Welcome to Essays on ageing

My travel insurance went up this year: being over-75 and breaking my wrist a couple of months ago might have had something to do with...

In what must have been the 1970s when there was an early shortage of computer programmers, I was invited to do an aptitude test to train...

There’s a scene at the beginning of the 1990 film Ghost , in which Patrick Swayze gets up after being attacked in the street, looks...

The state of my feet!  One foot bandaged to support a sprain; the other sporting a newly plastered toe where the first sandals of summer...

Somewhere between being a sentimental hoarder and a minimalist, I hold onto possessions that have meaning for me and chuck out everything...

Old age and retirement can sometimes feel like a welcome opportunity to do less, or, more often, to promise oneself to do only those...

I’ve just sent a letter to my MP about Assisted Dying.  I’ve also signed a petition asking for a debate in the Houses of Parliament on...

A family member in his 70s, good at sports and working out in the gym, says he can’t see the point of walking.  Children straggling...

There have always been Influencers with a capital ‘I’.... historically more likely to be religious zealots, poets and philosophers. ...

When Elon Musk announced last month that Artificial Intelligence would mean eventually no-one would have to work, I imagine it sent a...

Looking through a friend’s old photograph album, my friend stopped at a picture of a young woman in a colourful jacket looking sideways...

Working past normal retirement age and thinking I was fit enough to do so, I nevertheless feared falling asleep in front of my clients in...

On a recent walk, I came across a dead pigeon at the side of the road, a worm on the pavement and a fallen tree in park land. The...

A few decades ago, I woz ere seemed to be carved into every tree in my local park usually followed by initials, sometimes by a date. Now...

I have just gouged out the top of a ‘cream cleaner’ bottle (the yellow stuff for scouring the bath and basin) with a sharp pair of...

If you look up a list of expected losses in older age you will find the following: loss of health, loss of parents, loss of career, loss...

At an age when my mother had descended from old to elderly, I would sometimes have to search for something she’d lost in her room. One...

Given that I know people who’ve had cancer or a heart attack by this age, it seems a bit feeble to complain of not-quite-flu, especially...

I was imaging writing that my Christmas Card list would be shorter this year. Actually, it’s the same length as usual. Why then this...