Britain is no country for many sad old men in a later life crisis

Dr Oliver Robinson from the University of Greenwich recently told the British Psychological Society Conference in Harrogate about his research based on an online survey of 282 old men and women over the age of 60 which found that :

* 32% of the old men and 33% of the old women reported having had a 'later life crisis' since the age of 60 with :
- the most frequent cause being 'bereavement'
- followed by 'illness or injury to themselves or close relatives' 
- and 'caring for an ill or disabled loved one'.

* between 40% and 50% of those who experienced a crisis, emerged feeling more positive about life, setting new goals, appreciating every day and endeavouring to enjoy life more than they did before.

* for about 33% of those in crisis there may have been a decline in their physical and mental abilities, with some ‘retreating from the world', making It more serious than a 'mid-life crisis' because people in their 40s did not usually become withdrawn from the world.

Dr Robinson said it was important for people in their 60s to recognise the signs and for some to seek help and "If you handle it badly it can accelerate your decline. People should not be ashamed of having these experiences – it’s very common – or about seeking help.’ 
He concluded :
"It seems that when loss-inducing events occur together or in close proximity in time, a person's capacity to cope in their sixties is overwhelmed and a later life crisis is precipitated. By better understanding such crisis episodes, psychologists are well placed to understand mental health problems in this age group. They will also be better placed to offer help to promote positive post-crisis growth".

Britain is a country which will soon say "Goodbye" to a brave, barely old, Scots novelist called Iain Banks

Bestselling author Iain Banks, who is 59 years old has announced that he has been given only months to live. Best known for 'The Wasp Factory', Iain has gallbladder cancer. His illness was reported on the BBC : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cutNXByHMo

Iain :

* using his deadpan humour, said : "I've withdrawn from all planned public engagements and I've asked my partner Adele if she will do me the honour of becoming my widow, sorry – but we find ghoulish humour helps." 

* in the past, delighted fans with his prolific output under two names and outraged literary puritans with his blithe assertion that he aimed to devote no more than three months a year to writing, because there were so many more interesting things to do – like driving fast cars and playing with fancy technology.

*  discovered a back problem he had ascribed "to the fact I'd started writing at the beginning of January and so was crouched over a keyboard all day" was something much more serious.

* said : "When it hadn’t gone away by mid-February, I went to my GP, who spotted that I had jaundice. Blood tests, an ultrasound scan and then a CT scan revealed the full extent of the grisly truth by the start of March." 

* stated : "I have cancer. It started in my gall bladder, has infected both lobes of my liver and probably also my pancreas and some lymph nodes, plus one tumour is massed around a group of major blood vessels in the same volume, effectively ruling out any chance of surgery to remove the tumours either in the short or long term."

* intended : "to spend however much quality time I have left seeing friends and relations and visiting places that have meant a lot to us".

* was interviewed for 5 minutes, before his diagnosis, last November : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdEK9USa_7w

Thriller writer Mark Edwards tweeted:
‘Just saw the sad news. Wasp Factory, Walking On Glass, Crow Road – some of the best novels I’ve ever read.’

Science fiction writer Ken MacLeod said :

"The way Iain has reacted to his situation is not really with a sense of unfairness but more that it's just the way the universe works, the way matter works, that there's nobody out to get us, nobody to blame for it all. It's a very courageous and stoical attitude in his situation. There's no doubting the style of the man. What you see is what you get, and the Iain who comes across in his books is very much how he is."

Ian Rankin, creator of the archetypal Scottish detective Inspector Rebus said :
"That combination of the macabre with the comedic is something he pulled off time and again in his fiction. He's taken it with good grace and humour and stoicism. I hope I have the chance to have that drink with him in Edinburgh."

Old men in Britain might hope that they can face their own death with as much alacrity as that shown by Iain.

Britain is still a country for and says "Happy Birthday" to that old, upper class and English actor with a stiff upper lip, Edward Fox

The actor Edward Fox is 76 years old today.

A man who has a 'stiff upper lip' displays fortitude in the face of adversity and exercises great self-restraint in the expression of emotion. When the upper lip quivers, it is one of the first signs that the person is scared or experiencing deep emotion, The phrase became symbolic of those men who were products of the English public school system in the 1900's, during the Victorian era. Educated at Harrow School, then serving as a lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards, Edward acquired his 'stiff upper lip' in his youth and it has served him well in a long career in films in which he has played an assortment of British military characters. On the stage at the moment, he is playing Winston Churchill who was also educated at Harrow and left to start a military career which, like Edward, he did not complete, in his case leaving it for politics rather than the stage.

What you possibly didn't know about Edward, that he :

* had a father, Robin, who was a theatrical agent, a mother, Angela Muriel Darita, who was an actress and writer and an elder brother, James, an actor.

* after the Guards, attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked in repertory theatre before his first film appearance as an extra in 'The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner' (left) in 1962 and as a barman (right) in 'This Sporting Life' in 1963.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbdvRzefmmE

* in the 1960s he worked mostly on stage, including a turn as 'Hamlet' and then established himself with roles in major British films including 'Oh! What a Lovely War' (left) and 'Battle of Britain' (right) in 1969 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9Ak1w4DwV8
and as a war veteran in 'The Go-Between' in 1970 and won a BAFTA for 'best supporting actor' (left).

* came to the attention of director Fred Zinneman who was looking for an actor who wasn't well-known and could be believable as the assassin in his 'The Day of the Jackal' and won the role, beating the other contenders, Roger Moore and Michael Caine.
The trailer :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6xMnTPEzPo
Shooting melons :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enBM3SQwryE&feature=related

* appeared in 'A Bridge Too Far' in 1977 as Lieutenant General Horrocks, a role he has cited as a personal favourite and for which he won the Best Supporting Actor award at the British Academy Film Awards.

* portrayed King Edward VIII in the television drama, 'Edward and Mrs. Simpson' in 1978.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqtOD_CnMLY

* in 'Gandhi' in 1982, portrayed Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, responsible for the Amritsar Massacre in India.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg1U28TYW0I

* has continued to work on the London stage and in 2010 performed in a one-man show, 'An Evening with Anthony Trollope' at the age of 73.

* this year replaced Robert Hardy as Winston Churchill in the premiere of 'The Audience' after Robert had to withdraw for health reasons.

Film tribute :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDCYV

Britain is no longer a country for and says "Goodbye" to the creator and fearless fighter for 'in-vitro fertilisation' called Robert Edwards

Robert, physiologist, pioneer of in-vitro fertilisation, creator of the world's first test tube baby and Nobel prize winner, has died at the age of 87.

What you possibly didn't know about Robert, that he :

* was born, one of three sons in a working-class family in the Yorkshire mill town of Batley, his father, a labourer on the Settle to Carlisle railway and his mother, a machinist in a local mill. 

* got a scholarship to attend Manchester Central High School for Boys, then in 1943, during the Second World War, at the age of 18, was conscripted into the Army and served in Palestine. 

* in 1948, joined University College of North Wales at Bangor to read agricultural science, found it to be devoid of scientific rigour, switched to zoology and was devastated, in 1951, to get just a 'pass' degree.

* had his potential recognised by Professor Conrad Waddington, who accepted him for a diploma and then a PhD in genetics at Edinburgh University.

* initially focused his work on the possibility that birth defects might arise through errors in chromosomal segregation during egg maturation or fertilisation and worked with Ruth Fowler, who he married in 1954, to demonstrate that eggs could be induced to mature according to a schedule through hormone treatment.

* in the late 1950s and early 60s, worked on contraceptive development at Institute of Technology in California and the National Institute for Medical Research in London, spent a year at Glasgow and then, in 1963 moved to Cambridge and the University, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life.

*  In 1968 was able to achieve fertilisation of a human egg in the laboratory and started to collaborate with Patrick Steptoe, a gynaecological surgeon a pioneer in key hole surgery.

* with Patrick faced obstacles that would have deterred a less determined pair with their work attacked by religious leaders, scientific and clinical colleagues and the press and the refusal of the British Government to fund their research.

* later said that he had felt "quite alone" at the time, but that he'd been carried by his absolute certainty that eventually he would be proved right,

* in 1978, at the age of 53, was responsible for the conception and therefore the birth of Louise Brown, the world's first 'test-tube baby', making medical history and creating a new way for childless couples  to procreate through IVF.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCUO_zVxflQ

* with Patrick, founded the Bourn Hall Clinic as a place to advance their work and train new specialists and on Patrick's death in 1988, continued his career as a scientist 
and an editor of medical journals.

* by 2010, was awarded the 'Nobel Prize in Physiology' for  the development of in-vitro fertilisation, the year which witnessed the fact that an estimated 4 million children had been born by IVF with 170,000 coming from donated embryos.

Louise Brown said :

" I've always regarded Robert Edwards as like a grandfather to me. His work, along with Patrick Steptoe, has brought happiness and joy to millions all over the world by enabling them to have children. I am glad he lived long enough to be recognised with a Nobel prize for his work and his legacy will live on with all the IVF work being carried out throughout the world."

Martin Johnson, Professor of Reproductive Science at the University of Cambridge said: 

"Bob Edwards was a remarkable man who changed the lives of so many people. He was not only a visionary in his science but also in his communication to the wider public about matters scientific in which he was a great pioneer."

Kate Brian, mother of two children conceived by IVF :
" It always seemed strange to me that a man who had done so much for so many didn't gain the accolades he truly deserved until relatively recently, receiving a Nobel prize in 2010 and a knighthood in 2011. Edwards may not receive the pomp and circumstance of a ceremonial funeral, but he will be remembered forever in the hearts of those of us who have benefited from his work."

Britain is a country where old men in Yorkshire 'celebrate' the passing of an old, ex-Prime Minister called Margaret Thatcher

South Elmsall in West Yorkshire was a village once dominated by Frickley Colliery, whose 1,800 miners took part a 12-month strike for jobs in 1984-85.

Yesterday, 69 year old Graham Whitehurst, a former face-worker in the coal mine who was made redundant in 1994, clenched his fists in pleasure at the news of  the ex-Prime Minister's death yesterday. He said :

" The Tories always hated the working class. They hated us, and we hated her. She should have died 30 years ago.”

He was not alone. In the 'Brookside Social Club' they played Barbra Streisand’s, 'The Witch Is Dead' time after time at ear-splitting volume with the clubbers singing 

“Thatcher’s dead, Thatcher’s dead” in the chorus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0287UFq9SA

Tony Harrison, a former pit man, said: “She ruined the community. She had wanted to put down the miners ever since she came to power in 1979.

She had never forgotten the defeat we inflicted on Edward Heath.”

Gordon Wain, 62, an ex-mining surveyor said: 

“She killed the union and she killed the pit. Everybody suffered.”

John Stones, 75, former National Union of Mineworkers delegate at Frickley said :

“I’m sorry for those who cannot be here today. Those who passed away before she died.”

Ken Carroll, 69, a former face worker said :

“They should drop her down the shaft of the last pit that’s open, or put tonnes of coal in her coffin.”

Terry Carter, 81, the oldest member of the Empire, who recalled when she  repeated the words of St Francis of Assisi on the steps of Downing Street in 1979 :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A23PQCndPYU said :

“It’s a wonder that a bolt didn’t come down and hit her. 

I knew exactly what she was going to do. She beat every single union, one by one.”

In the Empire Working Mens' Club up the road in Moorthorpe they had to extend the opening time to cope with the demand. It was 'Thatcher's hour' for the jubilant drinkers,

In South Elmsall has not just lost its pit. The pubs have gone. Only two working mens' clubs remain, the market is under threat, the Co-op has closed and the village is now a commuter centre for nearby cities.

In January 1993 these miners were about to begin their shift at Frickley Colliery but despite the smiles the men knew that the colliery was about to close and they were about to loose their jobs. It was demolished in the same year that this picture was taken.

Graham and the other old miners in the village are not alone in considering the 'bad' effects of the policies of Mrs Thatcher and her Government from 1979 to 1990 as revealed in an ICM poll of 965 adults for the Guardian yesterday afternoon.

Graham had taken part in a major industrial action in the British Coal industry and its defeat, which significantly weakened the British Trades Union movement, was also seen as a major political victory for Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party. The political power of the National Union of Miners was permanently broken. The strike was interspersed with violence : six picketers, three teenagers searching for coal and a taxi driver taking a non-striking miner to work all died.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw9zbTsKNAA
 
Singing 'My Way' on 'Spitting Image' :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1jY5fYjV-U

Britain is no country and a country for more and more lonely old men

The charity, 'Womens Royal Voluntary Service' has produced this report :

It looks at the correlation between the distance old men and women live from their family and their feelings of loneliness and reveals that :

* as a result of  the fragmented nature of families today, a  large number of over 75 year olds have their closest children living  a substantial distance away from them. 

* 82% of children who have moved away from their old parents have done so for work reasons.

* nearly three-quarters of over 75s who live alone 'feel lonely'.

* those old men and women who live alone see their children less often than those who live with their spouse.

* 342,000 old men and women over 75 said they felt 'trapped in their own home' through lack of suitable transport.

* the situation has been exacerbated by cuts in public tansport services which has hit 14% and now 10% said they get out less because they have no way of getting out by themselves, have lost their independence and 6% had 'increased feelings' of loneliness in 5% of isolation.

Britain is still a country for a very old poet called Dannie Abse ...and his parrot

Dannie, now almost 90 years old, was born in Cardiff, Wales to a Jewish family and was the younger brother of the late  politician and reformer, Leo and eminent psychoanalyst, Wilfred.

One of Britain's most well-respected poets, Dannie has produced a new anthology of poems named after the ventriloquist bird invoked at the beginning and end of his collection is bright-plumed but fugitive. He was interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme by the 69 year old Welshman, John Humphrys. Dannie began by reading his poem:

 

                                            

                                Talking to Myself

 I, old man in my new timidity,

Think how profligate, I wasted time.

 

Those yawning postponements on rainy days,

Those paper hat hours of benign frivolity.

 

Now time wastes me and there's hardly time,

To waste for vascular speech.

 

The aspen tree trembles as I do,

And there are feathers in the wind.

 

Quick, quick, speak old parrot,

Do I not feed you with my life ?

 

John : You talk of wasting your life. It's hard to think of many people who've had a fuller life than you have had.

Dannie : On yes, I wasted a hell of a lot of time sitting in cafes in Swiss Cottage when I was young and just sitting down and staring. No, I wasted a hell of a lot of time.

 

John : You've done a huge amount. You've not only become one of the favourite writers of your generation, you've been a hugely successful doctor. You've done all manner of things, even a footballer.

Dannie : I have just often been in a state of mental paralysis and maybe that's led to writing poetry, because I had to prove to myself I'm alive.

 

John : So you didn't set out to become a poet did you ? Did you set out to become a doctor ?

Dannie : I was put down for Westminster Hospital when I was 15 or 14 by my eldest brother, Wilfred.

John : You didn't have much choice then. It was foisted upon you.

Dannie : I didn't mind. I'd heard stories from my elder brother, he was a medical student. He told me stoies about othe medical students, how Tonken Davis had cut off a penis from a cadaver and went to a saturday night dance and took it in his pocket, much to the consternation of his partner. So I thought it would be great fun to be a medical student rather than being a doctor. Most days I wasn't thinking of writing poetry. I wanted to play for Cardiff City in Wales.

 

John : I ty to imagine what what the conversation would have been like in your house when you were a young man. There was your elder brother, Leo Abse, who became a great reforming politician. Your older brother still, became a very eminent phsychoanylst. I wondered what the conversation was like.

Dannie : It was a privilege to hear their conversation in the 30's. Leo was seven years older than me and Wilfred was nine years older than me and I was hearing the conversation about Karl marx and Sigmund Feud as a teenager.

 

John : Now what about old age ? You've porduced a book of poetry at the age of ninety. Is that it ?

Dannie : I keep telling myself how well some poets like Thomas Hardy and Yeats did in their old age and that gives me encouragement to write.

We're an amalgam of many selves aren't we ?  I mean, however sedate we may be, there are sometimes an evil one escapes and I have an inspirational self, that's what my parrot is.

 

John : Will you keep writing poetry ?

Dannie : I don't know. I have to wait and see if that parrot returns. At the moment the cage is pretty empty.

John : You don't just sit there now with the blank in front of you. Do you still do that ?

Dannie : No, but I leave the cage door open.

John : I think a lot of people hope that it does return and there will be much more poetry and perhaps we'll talk again on your centenary.

Dannie : I have the feeling that this could well be my last 'new' book of poems.

What you possibly didn't know about Dannie, that he :

* was born in 1923 in Cardiff to Jewish parents, with one grandfather from Poland and his grandmother from Germany and studied Medicine in Wales and at King's College, London, qualifying as a doctor in 1950.

* had his first collection of poetry, 'After Every Green Thing', published in 1948 and combined hs careers as both a doctor and a specialist at the Central Medical Establishment Chest Clinic between 1954 and 1989.

* endured the tragedy of his wife being killed in a car accident in which he suffered a broken rib in 2005 and published 'The Presence,' a memoir of the year after his wife died, in 2007 and saw it win the 2008 'Wales Book of the Year Award' and later dramatised for BBC Radio 4.

 

* read for Oxfam in 2007.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmNXUai

 

Britain is a country where old men say "Happy Birthday" to a very old Hollywood star called Doris Day who beguiled them at the cinema when they were boys

The American actress and singer, Doris is 89 today.

What you possibly didn't know about Doris, that she :

* was born Doris Kappelhoff in the Cincinnati, where her father was a music teacher and choir master and her grandparents German immigrants.

* had a car accident in 1937, which damaged her legs and curtailed her prospects as a professional dancer and while recovering, took singing lessons and at 17, began performing locally.

* had her first hit recording, 'Sentimental Journey', before I was born, in 1945 which soon became popular with demobbed soldiers from The Second World War.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUw125JMVFI


* in 1953, appeared as 'Calamity Jane', which I saw at the Gaumont Cinema in Lewisham, London with Mum and Dad when I was 6 years old :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXSkVK4sFLQ

* won the Academy Award for 'Best Original Song' for 'Secret Love' :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL87sHjXlVU

* also sang :
'The Deadwood Stage'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_xmujSyxkU

'The Black Hills of Dakota'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p59nrGixAYY

* starred in Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' in 1956 and sang "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)" which won an Academy Award for 'Best Original Song' and became her signature song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVuEC3r7a-o

* caught up with the sexual revolution with had her last major hit in Britain in 1964 with "Move Over, Darling" from the film in which starred with James Garner, which I saw at the Gaumont Cinema in Lewisham with my girlfriend when I was 17 years old.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxAjIqKbeDg

* featured in the 'car wash' scene :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK_PLJZeLW4

* over the course of her career, appeared in 39 films, was ranked the' biggest box office' star for four years in the 1960's and in 2012 was ranked sixth among the top 10 box office performers, male and female, of all time and released 29 albums.

* recorded her last album in 1967, 'The Love Album', which was not released until 1995.


* has been an outspoken animal rights activist since her retirement from show business.

Move Over Darling :

Our lips shouldn’t touch.
Move over darling.
I like it too much.
Move over darling.
That gleam in your eyes is no big surprise anymore,
Cos you fooled me before.

I’m all in a spin.
Move over darling.
I’ve got to give in.
Move over darling.
And though it’s not right, I’m too weak to fight it somehow,
Cos I want you right now.

The way you sigh, has me waving my conscience bye-bye.
You can call me a fickle thing,
But I’m practically yours forever, because

I yearn to be kissed.
Move over darling.
How can I resist.
Move over darling.
You captured my heart, and now that I’m no longer free,
Make love to me.

The way you sigh,
Has me waving my conscience good-bye.
You can call me a fickle thing,
But I’m practically yours forever, because

I yearn to be kissed.
Move over darling.
How can I resist.
Move over darling
Please give me your love, I’m longing for you.
I need all your love, honest I do.
You captured my heart and now that I’m no longer free

Make love to me.
Move over darling....

Britain is no country and North Derbyshire no county for an old tenant farmer called Edward Hill on Game Lea Farm

A recent article in the 'Daily Mail' was entitled :

Duke of Devonshire evicts farmer whose family have worked on his estate since 1830 - because the rent was ONE DAY late

It related the case of the 63 year old farmer, Edward Hill who :

* is the latest member and seventh generation of a family which, for almost 200 years, has run Game Lea Farm (right) on the Duke of Devonshire's Chatsworth Estate, the first, John Hill, founded the farm back in 1830 when he developed it from moorland. 

* had this web page for his farm :
http://www.gamelea.co.uk/aspx015/article.aspx?CID=5

* got behind with his rent payments to the Estate to the extent of £2,000 and the day after the final payment date, officials from the estate visited the farm to serve him and his wife Elizabeth, 61, with a ‘notice to quit’.

*  suffers from Parkinson’s disease and blames his condition for forgetting to pay the rent, paid the arrears, but the estate terminated the tenancy anyway.


* saw his 89 year old father, Joe, who ran the farm under four Dukes, write to the current 12th Duke (right), asking him to let his son stay but found his letter, along with his own, unacknowledged by the Duke.

* said : "I was not ready to hang my clogs up. They have not got a shred of humanity or sympathy in them. It has ripped my life apart."

George Dunn, Chief Executive of the 'Tenant Farmers Association' who was involved in negotiating with the estate, said :
the Duke of Devonshire’s Estate had been "quite benevolent" in the past and is now "more commercial in its approach" and "more aggressive" in its rate reviews with farmers.

A spokesman for the Chatsworth Estate said: 
"It is a very complicated and difficult situation and due to the circumstances we cannot discuss any details for legal reasons." and the land was now being farmed by neighbouring tenants who were "slowly bringing the land back into condition". 

John's wife, Elizabeth said : 
" It's been absolutely horrendous. It's not just moving house, we have farmed the land and put down roots, When I met my husband he said "they'd carry him out of here in a box". The land is in his blood. He is absolutely devastated and this has exacerbated his condition. It's just awful for the whole family."

JohnBoy who reflected, Britain was still less a country for some old men compared to others said :
"Britain in 1113 : a country where old lords called Ducs held land farmed by poorer tenants.
Britain in 2013 : a country where old lords called Dukes hold land farmed by poorer tenants."