We, by nature, have definite expectations of those a certain age. Cynical, I guess, but realistic. I was only walking down the main drag of my home town this morning – a quaint seaside town in north-west England – surveying the behavior of a largely retired population strolling at leisure. They were window shopping, gazing at clouds from wooden benches covered in memorial plaques, stroking dogs that had become their motive for survival. Waiting for death, I guess, in the most dignified manner. People in their late-sixties, seventies, eighties. You can spot them a mile off. They wear the fatigue of stacked up decades in their stoop, their doddering shuffles, their swollen bellies, receding hairlines, frail shoulders, high-blood-pressured cheeks. In their obsolete clothing. Their palpable surrender to antiquity. Curved spines held up by wooden canes. They know they’re old and …
