Bakewell - The view from here : life at seventy

The View from Here

JOAN BAKEWELL was born in Stockport in 1933 and went on to become a celebrated radio and television broadcaster, co-presenting BBC's Late Night Line Up until 1972 and later The Heart of the Matter , for which she won a BAFTA for television journalism. She was awarded a CBE for services to the arts and television in 1999. Joan Bakewell's autobiography, The Centre of the Bed , was published in 2003. Belief , which she edited, was published in 2005 to accompany the Radio 3 series of the same name. Joan Bakewell lives in London.

The View from Here

LIFE AT SEVENTY

JOAN BAKEWELL

theguardian

ATLANTIC BOOKS

LONDON

First published in 2006 in Great Britain by Atlantic Books on behalf
of Guardian Newspapers Ltd. Atlantic Books is an imprint of
Grove Atlantic Ltd.

First paperback edition published by Atlantic Books on behalf of
Guardian Newspapers Ltd in 2007.

This electronic edition published by Atlantic Books in 2009

Copyright Joan Bakewell 2006

All articles used by permission of the author.

The moral right of Joan Bakewell to be identified as the author of
this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

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Media Group Plc. Guardian Books is an imprint of Guardian
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above publisher of this book.

The author and publisher would like to thank Faber and Faber Ltd
for permission to quote from copyrighted material: 'The Love Song
of J. Alfred Prufock' in Selected Poems by T. S. Eliot 2002.

ISBN: 978 1 84354 515 6

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Contents

'May you live all the days of your life.'

JONATHAN SWIFT

Introduction

EACH OF THE LANDMARK DECADES in life offers a frisson. Our culture operates by numbers and 'the big O' offers a chance for a larger than usual party as well as for a little introspection. But the approach of seventy seemed, for me, more laden with significance than any other birthday had been. It gave a public label to something I didn't feel: being old. Rather than let it slip by, I thought I would do something to mark a new departure in my life. So I began a column for the Guardian newspaper called 'Just Seventy', a title named in gentle mockery of the teenage magazine, Just Seventeen , now defunct, as is the Guardian column.

The effect was exactly as I had hoped. I felt a renewed sense of purpose about life, a sense that I still belonged to the community of journalists among whom I had worked for many decades, and also that I had a role that connected me, on a broader level, to other people.

These are things that tend to fall away as you get older. A sense of purpose that drives the young and directs the mature seems no longer needed in later years. The effect is to leave you stranded high and dry, out of the mainstream of ideas and activities that animate the working population. It takes real effort to reconfigure your life to stay within that community. Being a freelance as a journalist and a broadcaster is to be free of the daily constraints of consistent, unvarying employment. That, given the Byzantine managerial intricacies of today's media operations, is often a blessing. There is to be no sudden lurch at retirement from diary-heavy commitments to wandering aimlessly around the house. But on the whole society still believes that the old should have better things to do than insist on being as active as they ever were. Although, under pressure from the pensions crisis, a move is now afoot to keep the population working longer, there is no genuine consideration given to how people's later working lives might be made a source of fulfilment and satisfaction. Given our longer life expectancy and falling pension pay-outs, how this can be done needs to be positively addressed. My limited experience so far tells me that involvement with other people is a major pleasure that the old take in life. Its converse is the isolation and loneliness that afflicts so many.

This is, after all, merely the third of the three ages of man. Its span is as great if not greater than the earlier two. The distance from sixty to ninety is as far as from twenty to fifty, a fact that the old, their behaviour and their attitudes sets in perspective. That's why this book doesn't make such generalizations. It is not about issues; it is not a how-to book of advice and homely wisdom. It is rather a personal record of how I feel about being over seventy, based on and augmenting those Guardian columns. The responses to my e-mail address printed at the end of each column show that I struck a chord. Many people wrote to me of their own lives, added to my arguments, corrected my mistaken memories and took up many of the points I wanted to raise. I liked that. It convinced me that there is a huge communality of interest out there in society that remains somehow untapped and unappreciated. I look forward to the day when the old are not referred to as 'them', a problem to solve, but as 'us' at the heart of an active and lively community. I hope this book does something to bring that time forward.

PART ONE
Today

'For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.' HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

ONE
A Place Called 'Old'

PREPARE TO BE OLD, to be very, very old. Projections made early in 2006 promise that many more of us will live to be a hundred. Some ten thousand do so already; indeed, the question arises of whether, twenty years hence, the Queen will be sending herself a congratulatory card. The number of centenarians could increase tenfold in the next sixty-eight years. By 2074 there could be 1.2 million people over one hundred. According to that admittedly speculative calculation anyone now in their thirties has a one in eight chance of reaching that age. So how do we view the prospect? I have in recent years hit the problem head on, writing about my own age and ageing in regular articles that to my delight have prompted an enthusiastic response, proof if it were needed that the old are still engaged in ideas and eager to exchange them. This book collects and extends some of those ideas, giving them a more recent perspective and adding others that have occurred to me. Each day seems to bring new experiences and insights that are just not available to those who haven't travelled this far in life.

To most people old age is a bad smell, a nasty place of bedpans and stair lifts, of bleak care homes and nurses who call you 'love' and 'dear' simply because to them all old people are alike. The public image of age is grim too, reinforcing a cosy contempt: too much 'grumpy, old' this and that, and songs that ask, 'Will you still love me when I'm sixty-four?' while expecting the answer 'no' of course. Headlines that harp on pensions, euthanasia and neglect may be justified but they aren't the whole story. I know plenty of old people living feisty and fulfilling lives. My oldest friend, aged ninety-seven, is currently enjoying the writing of Gabriel Garca Mrquez and no, she isn't a graduate or a middle-class professional. She's simply a very intelligent woman whose humdrum life hasn't inhibited the use of her wits. I like to think there are many like her; it's a condition I aspire to in the coming decades.

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