When I was a young girl, I didn’t have any grandparents (they had all died before I was born), so I relied on older neighbours as an example of what old age might be like. It wasn’t a positive view.
I believed that old people never laughed. I thought they sighed a lot and groaned. They walked with sticks, and they didn’t like children on bicycles or roller skates... or big dogs.
They always said that things were different and better when they were young, and they seemed to have a negative view about our greedy generation, which wanted everything and wanted it now.
I thought it must be desperate to be old. To wake up in the morning and remember that you were ancient - and so behave that way. I thought old people were full of aches and pains and horrible illnesses.
And, of course, around us in newspapers and magazines today, people are always talking about Fighting Old Age. It seems to be a full-time job.
This cream keeps the signs of old age off your face; that conditioner restores a youthful bounce to your hair; this style of jacket is less ageing than another one.
In other words, don’t let your neck be seen. It’s a dead giveaway, and shows that you really are as old as the hills.
The only older heroes and heroines in this day and age are people such as Cliff Richard and Jane Fonda who don’t look their age.
It’s as if looking your age is some kind of sad defeat. As if growing old is something to be hidden, dreaded and avoided.
No wonder so many people are filled with terror at the thought of reaching the grand old age of 70.
But, truthfully, when you get there, it’s not like that at all. It’s just the same as it always was.
Seriously, why would I lie to you?
I suppose, to be fair, I don’t miss the energy of youth very much - because I was never fit. So it doesn’t matter not being able to walk miles. That was never on my agenda.
I suppose I would like to be sharper than I am, and stop forgetting names or the title of the film on television last night.
But there’s a sort of release about it in a way. Let it go; don’t fight it. The name you’ve temporarily forgotten? It will come back. Or it will not come back. One way or the other, it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Nobody is judging you; they are not tut-tutting about you losing your memory. Usually they are too busy chasing the names and book titles that are escaping from their memories.
To me, growing older has never meant looking wistfully at fashion and thinking I am too old to wear that, or regretting the days of short skirts.
But then, in my youth, I was never into high fashion either. I was big - and there was an emphasis on not drawing attention to myself.
So maybe I am luckier than those who were high-maintenance, glamour-puss people. They might have more to regret losing.
Still, they have the photographs to show that they were once contenders. So why worry?
I don’t find myself regretting all that has been lost from previous generations. Instead, I concentrate on all that is so much better now.
Like cellphones, for example. In the old days, I used to dream of some kind of way that you could carry a phone with you - but I never thought I would see it in my lifetime.
It doesn’t matter nowadays if you are caught in traffic or get lost on the way somewhere. You can just send an SMS and the recipient will know that you haven’t fallen under a bus.
And then there are books in large print. They never had those years ago. Nor books on tape - marvellous things that will help you to read if your eyes get tired.
In my view, it is a pity that so much money is spent advertising ways to defy age, instead of encouraging people to face and enjoy it.
This is sending out a very wrong message to younger people and exaggerating the fear of getting older.
Let’s put it this way: the alternative to getting older is to die - which none of us wants for ourselves or those dear to us.
So why not spend the later years peacefully and happily, rather than engage in a furious attempt to beat back the signs of age to make people think you are a few calendar years younger than you are.
I knew this amazing French woman who always claimed to be 15 years older than she was.
“I tell them I am 70 when I am really 55,” she’d say cheerfully. “They might think I look so-so if they believed I was 55, but they think I am sensational when they believe me to be 70.”
She had a point, but I don’t know many people who would go along with her and deliberately lie upwards about their age.
I am not saying we should turn into old hags, forget to comb our hair and go around in sackcloth. But I know too many people who talk about having “a little work done” - and they don’t mean adding some decking to the garden.
Some people find huge self-esteem in having a little work done. It means that they will still get the admiring glances that have been like oxygen to them all their lives. And so, I suppose, for them it is money well spent. They are still in the land of eternal youth. The mirror will confirm it every day.
Let them have more time in the limelight, if that’s what they like. It’s their money and their time, and people are always buying things that, to others, seem ridiculous.
But for the rest of us?
I think we have a duty to tell younger people that, truly, it isn’t bad at all getting older.
There are even advantages. For instance, we have become much more mellow. There aren’t nearly as many petty annoyances, we are not as anxious to have our say, be proved right, or have the last word.
I enjoy the company of my family so much, and we go back - with the shorthand that families have - to the incidents of our youth and remember it with affection.
I value friendship greatly, and have learned to tell my friends that I am fond of them without anyone feeling it is sentimental.
And let’s not forget that most of your friends are 70 also (or fast on their way there). It isn’t as if they all got stuck at 28 or anything.
So it’s a journey we have all been making together, and the odd thing is that it’s all exactly the same as it was when we were young.
Those who were warm and good-natured then are still warm and good-natured; those who were moody or difficult are often still moody and difficult.
There are wonderful cases of people mellowing, but still we watch them with a beady eye in case they will revert to their former ways.
Then there is this extraordinary realisation that you don’t feel any different to how you felt all those years ago. You still laugh at the same kind of things, you are still moved to tears by the same music or pictures or stories. You are still interested in everything and everyone.
And if you are lucky enough to love someone and be loved in return, old age will not change that.
It isn’t a case of regrets and sighing over lost youth, energy and opportunities. Instead, it brings a closeness, a collection of shared memories and an appreciation of all that has gone before.
So, if old age makes relationships even more precious, if it feels exactly the same inside at 70 as when you were 21, if it means a great deal more wisdom and experience, then what is there to dread?
Why must we fight it, fear it, pretend that it isn’t happening?
Live in dread of old age? No, we should welcome it. - Daily Mail