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forget.
Knees, elbows, shoulders, fingers give twinges to remind me that they are there. As if I would ever
I remember a face marvellously well and then call him or her by the wrong name.
I have a long and interesting conversation with a friend and discover that we have been talking about
two quite different things.
Someone quotes Shakespeare and I can’t remember the next line.
Have I reached the seventh age, that of second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans
taste, sans everything? (And what, Mr. Shakespeare, about sans ears?).
The moral of this as the tale unfolds,/ Is that for you and me, who are growing old,/ It is better to say “I’m fine”
with a grin,/ Than to let people know the shape we are in.
1 November 2003. Aamir Ali
FELLOW RETIREES, THIS ARTICLE IS DEDICATED TO OUR FORTY-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN
Who STILL think they are YOUNG. They are mistaken!. They have only to look around them!
Most of the students who entered university this year were born in 1984. They are REALLY YOUNG!
They have never sung "We are the world, we are the children …", "Sunday, bloody Sunday".
For them man walked on the moon last century (and, in fact, they're right)
For them AIDS and unemployment have always existed.
.
Twix were never called Raiders (two fingered snack bars)
They have never played on an Atari console or Commodore 64, they don't even know PACMAN and
WONDERBOY!
They've never heard of 5 ¼ inch diskettes.
They don't know that Apple was originally a record firm (the Beatles). CDs appeared when they were barely
a year old.
They have never had a 45 r.p.m. of Chantal Goya or a slot-in record player. They've only seen 78 r.p.ms in
a museum.
They don't know what it's like to listen to a long-wave radio.
Many have no idea what an old television set looked like, and they can't even begin to imagine how it worked
without a remote-control or how you could look at television in black and white. They have never seen a test
pattern on a television screen.
They think that flared pants were invented in 2000.
They think that telephones with cords belong to science-fiction, and that the Minitel is an old-fashioned
decorative object.
They'd be astonished to learn that their grandparents already had four-wheel roller skates and even scooters
when they were young.
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