Was Britain a country where old men once agreed with Sigourney Weaver and like her said : " I like getting old - it's interesting " ?

For my first witness in refutation of Sigourney and confirmation that there is nothing to like about getting old and it is not interesting, I call William Shakespeare.

" William, what would you like to say to Sigourney ? "

" Thanks John. Sigourney, I expressed my feeling about this in 'As You Like It' where through my character Jaques, in Act II, Scene VII, I said about the last age of man:

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans hair, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

For my second witness of refutation I call Dylan Thomas.


" And Dylan, what would you like to say to Sigourney ? "

" John, I would say to her what I said to my father as he approached blindness and death and I express my respect for my father's uncompromising independence of mind, now tamed by illness. To do this, I set myself the task of mastering the difficult form of the 'villanelle' so my poem has 5'tercets', followed by a 'quatrain', with the first and last line of my stanza repeated alternately as the last line of the subsequent stanzas and gathered into a couplet at the end of the quatrain. I did all this on only two rhymes. I made it more difficult for myself by having each line contain 10 syllables. This was the result :

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

For my third and last witness I call Matthew Arnold.

" Matthew, can I ask you what your thoughts are on this matter ?"

" John, I would recommend Sigourney reads my poem 'Growing Old' :

It is to spend long days,
And not once feel that we were ever young.
It is to add, immured
In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain. "

And now Sigourney, the evidence of confirmation of your supposition that getting old is likeable and interesting :

Well, I'm afraid I couldn't find any. Perhaps I didn't look hard enough.