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All good things come to an end. On Monday, my golden retriever Angus, having completed a century of doggy-years, relocated to the happy hunting grounds. Moreover, this will be the last report from the vestal hearth. With the house sold, and the domestic future still entirely uncertain, it feels like the right time to stop. After all, how can I be a hearth goddess without a fireside all my own? I could start up a blogging site called Notes from the Nomad’s Tent, but since a) my internet skills are limited to email and b) it takes the stick of a deadline and the carrot of a fee to get my creative donkey on the trot, I suspect I won’t.
Reference to the nomad’s tent is not a joke. My timid attempt at down-sizing by moving just down the road has come to seem a defeatist idea, clipping my wings while I can still fly. And since the headline ‘Grey but Groovy’ caught my eye while I was browsing through the Sunday papers, my imagined future has been changing shape faster than you can twist a kaleidoscope.
Sod practising for being a granny. I can be part of a new phenomenon: AENs (affluent empty nesters). These fifty-something are taking time by the forelock, making hay, not to mention whoopee, while the sun shines and generally having a ball after years of dutiful service as parents. They are selling up their redundant family homes, clearing their mortgages and buying ritzy centre-city apartments with triple-glazed views, under-floor heating, jacuzzi baths and concierges. Harrods Estates have labelled their demand for extensive space to entertain ‘the middle-aged spread phenomenon’. With the extremely large change from these deals, they are shaping sybaritic new eixstences, and, oh, yes, slipping a few shekels towards their children’s deposits on tiny first-time homes.
Not having a house at all is the most extreme vision. ‘Living on cruise ships is cost-effective for over-65s’ announced the British Medical Journal last week. Apparently, the ratio of care and support, and the immediate availability of medical care, is far better on cruise-liners than in most sheltered accommodation. Nor is it any more expensive. According to geriatrician Lee Lindqvist, many oldies with wanderlust are already heading off on cruises ‘almost every other week’. Incredible, yes, but it’s true. The cost of this week’s Times offer of a 6 night transatlantic voyage on QM2 is exactly what my mother used to pay weekly in her BUPA home.
Much as I love sailing, a succession of ocean voyages, cocktails, Glenn Miller music, bridge in the afternoon and dinner at the captain’s table does not appeal, though I may reconsider as time goes by. Nor does city-centre living and a constant round of theatres, films and shows. I always find myself wistfully thinking of much better things to do with the cost of a gourmet meal than spend it in a noisy crowded restaurant, I get fidgetty when sitting in an audience, and I have a puritan streak that makes the idea of a constant round of pleasure and parties intensely boring.
But the new thinking has inspired me to think out of the box: to start on a quest for what the social historian and founder in the 1980s of the ‘University of the Third Age’ Peter Laslett called ‘A New Map of Life’. We can do so much now with the extra decades that peace, plenty and medical science have given to us. So I’m looking with interest at absolutely everything in the property pages: Tudor semis, ancient cottages, Scandinavian newbuilds, even woodland suited to a yurt.
Thanks to all who have written in with advice, sympathy and jokes. You solved my reading glasses problem by telling me that if I had the right kind of eyes, I could wear contact lenses, one for reading, one for long sight. You admitted cheerfully to being sheet sluts, adding the suggestion that I reversed the sheets to ensure a crisp, if slightly foot-scented, turn-back. You supported my campaign for afternoon naps. Someone has even offered me a house lined with bookshelves at a bargain price; it’s too far from the Hearth God to work for our Together-and-Apart life style, but it was a kind thought.
I am proudest of all of a tribute from the Society of Aero-Modellers: they reprinted my account of our day at Middle Wallop for the Vintage model glider internationals last June in their magazine. Their achievements are a reminder that most satisfying way to spend your bonus years is in active creation: not following in other people’s wakes, but making waves yourself.
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