Living dangerously
Those three ‘pensioners’ as the newspapers
insist on calling them (I would prefer ‘seniors’ or better still just
‘people’) who sort-of got lost in the Pyrenees a few weeks ago, remind me of a rather remarkable place I once visited.
I had been invited to a day hospital set up to
rehabilitate people who had suffered a stroke or were very frail. The principal took me around and explained what was
going on. ‘This is where we teach them how to
fall,’ he said.
Fall? Had I heard him correctly?
‘Oh yes indeed. And we teach them to get up too,’ he said.
The policy at this unit was to help
people to live dangerously, even if that meant no more than getting up and going to the
toilet or taking a trip downstairs. Some people, it
seems, want to succumb to negative thinking and negative living after a debilitating
illness. In other words, they don’t want to
get out of bed.
A (very small) bit of me says if that’s what they
want, we should respect their wishes. But
a lot more of me thinks that wanting to be miserable is, well, miserable and also tough on
the carers, and maybe a drain on social services.
 So I cheered when I read about those three tourists in
their late seventies and early eighties who drove down through France to the
Mediterranean. And though I would have been
as furious as their children and grandchildren to be denied information about their change
of plans, I totally applaud their sense of adventure.
One report said that they had turned down the villa
they had originally booked on the basis that it involved too many steps to climb. And very sensible too.
I do hope that the grandson who
threatened to chop up the travellers’ passports was only joking. We’re talking about heroes here, not merely
‘pensioners’.
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This laterlife…
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Elton John, now 54, is said to be
addicted to Ovaltine at bedtime and parties on fruit juice or alcohol-free Kaliber
according to a profile in the Sunday Times.
80 year old Humphery Lyttelton, jazz
musician and broadcaster, was recently quoted as saying, ‘I feel 40 on stage and 120
in Waitrose’….
Maureen Parker, 71, wouldn’t
agree. She refused to budge when a thief got into
her car as she was loading up her shopping after a visit to the supermarket. Maureen hopped into the back and refused to move until
the thief gave her the car keys. After a
couple of miles and non-stop ranting from Maureen, the thief finally admitted defeat and
handed over the keys.
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