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UK:
Pensioned off
Guardian,
July 8, 2003 UK - Please
don't call me a pensioner. It's a kind of product label, in which the
ingredients are words such as whingeing, feeble-minded, self-righteous and
grasping. Pensioners
have to be tolerated and humoured. I don't want to be labelled. I
don't like pensioners en masse, and don't want to join in with jolly
pensioner activities with other ancients whose only claim to fame is their
great age. So don't call me a pensioner, just use my name. One
example, to expand on this theme, is SAGA holidays. I could never consider
going on one of those. The
thought of being one of a crowd trouping off the coach in fawn slacks,
with matching jackets and matching wives, and whining over toasted
teacakes about pensions, the government and young people today, is
unimaginably depressing. My
own opinions on these issues are hardly printable, but I would not want
them to be the sole topic of conversation with a group of "snowheads",
as my wife (a mere girl of 57) calls them. Travel,
ideally, is just with her: we only have to bear our own company. In some
other countries, this would be too expensive, and we have joined several
group tours. Happily, the groups usually feature a mixture of ages and
types of people, meaning that you can, to some extent, choose who you talk
to. It
is always assumed that old people are ill and frail. We are, of course,
more prone to this, but it should not be assumed that we are incapable. I
still feel pretty vigorous, and I still walk briskly. I admit to standing
on escalators rather than walking, and take a seat on a train, if
available, rather than demonstrate my virility by standing. I
hate it if anyone offers me a seat, but that is pretty unlikely these days
- young people again - and I think it has happened once in about ten
years. At
the other end of the spectrum, newspaper articles occasionally extol the
new breed of rock'n'roll pensioners, living it up on their pensions with
their mortgages paid off and their children solvent. Even in this kind of
piece, though, it is often implied that the women are all on HRT and the
men are on Viagra. You
cannot win: you can't be just "good for his/her age", which is,
of course, what we all think we are. A
recent article attacking free prescriptions for "rich, fit, and far
from decrepit" affluent pensioners urged readers to "observe the
tanned vitality of most of today's sexy sexagenarians". Most? I
am a member of my local rambling group, and try to walk with them on a
regular basis - but they're all so old. They have not managed to attract
new blood recently, and are now seen as fogies with whom no
self-respecting teenager (or 20 or thirtysomething) would wish to be seen.
Many
old people take pride in saying that they do not understand computers, the
internet, email, mobile phones, texting and so on. Having said that, many
non-pensioners also take the same pride: something to do with being
British, I think. I
still take an active interest in all these things, to the point of being
boring about them, and I have been involved with computers for longer than
most people think that they have existed. I
can bore for Britain on how programming was really programming in those
days, and the intricacies of acoustic delay lines. I do voluntary work for two charities, setting up websites, but - in keeping with my feelings about not wishing to be categorised - please do not call me a silver surfer. Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging |
