Now we are six(ty)

It is not far short of a month since I passed the significant (for me, anyway!) milestone that was my sixtieth birthday. I am now officially ‘getting on a bit’!

The gentle reader may have noticed – however – that apart from describing in a frankly unnecessary degree of detail the celebrations that accompanied the event I have made very little reference to what it is actually like to have crossed the great divide into a seventh decade. Though I have now achieved an age that would once have been considered ‘pretty good going’ – in this day and age to have done so is merely commonplace.

Truth be told I have written nothing because being 60 has felt little different to being 59 – which in turn felt no different to 58 – and so forth…

That this may be self-evident is clearly no help at all to anyone who has arrived here as a result of Googling the InterWebNet nervously for signs of an after-life in the detritus of the boomer generation. I will therefore make what observations I can – however prosaic they may be.

The first thing to say is that once one has passed one’s sixtieth anniversary – in the UK at least – one is suddenly eligible for free stuff!

I take regular medication for inherited hypertension. It will be very nice no longer to have to pay for my prescriptions (three off – every two months)… at least until we move to Canada, where – the Kickass Canada Girl assures me – I will be charged even more than I had once to pay here.

I am also a long-time contact lens wearer and – as a result of one of my habitually curmudgeonly fallings-out with my erstwhile optician – I had recently to sign a new contract with a different chain. For this purpose I was required to take a fresh eye test and I was delighted to find that this also was free of charge.

Until fairly recently I would have been able to get a free bus pass as well – but I learn that the powers-that-be have decided that this was far too straightforward a service to be gifted to mere mortals and have thus of late complicated it to the nth degree. To qualify now one has to live in a certain part of the country, to have been born under a particular phase of the moon and to arrive at the answer ‘5’ when asked to subtract the number one first thought of…

Well – something like that! I will not – apparently – qualify for mine until I am sixty five years, two months and twelve days old – and I certainly don’t intend still to be around here by then. Those who know me will doubtless snort derisively at this juncture and point out that the issue is moot since I wouldn’t be caught dead on a bus in any case!

One change – however – is significant. I am now a pensioner! At my previous school my retirement age was 60 and my pension thence – though relatively humble – has now come into effect. I thus received my first pension paycheck at the end of last week. Now that was a momentous event.

The real changes – though – will not take place until I finally retire…

Roll on the day!