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How old is ‘too old’?
Tim Lott28.04.09
Kazuo Ishiguro thinks writers are over the hill after their thirties. Elen Rives, Frank Lampard's estranged girlfriend, despairs that at 34 she's old".
Geena Davis complains she can't get a decent role because of her decreptitude (she's 52). I can only say that Harriet Harman's blast against ageism — enshrined in the new Equalities Bill — comes not a moment too soon.
At 52, I am ancient by the Rives/Ishiguro standard — but personally I find the idea that the best is behind me incomprehensible. I didn't have my first book published until I was 40, and my first novel, which won the Whitbread First Novel award, came out when I was 43. I was married (for the second time admittedly) when I was 50, and only a few years ago I enjoyed the arrival of my fourth daughter.
From what I remember of being 30, most of these achievements would have been unthinkable. Like Martin Amis, who Ishiguro says is obsessed by age, I was then haunted by the idea that things were slipping away from me.
At the same time, oddly enough, I was aware that I had very little idea of myself, possessed virtually nothing that would amount to "wisdom" and thought the endless self-demanded duty to be present at the mythical party to which I was never invited was tiresome and stressful.
Now that I am "old" I know the present is more fulfilling than the past.
Certainly it's an improvement mentally. One can easily roll out a list of literary geniuses who continued to flower late in life — Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Jean Rhys and many more. But even for anyone less talented, life is more palatable because it makes more sense — that is, you understand it contains little sense in the first place.
There are disadvantages to growing older — you smell, your teeth crumble and the bad habits you once thought you could get rid of by force of sheer of willpower you now realise are as inescapable as your rumpled skin.
But the great consolation is that all your contemporaries are crumbling in much the same way. Even people who were once rock stars I can now joyfully observe on TV resembling balding retired pork-pie tasters.
Thanks to the great advantages of male vanity, peer comparison and self-delusion, when you look in the mirror you look the same as you ever did.
And if you're a woman, need I do more than conjoin "Helen", "Mirren" and "bikini"? Or, for that matter, "Geena" and "Davis".
As for decaying mentally, hey, forget about it.
Because being brilliant at forgetting things is just one of many new pleasures that lie in store for everyone as time rolls implacably on.
Reader views (9)
I'm approaching 50 and am now riding to work each day ,learning to play the guitar eating better than ever before ,sleeping better than before shall i go on..
- Tom, paris
Silly girl! Women don't come into their prime until they're around 35.
- Scotty, Cambridge UK
I'm 52, and I really must protest Mr Lott. Just because you are 52 it doesn't mean you start to smell. Please, it make us 50s and above sound incapable of looking after ourselves!
- Sue Rochester, London
I think she feels old at 35 because vacuous empty-headed Cool Britannia pretty much takes that attitude, not her. Bung a couple of ankle-biters into the equation and you really become a second-rate citizen. I have no idea who this woman is, but I feel great empathy for her: she's been two-timed whilst pregnant and left with a baby and a toddler and ridiculous pressure to snap back into the life and looks she had before. Plenty of people have even commented that she was with him for the money and should just put up with the behaviour or else raise his children alone and get a job!
Any woman in that vulnerable position would remember that she used to be thought beautiful but isn't now, and conclude it must be because of her age. It is a great pity that no-one has told her how marvels she looks for someone who has just had a baby, and point out all the joys ahead with her children, instead of hoody-ish 'let's kick her whilst she's down' personal attacks. She should move to France, where you can be fabulous at any age, and where people perfectly understand you are tired and a bit mishapen for a year or two after a baby.
- Roz, France
I think when she says she's "too old" at 34 she means she's too old to bag herself another footballer and in that sense she's probably right.
- J., Fulham
You can't compare Mirren's life as an A-list actress with a waitress who was gifted a temporary membership to the freeloader's club? 34 equals 50 in wag years and she's just been made redundant from her life's worik. From what (very little) I've read, she's worried and recognises that her old skills (febrile plucking of eyebrows, wearing lipstick without it sticking to her irradiated teeth and taking tapas orders) may not help with a new direction and, without wishing to malign her too much, the only Whitbread prize she could get right now is the tip from a round of drinks. Obviously, her 'new' job is the same as the old: mother, a homeowner and 'being' 34 but I imagine for her, those were the duties of her real job, as a wag. She must recognise her diary of 'plus 1' celeb bashes and fashion freebies diminishing and the only way to recapture that demi-royal lifestyle is by tightening the abs, pushing the boobs further along the alphabet and sticking her children in China White's creche so she can make Princess Di eyes at lesser footballers. That, or accept a Channel 5 reality show... or be arm candy for a continental captain-of-industry lothario. And that takes more guts than you or I could muster. It'd be nice to think that she'll beat the cliche on the horizon.
- Marino, london
TIM, great article, however your a man and Elen is a woman the aging process is different for the sexes. But the question your asking How Old is Too Old ? really depends on what your thinking on doing ?
- Leo, London
dear lord is this woman a sad cow or what (ER) what does she have to worry about - she will take half of his money does not have to work and can just subscribe to a Surgery mag.
please poeple like her should be keep indoors and not allowed out to talk such rubbish - no wonder he wont agree to a reconsiliation
- London Eye, uk
Isn't this just typical of the vacuous empty headed generation that spawned WAG's, just another example of a society thats been programmed by the media to value appearance over all other qualities, If I were one of the above WAG's I'd be more concerned about being so thick that I was worried that 34 is too old (on the asumption that any of them can count) rather than worring that my artificially aged sunbed orange mug was gathering a few wrinkles.
- Paul W, Kensington
