons of the same family’.
Why would anyone want to do that?
For some obscure reason, the distant refrain of The Ball Of Kerrymuir just wafted through my consciousness.
The first time I thought I’m getting really old was about 25 years ago when a woman in the office where I worked said “My dad was born in the week England won the World Cup”.
@Carl – most of my ex work colleagues were born after decimalisation and the inaugural flight of Concorde
Concorde??????
I presume you mean their fathers.
I’m physically old (61) but don’t feel mentally old, other than a lack of interest and/or ability in learning new work stuff. I started in an analog world where every cable could be traced and now lots of stuff is networked and signal routing isn’t physical so must be drawn or held in the head. I’m seeing a significant number of very clever techs in their 20s who leave me for dust in technical ability but not so much in real world practical, hands on stuff.
A couple of weeks ago my wife was down in the kitchen and heard me grunting and straining from upstairs. She shouted “I hope you put the mat down before you started your workout.”
I said: “I’m putting my socks on”
Very good
Another time for me was when I turned 60. I had an apprentice working with me and it turned out that I was ten years older than his dad and ten years younger than his granny.
It’s the aches and pains which make me feel old every day. Back, knees, shoulder etc etc. And forgetting things then remembering them 10 minutes later. WTF.
When I started in my current job I was the 2nd youngest in my group of 5 (at 51), I am now the 2nd oldest and two of my colleagues are almost 40 years younger than me! One guy is still working at 72 to make me feel slightly less old
Anyone still working at 72 needs to get a life.
He has cut down to 4 days a week. Who are you to say how he should best live his life? And a lot of it depends on financial situation. More people are going to work longer if they can, as they don’t save enough for retirement.
Amen to that.
Yeah I know and very sad it is too.
I am nearing 69 and retired 18 months ago. I have taken some consultancy work 2 days per week.
Even 2 days is probably too much – such are the joys of being in charge of your everyday life
Oh and there are plenty of people in the UK who are retiring early too – an ex colleague is retiring at 56 – house paid partner on a JLR pension. This is equally a problem as skilled workers opt out of the rat race.
At 65 I am eligible for 2 of my 3 state pensions (Switzerland and Canada), UK one comes in when I turn 67. None are full pensions, but the UK one will be close as I have kept up with my National Insurance payments. Together they add up to a half decent amount.
The rest comes from investments and a small private pension. I may be able to retire at 65 if I get made redundant in the next 18 months with a suitable package. It could happen.
My brother in law still works at 75. He is an electrician for a University Hospital. I’ll generalise, but I think people who work with their hands and can see the results of their work are often happier in their jobs, and like to continue as long as they can.
When he does retire, my sister thinks he will take up some equally practical hobby.
He could be facing a long retirement anyway, as he comes from a long lived family. His mother recently died at 103 – still mentally and physically active until the last few months.
Interviewing potential apprentices, and living in a small community we would ask who the parents were. It came to a point where we had to start asking who the grandparents were.
Normally I come on here to feel young. But every now and then an AWer younger than me talks about their grandchildren and I realize I am living in a fantasy world.
Have spent much of the last two weeks accompanying my partner on her hospital stay. These days its not just the nurses who look younger than my children. But the surgeons too.
Also, here in Spain the graduation from tu to usted is a bit of a giveaway. I’m now 100% usted. Maybe if I shaved my white beard off…?
So many things:
Rarely meeting anyone who is older than me unless they are on day trip from their care home or sitting in the doctors waiting room in their slippers
Walking into kitchen and can’t remember which cupboard the plates are in (this happening immediately after I’ve remembered why I’m in the kitchen in the first place)
When years slip by in an instant – I swear this is actually true some kind of weird wormhole in time that’s yet to be discovered.
About 15 years ago, there was a significant birthday party for the grandmother two doors down from us. It got rather lively and she came round in the morning to apologise for the noise.
Me: “Don’t worry about it, Wendy, you only turn 40 once.”
Wendy: “I’m 30.”
When Twang Jr was about 8 I took him and his mate to get an ice cream on the beach. They were messing about and having every topping etc and the ice cream man gave me a knowing look and said. “Cuh, grand kids eh”. Bastard.
I had a version of that recently. I was having a cuppa with my oldest friend and his adult son came in with his firstborn and asked me how old mine are now. 6, 8 and 10 I said. His partner, who was present asked “Do you have only the three grandkids? Oh how we laughed!
When there are loads of global superstars you’ve never heard of.
And don’t mind admitting it.
Celebrity Race Across The Strictly QI Traitors Krypton Wipeout Gladiator Challenge.
Celebrities?
The man don’t give a fuck.
Exactly. Anything involving celebrities is subtitled “don’t bother” to be.
I like some new music, like that recent album by x.
But that came out 10 years ago.
Were they offspring of XX?
All of the above. People being respectful as I am thought of as being venerable, including being offered a seat on the train or bus. Being the oldest and most experienced person in the room when i do any client work, and many patients being younger than my children. No idea about what’s “in”, and new music to me are acts from the mid-1980s. After a lifetime of being technologically capable, I start to find new devices incomprehensible. Eyesight going for smaller print, and struggling to crack almond shells. Spontaneously eating and drinking less. Realising that the befuddlement or indifference (if not dislike) I feel about much in contemporary life is what my parents felt at a similar age, and I thought them ancient.
When you realise that Homo sapiens is fucked, and accept that you can’t do anything about it?
I am pleased to say that we have a large-ish extended family and Christmas Day means about 15 teenagers/young adults being loud and boisterous and about half a dozen people – the parents – on the deck taking it easy. In about 5 or so years I think we’ll begin to see grandkids but this is quite a good period we’re in now. We have lost our older generation and a couple of years ago it struck me that we were the old ones now, the ones in control, the ones who know what’s what. Apparently.
Joining in teenage conversations make me feel 100 years old. It’s the politeness that gets to me. I used to be like that when I was 17 with my friends and an old git started talking to us. If he (always a he) started to get comfortable and join our group, this became a problem. At least I know not to do that.
Hard to think that I have been retired for nearly 10 years (and I didn’t retire early!). Getting Prostate cancer in 2018 was a bit of a wake up call – as Warren Zevon said, I realised my shit was fucked up. Now not quite so fucked up, but find dealing with stuff has got harder, the feeling that the world has moved on and left me behind, the knees hurt, my dad looks back at me from the mirror, the realisation that there is rather more behind than in front, my kids are middle aged….still, mustn’t grumble!
When you go on a pub crawl with a group of mates you used to work with and most of them are now retired, and loving it.
2 more will be retiring in the next 6 months, leaving me and one other still working at the funny farm.
One of them recently died and it was the first funeral outside family I’d been to.
As me dad said, always keep a dark suit handy – you’ll be needing it more often than you want it.
I’m 55 and starting to think about it.
Pros: no mortgage, decent pension
Cons: what to do with free time that does not involve DIY
“what to do with free time”
Walking, swimming, reading.
Gigs/concerts/cinema.
Not cycling (in the UK – it’s too dangerous on our roads with our drivers).
Not running (seems a bit desperate for oldies – either convincing themselves they can go on living forever or a disguised death wish).
There’s always collectoring. Veganism. Alcoholism.
The first couple of lines are “will do”.
Veganism – maybe not
Alcoholism- there’s an appel there, but may not be sensible.
I’m considering golf and procrastination
And maybe a bit of voluntary work (in a pub)
I retired early at 52 (basically the company wanted to reduce the management levels and I got a very generous payoff). I decided that I would take a year out to recharge, enjoy life etc before thinking of resuming work on the assumption that I would be bored by then…..
I never went back to work.
I can’t exactly tell you what I do all day, but I am always busy (and never with DIY). I don’t think you will have any worries about finding what to do with your free time.
I’m also 55 and currently signed off sick for a week or so, and enjoying having a rest (averaging two music documentaries per day).
After an insane three-month project during the summer, which caused me to have my first time off sick in a decade through sheer exhaustion, I’m wondering how much longer I can be bothered to put up with working. Now that both Offspring are working, Mrs F earns enough for both of us – trouble is, she also wants to retire early…
I have a similar problem. Youngest finishes uni next year, hurrah! She’ll have to either live with us or support herself, unexpected disasters notwithstanding. I could get out of my warehouse lease early ‘27 but what I do supports everything else: bills, pension payments etc for me and my wife plus taking our private pensions early reduces the annual income significantly so I’ll probably carry on until early ‘29 when I’ll be within sight of 65 but it seems a long way off and I’m getting to resent the time I spend working, having already clocked up more hours than most people do in a job with regular hours, if such a thing exists any more.
Offspring the Elder has just signed up to do a part-time Masters (remotely) at Canterbury, starting next September. She’s been doing support work for a charity since graduating, so earning a pittance. Once she starts on the Masters, she’ll go part-time and earn half a pittance, so Bank of Mum & Dad are going to have to bail her out until at least 2028.
This summer’s project was really under-resourced, and I’ve really come to resent the stress and the impact it had on my health. I had to put the phone down on someone because inside I was screaming “oh just F**** Off!”, but what came out of my mouth was “please just stop, you’re wasting your own time as well as mine.” My role is supposed to be in low-stress support, but I’ve not seen much evidence of that since lockdown started. I’ll be using my sick leave to have a word with HR.
Realising that my trainee was younger – much younger – than the bike on which I’d commuted to work.
Last week, another of my trainees retired. It really isn’t supposed to be that way round.
Similar moment when my boss told me my turntable was older than she was.
When you understand the word “retirement”
Ten years ago – Wow, what a productive day I had: washed the car, did the laundry, mowed the lawn, vacc’d all the carpets, and cleaned the kitty litter trays. Well done me!
Today – wow, what a productive day I had: did the laundry. Well done me!
I’m preparing to retire at the end of the year – state pension due in May but private annuity will see me through until then – and I don’t feel old. I will be game for a little freelance work to top it up, but looking forward to lots more time for creative stuff, voluntary work, long walks, reading more books and listening to more music.
More books and music for me too. The in-tray of paperbacks is three wide, two deep and about four foot high. The piles/boxes of CDs are almost elbow to elbow in the music room. I’ll need to be retired for about thirty years to listen to them all while reading the books. Especially as I will likely buy more of both once a gentleman of leisure. Before I croak my ambition is to have listened six times to each of the discs from the Yes 1972 boxed set. My last gasp will be saved for clicking ‘Submit’ on my review of the set.
When I read that today is the 24th anniversary of the launch of the first iPod……..
It’s 11 years since the iPod classic ceased production, so there are probably adults who either think of it as being as obsolete as the 8 track or have never heard of it.
I was listening to the first Coldplay album this morning. It’s 25 years old, pop pickers.
Northern Powergrid have just welcomed me to their Priority Services Membership as I am now classed as vulnerable.
I’m pretty sure Northern Powergrid released a few dance 12″s in the early 90s. Glad to hear they’ve branched out as it were.
Quote:
“No one tells you you’re old. You have to come to the realisation yourself, while reading Amazon reviews for light bulbs.”
Or buying mono Beatles album box sets.
You know you’re middle aged when you realise that Denis Norden was considerably younger than when he started presenting Looks Familiar.
When car parks and lightbulbs scare and confuse me.
How do you know when you’re getting old? I suppose it’s when I look in the mirror, see a full head of grey hair, and recognise my dad. I’m 64, and retired 18 months ago, but I don’t feel old, even though I suppose I am compared to a 50 year old.
I do have a few aches and pains, which are mainly work related, as I always had manual jobs, and did a lot of heavy lifting. My back does play up occasionally, but apart from that I feel pretty healthy.
One of the worst things I’ve noticed about being in my mid 60s is the tiredness and fatigue, which has crept up on me in the last few years. I just don’t have the energy to do the things I used to do without thinking about it, like painting and decorating the house which I always used to do myself. I just can’t do it anymore, and would rather pay someone to do it for me. Also, as I said above, having the grandchildren all day is very enjoyable, but totally exhausting. I do walk a lot and eat relatively healthy, but it makes no difference. By 10.30pm I’m ready for bed, although that’s another annoying thing about getting older. I never get a decent night’s sleep. I know I will wake up at least once a night, and sometimes twice, for a pee. It’s awful, and I’ve even tried not drinking any fluids after 6pm, but it makes no difference. Oh, to be able to sleep all night without waking up would be wonderful.
I can’t complain though. I don’t have to go to work anymore, and have enough records and books to last me two lifetimes. Hopefully, I’ll still be around to draw my state pension in two and a half years time, when I’m 67. I paid into the system for 47 years, from 16 to 63, so I’d like to get a few quid back off the buggers. Knowing my luck, the country will have gone bust by then and there won’t be any money left.
It’s when you realise you have more friends and loved ones that are dead than quick.
Have lost 4 close friends/colleagues and relatives in a year. 2 were only 50. That gives one pause for thought about continuing to work
This. I’ve mentioned previously that I’m hearing about people I’ve known through work dying before their time all too often. That and my brother and his wife both having strokes, hers being by far the worst, with a vague recovery time of a year, if at all. They’re both late 60s and haven’t had the healthiest lifestyle but even so…… Meanwhile, my dad manages to keep The Grim Reaper at bay with spite and bile. If he gets to the end of January, he’ll be 97 but with zero quality of life. Hope my last years are better than his.
That’s one of the reasons I decided to finish work last year. Two work colleagues died, one in his late 50s, the other early 60s. Then two lifelong friends died in quick succession. One aged 64 from a heart attack, and one aged 67 from cancer. I’d been thinking of finishing work for a while, but this was the turning point. I had a word with my boss, and was gone the following week. I don’t regret doing it at all. If I do have any regrets it’s that I should have retired at 60, as I’m loving every single minute of it.
Absolutely. Recent deaths include a very fit and healthy (rower) colleague, of cancer in her early fifties, and a doctor friend of my age. of leukemia. The realisation that one could go tomorrow becomes much less of an abstract notion.
When you have to pay a complete stranger £25 to cut your toenails because you’re too crocked to do it for yourself.
I was rather startled to find that some healthcare professionals use the ability to cut one’s own toenails as a measure of physical fitness. Who knew?
Blimey!
Still fit enough to be sent out to work by Nigel, if the worst comes to the worst.
Great Scot! That’s me ready for the knacker’s yard then.
Once your new hip has bedded in, I am sure you will be able to bite them short again……..
I’ll happily pay Pritti my lovely mobile chiropodist £25 to continue biting them once a month thanks very much. Age and being completely fu*ked has it’s compensations.
I must be half fit as I’ve managed to cut the toenails on one foot having purchased a foot toenail cutting kit.
As we’ve moved our podiatrist is no longer available so we are on the lookout for a new one.
Pre op I could cut my toenails after a fashion. It was damn painful and awkward to do so especially the nails on my right foot because of stiffness and a lack of mobility due to being bone on bone in my right hip. Now I can’t cut either due to the restrictions around my new hip that sensibly I’m adhering to until I’m fully healed. At least I can walk about for a short time completely unaided now. No stick, no crutch but I prefer the security of a crutch for now as I get stronger. The incision has fully closed and seems to be healing well even if it’s still very sore and achy.
Mrs B cut my toenails for a couple of months post-THR. Thereafter I could just about contort the rest of my body into the requisite position without busting my new hip. 5 years on I can cut my toenails with the best of them – providing my back, neck, shoulders, wrist or elbows don’t give out in the process….
Something to look forward to. It’ll be seven weeks tomorrow since I got sawed and hammered so still a ways to travel yet. I’m still pretty sore which I guess is entirely normal all things considered.
Could always get yourself a fancy stick to look dapper with, Peter.
I have a good solid stick but not a fancy stick. I’m hopeful of graduating back onto it from my elbow crutch very soon.
The thing that is the most constant reminder, is when I look around the room at gigs, or most of them. I guess this is because most of those I go tend to by age appropriate artists and bands, those I grew up with, so performers tend to be 10 or so years older, down to around my own age and a bit lower. The audiences are of a similar range and some wear their years way more heavily than I pretend I do, and it can be depressing to see just how bloody ancient some of them seem.
The flip side ought to be the folk artists and festivals I attend, where performers can be as low as in their 20s, if then going up to the octo- and nonagenarians still treading the boards. And, yes, whilst the audiences do contain younger blood, especially at festivals, they are still heavily weighted towards those who were similar whippersnappers to when Martin Carthy was a bright eyed youth.
Tonight I go to see the 71 year old Steve Knightley. I suspect I may feel on the young side.
Recent gigs: Sleeper, audience a bit younger than me, mainly 50s? Lightning Seeds, mainly my age or older. Peter Hook and the Light, late 50s/early 60s.
Coming up: Ferocious Dog, local gig so mixed probably but 30s up I would think. Undertones supported by The Men They Couldn’t Hang, 50s upwards with a few offspring along the the parents.
The FD audience are closer in age to singer Ken Bonsall’s age than the young turks he now surrounds himself with, but often look much much older, if be-tatted, be-pierced and unshirted. Scary looking crowd but very friendly, by and large.
It’s in Worthing and the tiny venue has a small wheelchair area so it’ll be an interesting night. Never seen them before but it’s almost walkable so we can bail if necessary.
They are great live, these days, and both much tighter and more varied in song style than of yore. See if you can count how many instruments, Sam Wood, the shaggy haired pothead pixie in a woolly tea cosy, plays.
The SK audience was around 55-75. Apart from the support “band”, True Foxes, 2 probably around 25-30 comely West Country wenches who sang and played well, nobody under 50 in the room. Unless drummer Evan Carson and guitarist David Delarre are still in their 40s.
Nice little venue is the HMV Empire, Coventry, which is much less grand than it sounds. Upstairs in what was a poky cinema, with about 300 capacity. Tonight it was seated, but it varies, I gather, with the seats being school assembly stackers. Pity it is so near impossible to get into the middle of Coventry. And then again out. No signage to actual places, just N,S,E& W, designed to keep you circling the centre in perpetuity.
I saw Sleeper supporting my tall chum in (I think) 1993, so their audience would have been 18-30 then, and will be in their 50s now.
I still have most of my hair, although it is now streaked with grey it’s still noticeably Ginger from a distance, I’ve never really smoked, drugged or boozed, and I routinely cycle around Cambridge (any other form of transport in town is insane). I’m often the youngest-looking person in the room. Hurrah for Crohn’s and/or dullness.
Louise must have a shocking portrait in the attic.
Indeed. Whereas, say, Shaun Ryder has looked like a living corpse since about 1989.
It first hit me when I went to a local art house cinema to see the film of the Monty Python reunion live show. I thought the audience had been bussed in from an old folks’ home. The penny dropped eventually that the audience were roughly the same age as the performers. I’m a bit younger – but not by much.
For the first time, I feel like I can contribute to an Afterword “you know you’re getting old when…” thread.
Historically, I’ve tended to see the passage of time in my mates and my parents much more than myself, largely because I’m a creature of longstanding habit and therefore still doing most of the things I was doing in my 20s. Nature has not yet intervened.
But this year, an event occurred that profoundly challenged that sense of stasis. My younger brother became a grandfather. He’s in his early 40s. His own youngest child is 2 years old. And he has a granddaughter. And she’s perfect. And – hey presto – we’re all old now.
Hamper of Ralgex and Sonatogen tonic wine to Mr Rawlinson!
I shall add them to tonight whisky chaser.
You can chase that whisky, but you might need to stop for a breather before you catch it.
Can you have a whisky hobble?
After a few drams, I am sure you can.
I’m having a medicinal Guinness barrel aged Jameson to help me recover from the Coventry ring roads…..