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Ageing & Growing Old

Are you growing older?

  • Yes, I am

    Votes: 82 61.7%

  • No, I'm getting younger

    Votes: 28 21.1%

  • Sorry, I don't understand the question

    Votes: 16 12.0%

  • I'm a Mod; I think adding silly polls to chat threads is pointless

    Votes: 7 5.3%
  • Total voters
    133
Comfortably Numb said:
Billy Connolly talking about growing old - you know it's so when you start making vocal expressions, having to get up from a comfortable chair/settee.

'Arghh', etc.

My daughter recently pointed out, to her amusement, that I do this all the time now...

Resonate with anyone else!?
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Yerrrsssssss.....
 
Roger Nowell said:
I now do the full "urgghh" when getting out of a chair. Like a World's Strongest Man contender pulling a truck with his teeth. It's all in my mind; I wouldn't dream of doing that on this railway platform.
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'Yeahargh...'... Just got up from my comfy chair there and made that kind of noise...

Consciously tried not to...

No, *seriously*...
 
It seems to me that the real generation gap - and hence signifier of one's real age - centres around digital technology rahter than anything else. No longer is it fashion, music or politics.

I mean we all dress pretty much in the same way these days, don't we? Hoodies, desert boots, skinny jeans, chinos, khaki, muted colours...etc

A person from the millennal generation might well enjoy the music I listen to, and I their's (or might not: the point being it is no longer a generation thing so much, just down to individual taste). A guy in his fifties could be into Cannibal Corpse whereas a kid of 18 might be heavily into Yes.

As for politics, I find myself increasingly in sympathy with the Millennials - minus the snowflakiness, that is (and anyway, the prevalence of this has been much overstressed by certain media outlets).

But when we come to technology...oh dear, oh dear.

I know that some of you on here are real techo-nerds (and thank god for that!) but I for one am much more of a digital immigrant than a digital native. Most software technology for me has never been anything more than a work tool which I have been obliged to learn about in order to do my job. A bit of a nuisance, in other words. Of course, I use the web, and have a blog, and stream films and so on - but what distingiushes the millennials attiitude to digital technology is that they see it as the be all and and all (not just as another media option, as I do) - plus the ease and serenity with which they constantly upgrade and also communicate between different gagdgets (ie sending things from their phones onto their laptops, etc).

Interestingly, the show Not The Nine O'Clock news absolutley nailed this techo-generation gap phenomena back in the seventies in (what has become known as) The Gramophone sketch. Every time I enter a phone or computer shop I feel exactly like the Mel Smith character! Especially, for example, when he asks for something that can play his old 78's. (I want something that can play my old DVDs!) The Hi-Fi snobbery of yesteryear has been replaced by a similar attitude around phones and PC's. - so nothing is new. (What gives me succour is that the Millennials will eventually find themselves similarly bamboozled by some new type of technology that comes along in thirty odd years time!)

Anyway, here;s the sketch - and if you like you can see it also as my belated tribute to the late, and occasionally great, Mel Smith:



[Edited owing to technical problems!]
 
Zeke,

..(I want something that can play my old DVDs!) ..

How about a DVD player ? Plenty around. I bought my last one for £5 from the Cat Protection League' shop.

Or even your PC.

The mention of HI Fi snobbery is interesting. Today's listeners will accept a much lower quality of sound than we would in the past. I still lust after a pair of Seinheiser (sic ?) headphones.

And the next generation won't be able to fix anything. The majority will not know where to start. Plus the new equipment is virtually non-repairable anyway.

Bring back the days of discrete components, the soldering iron and the circuit diagram.

Hands up all here who still own a valve radio.

INT21
 
I don't own a valve radio, but I can change a three-pin plug with a tableknife. A handy skill acquired aged about ten. Regularly swapping between stereo; B&W portable and cassette player. Ah, all the old crafts are dying out..
 
Roger Nowell,

We were posh.

Each of our appliances had it's own plug. Both of them.

INT21
 
Two appliances, two plugs! Bye, tha' don't know tha' were born.
 
Maybe that's why the local kids used to beat me up on my way home from school.

INT21.
 
Oh aye...coal oil lamp eh.. we 'ad carbide chips and water ter maake acetylene we did an' all. an' if jets got blocked, whole bloody package 'ud go sky high. yer could tell 'oo didn't have primus prickers by the slates missin' from t'roof.

EEeee tha' think tha's 'ard done by...Why, when I were a lad...........
 
..Ye were lucky, ye had electricity. ..

But we had to keep it turned off at night so that the gangs of Luddites didn't see it and pull down the cables.

Ma used to hang our washing on them during the day.

INT21.
 
We used to make our grandad eat the carbide chips then we would light his farts and cook our Sunday dinner on the flame. A whole pigeon for the ten of us; if we were lucky.

INT21.
 
Roger Nowell said:
I don't own a valve radio, but I can change a three-pin plug with a tableknife. A handy skill acquired aged about ten. Regularly swapping between stereo; B&W portable and cassette player. Ah, all the old crafts are dying out..
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Modern appliances have to arrive with a plug fitted. (That may be EU law.)

Back in the day, they'd turn up without one and you'd be searching around for something you could whip a plug off. Caused ENDLESS trouble at home.
 
Pensioner aged 91 put his three bedroom house up for sale (£2.7 million) in Chelsea to finance 24-hour care. He will knock a million off the price on condition that he'll continue living there for the rest of his life (Telegraph today). This is not uncommon in France where you can buy a house complete with an elderly resident (viager, 'for life') who receives a life tenancy and monthly payments.
I remember the story in the 1980's of a Lawyer in France who agreed to pay £400 a month to a 90 year old woman until her death - but the additional income greatly improved her standard of living and subsequent longevity. Never knew the outcome until Telegraph kindly supplied her name as Jeanne Calment, who went on to become the oldest living person, dying 32 years later, aged 122 and she outlived the buyer by two years. There's hope.
 
One of the women in the 'Pauper's Grave Unit' had a tear in her eye as she related a story about an old bloke who lived on the edge of a Council Estate in one of the London Boroughs (she wouldn't say which one). He was not an easy person to get on with, in truth he was a cantankerous old git, his temperament not helped by having been burgled five times in nine months by scrotes from the Estate. The last break-in took the last two things he had of any value, namely his war medals and his pension book.
Knowing the pension book was his only source of income, the Council gave him a £30.00 emergency loan but with strict instructions that it was to be repaid within a week (presumably from the re-issued pension book). Obviously a week later the pension book still wasn't ready and the Council then withheld it until the loan was repaid. The old boy's body was found six weeks later and it was estimated that it had taken four and a half weeks for him to starve to death. Once the Council learnt of his demise they released the pension book so the funds could be used to pay for his funeral.
I would like to think some-one got their knuckles rapped over this one but I doubt it.
 
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Bad Bungle said:
One of the women in the 'Pauper's Grave Unit' had a tear in her eye as she related a story about an old bloke who lived on the edge of a Council Estate in one of the London Boroughs (she wouldn't say which one). He was not an easy person to get on with, in truth he was a cantankerous old git, his temperament not helped by having been burgled five times in nine months by scrotes from the Estate. The last break-in took the last two things he had of any value, namely his war medals and his pension book.
Knowing the pension book was his only source of income, the Council gave him a £30.00 emergency loan but with strict instructions that it was to be repaid within a week (presumably from the re-issued pension book). Obviously a week later the pension book still wasn't ready and the Council then withheld it until the loan was repaid. The old boy's body was found six weeks later and it was estimated that it had taken four and a half weeks for him to starve to death. Once the Council learnt of his demise they released the pension book so the funds could be used to pay for his funeral.
I would like to think some-one got their knuckles rapped over this one but I doubt it.
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:mad:
 
Bad Bungle said:
One of the women in the 'Pauper's Grave Unit' had a tear in her eye as she related a story about an old bloke who lived on the edge of a Council Estate in one of the London Boroughs (she wouldn't say which one). He was not an easy person to get on with, in truth he was a cantankerous old git, his temperament not helped by having been burgled five times in nine months by scrotes from the Estate. The last break-in took the last two things he had of any value, namely his war medals and his pension book.
Knowing the pension book was his only source of income, the Council gave him a £30.00 emergency loan but with strict instructions that it was to be repaid within a week (presumably from the re-issued pension book). Obviously a week later the pension book still wasn't ready and the Council then withheld it until the loan was repaid. The old boy's body was found six weeks later and it was estimated that it had taken four and a half weeks for him to starve to death. Once the Council learnt of his demise they released the pension book so the funds could be used to pay for his funeral.
I would like to think some-one got their knuckles rapped over this one but I doubt it.
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We need a 'Charles Dickens' smiley.
Hell, we need Charles Dickens.
 
escargot said:
Hell, we need Charles Dickens.
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I had no idea until this year that we've to thank him for having shamed employers into giving their employees Xmas Day off (as a prototypical paid public holiday), and for the benefactorial existence of the world-renowned Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. Respect is due, certainly
 
Bad Bungle said:
One of the women in the 'Pauper's Grave Unit' had a tear in her eye as she related a story about an old bloke who lived on the edge of a Council Estate in one of the London Boroughs (she wouldn't say which one). He was not an easy person to get on with, in truth he was a cantankerous old git, his temperament not helped by having been burgled five times in nine months by scrotes from the Estate. The last break-in took the last two things he had of any value, namely his war medals and his pension book.
Knowing the pension book was his only source of income, the Council gave him a £30.00 emergency loan but with strict instructions that it was to be repaid within a week (presumably from the re-issued pension book). Obviously a week later the pension book still wasn't ready and the Council then withheld it until the loan was repaid. The old boy's body was found six weeks later and it was estimated that it had taken four and a half weeks for him to starve to death. Once the Council learnt of his demise they released the pension book so the funds could be used to pay for his funeral.
I would like to think some-one got their knuckles rapped over this one but I doubt it.
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Sounds as though he had no one to sue the arse off those responsible. Criminal negligence springs to mind, but the police and CPS seem reluctant to pursue this type of case. Dreadful indicator of just how "caring" local authorities can be. The council where I live have made it blatantly obvious on a few occasions that they could not give a toss about residents in their area. At least in one particular serious case I got involved in I had the satisfaction of helping to remove some of them from their lucrative jobs.
 
Bad Bungle said:
One of the women in the 'Pauper's Grave Unit' had a tear in her eye as she related a story about an old bloke who lived on the edge of a Council Estate in one of the London Boroughs (she wouldn't say which one). He was not an easy person to get on with, in truth he was a cantankerous old git, his temperament not helped by having been burgled five times in nine months by scrotes from the Estate. The last break-in took the last two things he had of any value, namely his war medals and his pension book.
Knowing the pension book was his only source of income, the Council gave him a £30.00 emergency loan but with strict instructions that it was to be repaid within a week (presumably from the re-issued pension book). Obviously a week later the pension book still wasn't ready and the Council then withheld it until the loan was repaid. The old boy's body was found six weeks later and it was estimated that it had taken four and a half weeks for him to starve to death. Once the Council learnt of his demise they released the pension book so the funds could be used to pay for his funeral.
I would like to think some-one got their knuckles rapped over this one but I doubt it.
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Miserable, sad, and unforgivable if true.

I may be nitpicking but haven't pension books gone away now? State pensions are now either paid directly into a person's bank account or (if the recipient doesn't have a bank account) into a Post Office Card Account. I guess it could have been his Post Office Card that was stolen, rather than his pension book.
 
markrkingston1 said:
Miserable, sad, and unforgivable if true.

I may be nitpicking but haven't pension books gone away now? State pensions are now either paid directly into a person's bank account or (if the recipient doesn't have a bank account) into a Post Office Card Account. I guess it could have been his Post Office Card that was stolen, rather than his pension book.
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That's a good point. Surely it'd be his Post Office card, which'd be replaced in no time.
 
escargot said:
That's a good point. Surely it'd be his Post Office card, which'd be replaced in no time.
Click to expand...

Might be a good while ago though. For a while pensioners had the option to hold on to books and some did until the bitter end.
 
Zeke Newbold said:
...But when we come to technology...oh dear, oh dear...
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Bought a back-up SIM card this morning. Now one of those where you have to fit same inside a tiny frame, which itself fits into another frame, just so as it all, 'fits'...

An hour of my life wasted...'Stop falling to pieces every fecking single time I try'...
 
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Bad Bungle said:
I can't remember how long ago the story was placed, but a pensioner with war medals would put it in the 1990's ?
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I was involved with the end of the pension book and the giro cheque, the Direct Payments initiative, when I worked in the DWP. That happened around the autumn of 2004. So the story is unlikely to be "set" any later than that.
 
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