Getting a Life (Older People Talking)

A collection of testimonies from an earlier generation.

 

Once you have read what Denis Healey, Barbara Castle, Claire Rayner, Peter Preston, and a rich supporting cast have said in this groundbreaking book, you will ignore them at your peril. It is estimated that by 2020 more than a quarter of the population of the European Communit with be over 60. This age group represents an articulate and capable section of society whose views matter as much in the polling blooth as they do in the marketplace. In these pages, for the first time, a cross-section of older people spell out from their own experience what it means to grow old in computer-age Britain—how to make ends meet, how to keep that precious independence, and how to cope with widowhood, with sex, and with sociability. They look at Education with a big E, health and physical fitness, travel, grandparenthood, the post-retirement vacuum, and survival as part of an ethnic minority. They advise on how to get away from it all and start again, even how, ultimately, to meet death itself. Every contributor to this book is over 60, and some will not see 90 again. They have writen as the mood took them—in anger, in joy, and often with a real zest for living. They are not sweet old things asking for a set on the bus; they are in many cases demanding a turn in the driving seat and for all who travel with them to sit up and take notice of what they have to say.