SIMON LEWANDOWSKI

THE WRITERS’ ROOM, CLOUDESLEY SQUARE, N1 0HN

What’s it like being old?

“Like being young, only not”? Which is to say, is being old the absence of “youngness” or the presence of “oldness”?

Getting old is comparatively easy. Getting old is a bit like getting to another city by staying in the same place while the world turns under you. For seventy-two years I just avoided being knocked off my bicycle, falling off mountains, being murdered, contracting a terminal illness, taking a drug overdose, standing next to a suicide bomber etc… It wasn’t an activity I consciously built my life around it was just there as a kind of background hum. Like breathing; that’s another one – keep breathing, that helps a lot.

But being old. What’s that like?

It’s a maybe a bit like being up a mountain and looking back and realising how far you’ve walked and how many things you’ve seen on the way. Realising how many things you missed seeing on the way or saw and forgot but you’ve started down the other side so there’s no way you’ll go back to remind yourself and fill in the gaps.