To Hope that when I get old I will never..........

[balotelli]

Put on a collar and tie to do the shopping at Tesco....

Think that beige socks and brown sandals is acceptable footwear at any time of year....

Eat Werthers Originals......

Think that taking 12 strands of 5 inch long hair from one ear to the other then plastering to my shiny pate with god knows what takes 20 years off me and actually looks anything other than ridiculous....

Wear a Polo shirt three sizes too small and tuck it into my jeans with the brown leather belt pulled three inches too tight, cutting off the circulation to both legs (my DF's favourite dress code for every outing)

Think that a trip to a garden centre is a 'really lovely day out'

Become a racist, homophobic git......

Any one with any more fears for old age??

This thread has depressed the crap out of me .

Well said mirry

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

To hope that when I get old, I will kill myself 5 months after my 75th Birthday. (Must ensure I have one helluva party first)

I shall throw myself off my <a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?num=10&hl=en&biw=1517&bih=741&tbm=isch&tbnid=3Qa9mLiBrBZ1CM:&imgrefurl=cordablogg.blogspot.com/2011/10/miscellaneous-trips.html&imgurl=3.bp.blogspot.com/-83OICHx1x-s/TqLojWy1r_I/AAAAAAAABGg/3uRgPfIE5_0/s1600/Tverrfjellet011011_1.jpg&w=1000&h=750&ei=c0Y5ULniH-Hl4QTjloHIBg&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=373&sig=100917297802735748290&page=1&tbnh=124&tbnw=166&start=0&ndsp=28&ved=1t:429,r:23,s:0,i:145&tx=48&ty=57" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">favourite mountain

I dont care HOW I get up there. But I shall leap off the mountain side next to that lake. You cant see it in the picture, but it is steep as fook!

There is a Red Hat Society you know.

Let Me Die A Youngman's Death

Let me die a youngman's death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death

When I'm 73
and in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an allnight party

Or when I'm 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber's chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns burst in
and give me a short back and insides

Or when I'm 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
and throw away every piece but one

Let me die a youngman's death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
'what a nice way to go' death

Roger McGough

Quintessential I really hope you're joking. We are an aging population and there are plenty of 75 year olds having a high old time.

These days 75 is late middle age!

Maggie Smith is 77
Judy Dench is 77
Jane Fonda is 74 and the face of L'oreal

I am not joking.

My mum is 76 and in a nursing home with dementia. I had to take her for sectioning nearly 2 years ago, as she was that ill. My dad had a stroke aged 74 (my oldest son was born on his 75th birthday), and has lived his life paralyzed and in a wheelchair, needing care for over 10 years.

I only hope I am fit enough to climb that mountain, as that particular point is 700 m above sea level.

My oldest son will be 45 when I am 75, and possibly with young kids, and can do without dealing with a demented mum (levy body dementia appears in clusters. I have 3 affected uncles, in addition to my mum)

I should add, a 75 year old woman "falling" down the side of a mountain, and to her death will be far easier to deal with, and really something to celebrate, than becoming a problem and a burden for my own lovely children.

I think it is dreadful that we can put an animal out of its misery when the quality of life has deteriorated beyond endurance, but humans are not permitted the same mercy.
We have to endure and endure despite the pain and the fear, and for what?
I agree QS.

I'm sorry about that Quintessential, that sounds horrific for you. I hope you get your wish and die with all your faculties in tact, I think that's what we all hope for isn't it? Falling off a mountain at 75 would be easier for most relatives to deal with. And you'd make the news.

I also agree that we should be able to choose the time of our own death and be able to legally ask for assistance when that time comes.

The last time I saw my mother she was wearing black leather trousers and a very chic cream satin blouse with peep toe patent platforms. She's 76.

The ltime before that, she was wearing dark grey leggings, a long black knitted tunic, knee high leather boots and had dug out an old gold chain belt she had in the 70s.

I've never had quite the same figure (or the same interest in clothes) but I am having a proper convertible sports car for my 60th birthday and if I end up on my own I'm going to sell up and buy a ground floor flat walking distance between Harrods and Peter Jones and dedicate myself to becoming indomitable.

I do like garden centres though and always mean to go in November to buy some Xmas presents from the shop at Wisley but never get round to it

I wish my Dad had had a heart attack and died while out sailing his beloved boat.

I hate seeing him struggling for breath stuck at home.

DMIL had the right idea, she dropped dead leaving the hotel bar holidaying on her favourite Scottish island.

oh Quintessential that's tough - I'm sorry I have a friend in similar circs to you. Not good.

Ah yes WDIKA and FallenC, I've got a few red hats waiting in readiness, and I wear masses of purple stuff now to get in the mood, though I hope I'll always eat butter especially on toast with nutella!
I hope to do as well as Joseph, so have started on the boxes, but not the spitting yet, though it's true many old boys especially, love to spit, won't divulge how I know that!

Back in the day, I used to know the Scaffold, so I hope where ever they are they are enjoying growing old. They were all a lot older than me natch!

Thanks to both of you for a different slant on old age.

Thanks Squosh.

My friends dad had a heart attack while playing Bridge with his friends. A happy way to go!

...turn into my MIL

Yes, well, you think that NOW...

I'm just back from a conference on active ageing - studies into longeivity have shown that our day is 29 hours long. So, for every day you live,you bank 5 hours and tack it onto your life expectancy.

That's why the population is ageing, previously medicine believed that your body would just wear out. Not so!

1% of children born this year will live to be 100. and, we are in better health, for longer.

The baby boomers are all about to hit their 70s. These are the people with disposable income, political power and who are USED to changing things - they were Woodstock!

And, I really believe that our society's dreadful ageist attitudes will change on the back of that. After all - look what that generation did for feminism, that was for their own benefit. You think they'll sit back and resign themselves to beige in a hurry?

So, whilst, that is really awful that your loved ones are so poorly, QS. The times, they are a-changing.

And just as an add on - there's lots of work showing that 150 mins of moderate exercise a week has an amazing effect on elderly people with cognitive problems. A walk for twenty minutes a day improves understanding and up to 60% less agitated. There's not a drug that can do that.

So, the way that dementia is treated and regarded will alter too.

I hope your mum settles quickly.

Mean while said cloth shop owning niece of my grandmother's, now well over 70, is as expensively dressed as ever, perfectly tanned, manicured and made up. She also had a walking stick and heels on I couldn't even stand in.

StarBall those are both brilliant ways to go, shocking for the people with them but for they themselves perfect.

A colleague's elderly mother died last Christmas Day, she was living in a care home but spent the day with her large extended family, after dinner she popped upstairs for a nap before Downton Abbey started and died in her sleep. I thought that was lovely, living in residential care and still died at home after a lovely day with all her relatives.

My nan was still working Kirkby market at 80.

My mum was still working as a lollypop lady until 79, then decided to retire, she still does my shopping and sometimes washing, at nearly 85.

Her friend, similar age, died suddenly in the street and she always says that's how she wants to go, on her way to the shops, with clean knickers on.

nankypeevy, yes, I agree that times are changing.

My parents were a generation of hard working people, used to walking miles every day, doing plenty of physical work, eating blueberries, raspberries, arctic cloudberry, what ever nature laid in front of them. Oats porridge for breakfast or wholemeal bread as standard, with fish nearly every day for dinner, lucky if they had meat once a week.

OUR generation grow up drinking fizzy drinks, eating chocolate boiled sweets, gumy bears, and crisps, eating fatty and processed food, fatty sauces, cakes and biscuits every day, and taking lots of medications, vitamins, and food containing artificial colouring and flavouring.

Yup, indeed times, they are a changing!

I asked my mums geriatric consultant why dementia was such a problem these days. She blamed modern medicine. People are kept alive longer due to modern medicine, but the brain has its "usual" expiration date.

She added "I am grateful I live and work now, and deal with the current generation of elderly who has had a healthy life and diet, compared to people growing up now, my colleagues 30-40 years in the future will not have it easy".

Food for thought.

I hope I will not be too cantankerous to get a hearing aid if I need one.

I hope I stay positive and don't always look for the negative in everything. I brought my children up saying"If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" and now am feeling the need to say it almost daily to DM . I hope I enjoy life.

Interestingly, on the subject of the elderly, I spoke to an economist the other week who swore that one of this country's biggest problems is that a huge amount of capital is locked up and not circulating because the elderly now are the wartime generation who are used to being frugal and don't spend what they have. A generation ago that money would have been passed on and back in circulation so the economy was boosted.

QS That's an interesting view point.

I'm not a medic, just a physio with an interest in elderly care. Active Ageing is a conference geared towards medics, but inclusive of anyone with research pertaining to the ageing process. This is fairly new - getting ethical permission to "experiment" on the under 65's has been difficult in the past.

I'd argue that it's medicine that's keeping people alive. It's sanitation, vaccination, anti-biotics and the NHS treating the normal illness/injury that people encounter.

People who are in their 80's have gotten there despite TB, measles, polio, flu, childbirth, poverty and war. They are the ones who are genetically gifted, as well as having enjoyed some degree of good luck not to have been knocked down by a horse and cart in their youth.

Oddly, none of the research I listened to last week projected what the thoughts were on my generation of lardbuckets. That is a glaring omission from the schedule - and I had not thought of it. So, thanks for pointing that out. Food for thought, indeed.

puts down glass of wine and chocolate biscuit