Opinion

Anita Robinson: Retirees soon find that permanent leisure can be stressful

Some retirees take up yoga
Some retirees take up yoga Some retirees take up yoga

Maybe it’s only something you notice on a leisurely afternoon when you’re relaxing after lunch reading the newspapers with the telly burbling quietly in the background, that all the commercial channels run advertisements angled at People of a Certain Age.

Here are heartburn and joint-pain remedies, walk-in baths and showers, riser/recliner chairs, adjustable beds, stairlifts, mobility scooters and funeral plans. How infinitely depressing. Even the ads for river cruises popular among People of a Certain Age, are counter-productive. Imagine being marooned on a boat with folk almost exactly like ourselves.

But how do we occupy the time that used to be occupied by work? The thrill of luxurious aimlessness and long lie-ins soon palls. Permanent leisure can be very stressful when pleasing oneself ceases to be a novelty. I make ‘long-finger’ lists of things that ought to be done, that need to be done – but not today. Should an unaccustomed burst of energy assail me, I sit down till it passes murmuring my favourite fridge-magnet mantra, “How beautiful it is to do nothing – and then rest afterwards.” The unexpected caller is directed to my second favourite fridge magnet, “The house was clean yesterday. Sorry you missed it.”

Many of my contemporary retirees have taken up gardening, yoga, walking or swimming, (in one alarming case outdoor swimming.) In the sea! In this climate? I’m basically ‘agin’ anything that makes me feel hot, cold, wet, tired, breathless or bored, preferring more sedentary pursuits that do not include evening classes, playing bridge or joining University of the Third Age. I expect eventually that my head will be the only healthily functioning part of my body left.

Others find the exhilarating liberty of retirement swiftly curtailed by taken-for-granted part-time grandchildcare. Wrestling with a recalcitrant toddler in a supermarket to the detriment of a gammy hip and arthritic knees, or baby-sitting small infants whose parents have instituted a formidable sleep/feed regime garnered from a baby-rearing book, is no sinecure – particularly when the young couple ring every hour to make sure Nana and Gramps are adhering to the rules, conveniently forgetting they themselves were brought up by the selfsame couple without help of either a baby-guru or a child psychologist.

When I worked as a peripatetic teacher for the Verbal Arts Centre in primary schools in three counties, the overwhelming consensus of opinion from P4s and 5s was that “grannies and granddads are spoiling us.” Ideally, grandparents should be mildly subversive, with sweets in their pockets, treats in mind and secrets to share, basking in the warmth of a child’s uncritical and unconditional love, with all the joy and none of the responsibility.

Age, pessimists say, is the attrition of everything. What value has a wealth of experience, accrued wisdom and common sense if nobody wants to utilize it? It was ever thus. The graph of our lives is an irregular one. In arrogant youth we rashly and erroneously believe we know everything. Decades later, when we do know everything, nobody’s listening.

Looking at the numberless thousands of vociferous youngsters protesting last weekend against climate change, I suddenly felt very old and rather envious. I was reminded of the awakening of my own nascent social conscience when, in sixth form, we were forbidden to form a debating society. The idea was greeted with horror by authority.

Oh dear, no. Far too morally dangerous for convent grammar schoolgirls.

Consequently, I never opened my mouth in public until I was 27. The fact that I’ve rarely shut it since could be construed as a mercy. Like every generation before us, we believed we could change the world. To some extent we did, in small but significant ways. At least we taught our children and grandchildren to speak up, speak out.

Now, we’re an ageing population, shamelessly extending our sell-by date with effective medication and mobility-restoring surgery, wont to swap symptoms when we meet and lament that society’s going to hell in a handcart. Despite increasing debility, incipient senility and apparent invisibility to the young, we are the baby-boomers, resilient to the last.