I quite like being old, insofar as nobody now expects me to do things that I never wanted to do anyway. For instance, I never have to go camping ever again. I have only had to spend a few nights in a tent during my life but I always hated it. Now I am confident that I will never be expected to live under canvas. If only I could think of a reason why old folk can't go to barbecues.
As far as changing my behaviour, I'm not going to become more wild or more respectable. I don't worry about having white hair and a walking stick, or liking to listen to loud music and to swear (a lot.) Inside and outside don't always match - sometimes I look like a granny and think like a teenager - but it's fine. My girls just say, "Mum's an old hippy. She's unshockable."
One thing I have found as I age is that I am more angry about politics. I have been on what is known as "the radical left" all my life and I was an activist in my youth, but then I became preoccupied by everyday life, particularly my kids. Now I feel passionate like I did in my teens. I suppose it is social media that has affected me. Where I would have moaned to friends and family about an issue, I can now find posts online to support or to argue against. I do wonder, though, where all the 1960s radicals have gone. Have they all become conservatives as they aged, or were there never really that many?
If I wasn't so bad on my feet, I would go to demos again. Or, to be honest, I wouldn't because of Covid-19. Plus my family says that I would get hurt and my daughter says that, if I try, she will push me to the floor and sit on me. So I guess I will confine myself to online rants. Maybe I am suffering from Daily Mail Syndrome - getting irate about things in old age - but from the opposite side of the political spectrum.
