How old is old? That depends on how old you are, for as you age you will nudge that number upwards. A recent German study asked people over the age of 40 that same question eight times over a period of 25 years, and it found “old” gets older as we age. Of course it does. Would Paul McCartney, fit at 81¾, choose 64 now as the time he’d need feeding? Jumpin’ Jack Flash at 80 is as lithe and frisky as ever, but only a halfway Dorian Grey, young in limb, but a face as raddled as that portrait: is Mick Jagger old yet?
I am 77: I and my friends contemplate our age all the time. How old are we, exactly? I can feel like Methuselah, mentioning to some bright young spark that the first election I covered as an Observer reporter was 1970, or that I remember the old king’s funeral, or that I had a doll’s ration book (sweet rationing lasted until 1953), or how the great smog of London of 1952 that killed 4,000 knocked me down with bronchitis, inhaling Friars’ Balsam under a towel. That’s old, isn’t it?
