Read Online No! I Don't Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a Sixtieth Year by Virginia Ironside - Free Book Online
Authors: Virginia Ironside
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actually being a woodcutter in the Forest of Dean had its good points.) As for joining a book club—no thanks!
Nick, the plumber, came and fixed a tiny gas leak in my pipe. He is a huge, nice black guy, about eighteen feet tall.
“You’re looking well,” he said.
“I’m feeling well!” I said, as I brought him an orange juice. “I’m sixty today!”
“You don’t look it!” he said.
Wasn’t sure quite what to make of that. In a way I do rather want to look sixty. Anyway, when I asked him how much I should pay him, he said: “As it’s your birthday, nothing.”
I spent all morning following up tips given me on a “So Now You’re Sixty” list, sent me by Lucy, which included information not only about bus passes and the like, but also the news that I might be able to get into swimming pools and sports centers at a special concession price. Despite the fact that several of my friends have taken up gym, and spend three mornings a week bicycling, like elderly hamsters on wheels, till they are red in the face, trying all the while to listen to improving tapes that promise to teach them Italian in eight sessions, I shall not be joining them. I have done my time in gyms and have no desire to enter another one, however cheap the entrance. So smelly! So noisy! So embarrassing! And the clothes you have to wear! It is simply impossible to look attractive, in my view, in a pair of Lycra shorts.
More interesting is the information, on Lucy’s list, that after sixty I can now get my prescriptions free. Brilliant! I wonder if I could get my pills on standing order, like with banks, so I could have a constant supply of Diazepam, Migril and all the strangely creepy things I have wheedled out of my doctor over the years. When it comes to sleeping, I’m not someone for whom milky drinks at bedtime, plant extracts and natural essences do the trick; namby pamby Valerian and things you can get over the counter at pharmacists, with euphemistic names like Natracalm and Sleepeeze don’t work for me. Instead, give me a prescription for a heavy-duty pharmaceutical knock-out pill. I get on much better with pop-out packs of goodies, things that come with leaflets listing at least three pages of possible side effects, made in laboratories by nice men in white coats.
According to Lucy, I am, apparently, also due a winter fuel payment of £200 a year. But my warming fuel will come in a bottle and not through a plug in the wall. And finally, my house insurance might be lower because old people are considered more reliable than young ones. Which is odd. Surely all old people leave the gas on regularly?
It’s a funny old business. I would have thought that if the government was sensible it would double the cost of prescriptions for old people, exclude them from gym, triple their heating bills, raise their taxes and generally do everything in their power to curtail their lives, thus saving the country billions of pounds, but no, they seem determined to keep us dragging on and on. I can see the point when it comes to animals and vets—the vets make a fortune out of keeping pets hanging on to the bitter end. But what’s in it for the government? Absolutely nothing.
Lucy had helpfully added telephone numbers, Web sites and information lines, so of course I got cracking at once and rang the number advertised as the Pension Helpline. I was taken by a mechanized voice through all the options I had, which reminded me that if I was hard of hearing I could get special assistance or, if I found it all confusing, I could get a friend to help me.
My query was finally answered by an old duck called Ernest, not a name I hear a lot these days. He spoke extremely slowly and clearly all the way through the call, and maintained a kindly smile in his voice. At the end of the conversation, he said, in a gentle, friendly, but distinctly raised, voice: “Ta-ra, dearie. And you take care, now!”
I am now a “concession” and can get into most
Nick, the plumber, came and fixed a tiny gas leak in my pipe. He is a huge, nice black guy, about eighteen feet tall.
“You’re looking well,” he said.
“I’m feeling well!” I said, as I brought him an orange juice. “I’m sixty today!”
“You don’t look it!” he said.
Wasn’t sure quite what to make of that. In a way I do rather want to look sixty. Anyway, when I asked him how much I should pay him, he said: “As it’s your birthday, nothing.”
I spent all morning following up tips given me on a “So Now You’re Sixty” list, sent me by Lucy, which included information not only about bus passes and the like, but also the news that I might be able to get into swimming pools and sports centers at a special concession price. Despite the fact that several of my friends have taken up gym, and spend three mornings a week bicycling, like elderly hamsters on wheels, till they are red in the face, trying all the while to listen to improving tapes that promise to teach them Italian in eight sessions, I shall not be joining them. I have done my time in gyms and have no desire to enter another one, however cheap the entrance. So smelly! So noisy! So embarrassing! And the clothes you have to wear! It is simply impossible to look attractive, in my view, in a pair of Lycra shorts.
More interesting is the information, on Lucy’s list, that after sixty I can now get my prescriptions free. Brilliant! I wonder if I could get my pills on standing order, like with banks, so I could have a constant supply of Diazepam, Migril and all the strangely creepy things I have wheedled out of my doctor over the years. When it comes to sleeping, I’m not someone for whom milky drinks at bedtime, plant extracts and natural essences do the trick; namby pamby Valerian and things you can get over the counter at pharmacists, with euphemistic names like Natracalm and Sleepeeze don’t work for me. Instead, give me a prescription for a heavy-duty pharmaceutical knock-out pill. I get on much better with pop-out packs of goodies, things that come with leaflets listing at least three pages of possible side effects, made in laboratories by nice men in white coats.
According to Lucy, I am, apparently, also due a winter fuel payment of £200 a year. But my warming fuel will come in a bottle and not through a plug in the wall. And finally, my house insurance might be lower because old people are considered more reliable than young ones. Which is odd. Surely all old people leave the gas on regularly?
It’s a funny old business. I would have thought that if the government was sensible it would double the cost of prescriptions for old people, exclude them from gym, triple their heating bills, raise their taxes and generally do everything in their power to curtail their lives, thus saving the country billions of pounds, but no, they seem determined to keep us dragging on and on. I can see the point when it comes to animals and vets—the vets make a fortune out of keeping pets hanging on to the bitter end. But what’s in it for the government? Absolutely nothing.
Lucy had helpfully added telephone numbers, Web sites and information lines, so of course I got cracking at once and rang the number advertised as the Pension Helpline. I was taken by a mechanized voice through all the options I had, which reminded me that if I was hard of hearing I could get special assistance or, if I found it all confusing, I could get a friend to help me.
My query was finally answered by an old duck called Ernest, not a name I hear a lot these days. He spoke extremely slowly and clearly all the way through the call, and maintained a kindly smile in his voice. At the end of the conversation, he said, in a gentle, friendly, but distinctly raised, voice: “Ta-ra, dearie. And you take care, now!”
I am now a “concession” and can get into most
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