How venerable is too venerable? I’m 77 and I don’t know yet. However I might when I ranking there | Polly Toynbee – Guardian

How venerable is venerable? That relies on how venerable you are, for as you age you might maybe nudge that quantity upwards. A most up-to-date German gaze requested other folks over the age of 40 that connected query eight times over a length of 25 years, and it stumbled on “venerable” will get older as we age. Of direction it does. Would Paul McCartney, fit at 81¾, resolve 64 now as the time he’d need feeding? Jumpin’ Jack Flash at 80 is as lithe and frisky as ever, but most effective a midway Dorian Grey, younger in limb, but a face as raddled as that portrait: is Mick Jagger venerable yet?

I am 77: I and my chums accept as true with our age your total time. How venerable are we, exactly? I will feel admire Methuselah, citing to a pair sparkling younger spark that the first election I covered as an Observer reporter become as soon as 1970, or that I undergo in mind the venerable king’s funeral, or that I had a doll’s ration e book (candy rationing lasted till 1953), or how the sizable smog of London of 1952 that killed 4,000 knocked me down with bronchitis, inhaling Friars’ Balsam below a towel. That’s venerable, isn’t it?

However I’m delighted to reject moderately masses of folk’s judgment of age, no doubt if it comes from social media trolls. Final week one man posted “God, are you continue to around? I presumed you’d been in a dwelling for years.” One other, “Oh, Polly’s nonetheless alive then?” and a third wrote: “Retire already.” Enemies’ abuse mutates from slow girl to slow venerable girl. Even chums, corresponding to the estimable Roy Lilley, closing week blogged a reward (I bet), reading: “She might maybe maybe also perceive admire a kindly granny who’d originate you fold yer pyjamas and take a seat-up-neatly on the tea desk. However … if she become as soon as a sports neatly-known particular person, she’d be a cage fighter.”

After I become as soon as 18 I had a (homely) original published in which the venerable and uninteresting had been of their 20s. Now, I bet “venerable” most effective applies to the seriously infirm in brain or body. If alert and nimble, you don’t count as venerable, discontinue you? However in no contrivance as younger. The younger are moderately loads of, in all all over again-zone, unhindered by journey that curbs enthusiasms with, “Oh, we tried that ahead of and it didn’t work.”

At our age you accept as true with death lots, calculating what number of years, what number of Christmases left and questioning if your youngest grandchild will undergo in mind you. Contemplating cupboards burly of dresses, you assume: perfectly serviceable adequate to behold you out, don’t ranking to any extent additional, discontinue you? And there’s no utilize wishing you faded as fantastically as Helen Mirren – there never become as soon as. My generation of wannabe actors on the National Formative years Theatre never put out of your mind the day she knocked away their silly delusions the 2nd she stepped on stage.

I might maybe maybe also snarl bravely that I am not anxious of demise, after two race-ins with breast cancer: I am most effective alarmed of dementia or exiting thru a torture chamber. However I’ve no opinion if that’s glowing. Until you hear the knock on the door, you likely can’t know if philosophical wisdom holds up. I’ve been bowled over by the deaths of others, the stoics and the alarmed clingers-on.

You accurate ranking to preserve going. Blessed with a extensive beloved family, four teens and seven grandchildren, I cease more in general to accept as true with my correct excellent fortune. At my age, you’ve got shed excruciating youthful anxieties about how issues will turn out. I’m grew to become out, and this is as correct as I ranking. I might not give a enhance to with age, nor develop wiser or nicer. I create not ranking any bucket list. Final three hundred and sixty five days I even wrote my memoir.

If one thing newsworthy befalls you in the boulevard, you shall be called “grandmother” or “pensioner”, a meaningless identifier when pensioners are even more socially divided than the remaining. Pensioner politics are perplexingly opposite: fewer of the venerable are miserable than the final inhabitants, but it’s nonetheless 2 million other folks. The low-paid risk growing too sick to work, falling into the succor abyss between job and a rising pension age. But the venerable are also the wealthiest, my generation reaping unearned bounty from dwelling-worth inflation, blockading the younger from shopping. However 1.6 million pensioners ranking an unmet care need and masses of die waiting, and not utilizing a authorities mettlesome to soar property wealth from the venerable to fund neatly-liked social care. Pensioners are great voters, inserting in a single Tory authorities after yet every other. The younger might maybe maybe also nonetheless desire us all useless, despite the incontrovertible truth that polls sign them amazingly magnanimous.

Geroscience might maybe maybe also preserve us alive, but clogging up NHS beds with more than one terrible morbidities. Could well perhaps it preserve us healthy longer, then assassinate us off quick? Monday’s landmark debate in parliament reflected the 2-thirds who desire the correct to die. Final three hundred and sixty five days, Sima the lab rat grew to become the longest-living rat in historical previous. What become as soon as her homely elixir? The blood of the younger, which reinvigorated her organs. By living too long, will we vampire the younger? I don’t know how venerable is too venerable, but I intend to recognise it when I ranking there.

• Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist