FRIENDS

"The notion that marriage is what sustains our brains is nonsense."

Liz Jones writes in the Daily Mail:

"When my dad retired at the age of 65, he tried to keep his mind active by completing a daily crossword puzzle and borrowing a weekly tome from the library, but for a man who had had a career in the Army to have so little direction was diminishing and, it turned out, deadly: he barely lasted five years.

I know my dad’s death ten years ago precipitated a decline in my mum’s mental health, meaning she is now convinced he’s not dead but merely late from some appointment – ‘Where on earth is Daddy?’ she keeps saying.

Last week, I found myself immersed in a sort of silver social soup. I went to the 90th birthday celebrations of Lord Weidenfeld, who set up his publishing empire 60 years ago.

He is still involved in running his business, travelling the world to find new writers, and he gave such a witty speech full of anecdotes of a life lived to the full that I couldn’t help but question the fact so many old people now sit in circles in care homes, not allowed even to turn on the TV.

The day before, I gave a talk to a writers’ group in Nottingham. The women were almost all over 60 and as the results of poetry competitions were read out and reminders given to put names down for upcoming barbecues, I began to feel exhausted.

These women were all astonishingly well read and funny. The sense of camaraderie in the room was heartwarming, too, and I realised that in order to avoid dementia we need not shackle ourselves with a partner who traps us in a house where we run out of things to say, but instead we need to forge friendships.

Now, this last bit might sound patronising but when I visited another women’s group, this time in the slums of Mumbai, I was staggered at the vitality of the women, many over 90.

When I asked my translator, 100 if he was a day, why this was so, he told me it was because in the slums everyone knows each other; no one stays stuck in a house, they are all out on the street, talking, gossiping, watching over each other’s children.

The women told me that to live in a flat, with a locked front door, would be a living death. They didn’t envy my privacy, which they saw as isolation.

I met families where three, four and even five generations lived together, where the great grandad was revered and listened to and would never be placed in a home.

The people in the slums of Mumbai feel sorry for the old people in the West. And so do I."