However, I did become sensitive to various suggestions that people of my age were over the hill. Like most, when I first heard The Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty Four”, I imagined a little old man, rocking in his chair hoping beyond hope that his life-long love still felt the same way. Now, for some reason, that chap is in his gym gear waiting to head off for a workout, maybe squeezing a tip-run in en-route.
Ed Sheeran’s Thinking out Loud hit the charts when I was still in my 40s (just) so his pledge to remain in love with his nameless suitor until he was seventy, seemed impressively ambitious. Now, it smacks of little more than a holiday romance. Hardest hitting of all though is The Wolfe Tones’, Janie Mac I’m Nearly Forty which talks of greying hair and impending pensions after the title line is sung.
Of course, I do not take these lyricists’ interpretation of age seriously, and free prescriptions and concessionary tickets are not to be sniffed at, but I am surprised how my definition of age shifts with the years.
As I mentioned in a previous column, not everyone shares my view that I am ever-green. Being told my nine-year-old author photos were unrecognisable prompted me to take a long hard look at myself in the mirror (once I found my glasses) and commission a new set. You can see the revised, and more representative, iteration at the top of this column.
I do actually go to the gym and to keep my joints passably mobile occasionally I see a personal trainer. I am sure he does it deliberately but he will insist on telling me that he sees what I’m going through in many of his older clients. I gave up chiding him for that when I learned he was young enough to be my grandson; and that is without us, then one of our children starting early.
I am too old to serve in the police (although, theoretically, I could have continued my last job until around now) but in my new found career I am surrounded by young (18-55 years old) authors who, even though some are too polite to mention it, think I have been on the scene for years. They must wonder therefore why I have only published five books so I get in quick with my thirty years of policing to justify the chasm in my literary CV.
I suppose what all this tells me is that despite the number of birthdays I’ve celebrated, having hit the big 6-0, I am incredulous, and a tad sensitive, that I am considered to be in the autumn of my years, even though the maths say I am. I have always considered myself young amongst my peers, whatever age I was. Maybe that emanates from being the youngest sibling, one of the youngest in my school year and positively baby-faced when I first donned my uniform, but notwithstanding the cause, I have come to accept it is a healthy state of mind.
I am not one for growing old disgracefully (my wife and children have long since imposed a lifetime ban from dancing and karaoke), nor behaving and dressing like David Brent, but I try to stay young at heart, physically well and active and take a genuine interest in my children and their generation’s endeavours and struggles. Whilst I would never dye my silver hair (and no judgement on those who do) I have genuinely come to believe that although we can do little to halt all the ageing processes, we can certainly slow them by our outlook, attitudes and wilful blindness to the wrinkles.
Old age should be like the horizon; an ever-moving destination which you will never reach. As David Bowie once said, ‘Ageing is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been.’ When I get there, I will let you know.
Former Brighton and Hove police chief Graham Bartlett’s Brighton-based Jo Howe crime novel series continues with City on Fire which is now available in paperback.
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