Age is only a number - (or is it?) Ongoing

Our first “do”, within days of our arrival, was at our SdF. We didn’t know a soul and sat at our own table in the far corner, watching all that went on.

I found myself twitching my feet, trying to match some of the steps… OH was happily quaffing.

Suddenly one large lady approached us. I’d seen her dancing several times with (presumably) her husband…
She smilingly held out her hands to me and… at arms length we “sailed around the floor”.
No idea what dance we were doing, she just guided me gently this way and that.

Hang on to that thought … we all need comfort one way or another…
We’ve no regrets only thanks/relief at being in France.

I’m 77 and when I feel a bit “old” I remind myself that the President of the USA is 79 and that’s not an easy job…

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thinking rhymes with drinking and too much of either/both can be detrimental to one’s health… :rofl:

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They all look like they’ve been "caught short":joy:

Interesting research report in the British Medical Journal… Although men are more likely to be killed or die from illness, etc, before women, it may not be true that men’s ‘natural lifespan’ is shorter.

““Although male life expectancy is generally lower than female life expectancy, and male death rates are usually higher at all ages, males have a substantial chance of outliving females… These findings challenge the general impression that men do not live as long as women and reveal a more nuanced inequality in lifespans between females and males.”

It’s a similar point to another I came across recently: we think about people in the past living ‘nasty, brutish and short’ lives - but this may not be true in a similar way. Obviously people did tend to have their lives cut short by things like lack of medical treatment after accidents, etc - but those lucky enough to escape a specific cause of early death might well have had longer ‘natural lifespans’ than we do - at least before industrialisation - a point backed up, perhaps, by the more accepted evidence that even today it’s in communities that have the most natural way of life, unprocessed diets, etc, that people have the longest lifespans.

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My neighbour La Grand’Mere, a farming wife, was a constant knocker at my front door, just wanting a ‘petit bonjour’, lived into her mid-90s.

When she was around her mid-80s, sitting with me at the garden table for yet another petit bonjour, I tried to persuade her to say just 2 English words – yes & no.

She refused, saying she was too old, too late to change her ways.

She lived to a ripe old age with mile high blood pressure, one leg swollen and distorted with varicose veins, and later she told me she had cancer. A game old bird, and canny, using her bad leg for sympathy, with easily brought on tears, when wanting a better exchange of goods from neighbouring farms. Or simply to get her own way about something or other.

Maybe a life time living on a farm, clean fresh air, eating only what they grew and reared, had something to do with her longevity. Added - plus huge determination…

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My experience with researching my (rural) ancestors indicates that, while most of them in the 19th century didn’t seem to get beyond 50 at best and a lot of the women died very young in childbirth, the women(mainly) who survived childrearing often lived well into their nineties. My 2xgt grandmother, for example, was over 90 when she died in 1850. As I say, this was the rural SW of England so might be seen to be healthier. On the other hand, there was a lot of starvation among the rural poor at that period. Complicated…

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A dear friend was at this morning’s funeral.
She is 96, widowed she lives alone on her small farm.
She insists on not accepting our help for certain things… although OH was allowed to afix her new house numberplate… and I have been allowed to fix her gate closure thingy…
She hauls the motor mower across her lawns (I can’t even get it started)
She digs and maintains a great vege patch (yummy)and keeps chickens
She lugs wood indoors throughout the cooler months…
She still drives and I have followed her and seen that her driving is better than most and she parks her car without any problem (whereas I dither, shunting my car here and there)

She’s bright as a button … and I hope she is able to stay in her own home until she drops… (I’ve informed her that she’s got to last at least another 20 years… :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: and she’s promised to try… :+1: :+1: :crossed_fingers: :crossed_fingers: )
EDIT: She follows UK News (in French of course) and thus knows far more about what is going on in UK than I do… which does amuse her. She can say “Yes” and that’s about it…

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Historic “average” lifespans were heavily dominated by infant mortality - if you made it past five or thereabouts (variably up to 50% infant mortality or greater) you had some chance of reaching your three score and ten, maybe older, for example Michelangelo was 88 when he died, Copernicus and Pepys made it to 70, Galileo 77 and Titian 87 or 88.

But many died young (Shakespeare only made it to the age of 52, Elizabeth I just missed out at 69, da Vinci 67) - just about any injury, infection or illness would finish you off as there were few treatments that worked.

In fact it was only the late 20th century that average lifespan started to hit 70 and above, and then only in rich nations.

So quite where “three score and ten” comes from is a mystery.

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Tomorrow’s village funeral is for a gentleman who has successfully reached 99 years of age… but unsuccessfully reached 100 :roll_eyes: :wink:

Precisely from pre-industrialisation natural lifespans (barring accident/illness).

Incidentally, the Hobbesian ‘nasty, brutish and short’ is almost universally abused. He was not writing about any actually historical experience of humanity at all, but about a purely imaginary counter-factual ‘state of nature’, by which he in fact meant the chaos he thought would be the case without absolute monarchy - he was an apologist for authoritarianism. He would have been horrified by the modern tendency to deploy the phrase to imply that life is better in a ‘democracy’!

I’ve been looking into my ancestry recently and it is noticeable that when I’ve looked at deaths in the family in the 19th century, there are many infant and juvenile deaths, and lots of deaths of ages 60 to 80. Fewer in between although there are some.
I found an ancestor born in 1794 who had 9 siblings less that 15 years of age who worked down a coal mine pulling laden carts at the age of 9. Later he became a farm labourer, then a farmer, and then a publican. He had a comfortable retirement and died in 1882 aged 87. Rags to riches and a long life.

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My family tree on Ancestry shows many early deaths including my sister who died in 1936, aged just 6 months,with a lung disease easily cured today. That was in a time of depression and poverty in Glasgow where my family lived. A rich family could probably have afforded better treatment. A sister I never saw as I was not born then but who strangely I still miss.

It was also pre NHS.

Unfortunately the UK is now post NHS :slightly_frowning_face:

Only because people have been drip fed the bull that private is better, until shit hits the fan of course then its the people who pay.

May I gently suggest: wrong thread for this type of discussion. Please don’t hijack it. There are plenty of other places here where you can talk about this. Please leave some space for the rest of us to talk about positive stuff. Thanks. :slight_smile:

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Today’s funeral was for a gent aged 99… tearful moments are always present on such occasions… but it’s nice for folk to chat as well.

The widow is a sprightly 96 year old (who forgave me my accent… :wink:)
Seems her OH was a marvellous man, upright in stature despite his years and (she confided in me)… “He only lost his marbles over this last month… until then he was great fun!!”
They’d been married for 68 very happy years and, while she and I talked quietly, there was a definite twinkle in her eye …

I hope OH and I can make old-bones in such good style …

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What do you mean by ‘this type of discussion’ Sue?
The thread was dead - nobody had posted anything for 5 months! We’re only here contributing because I revived it with my male/female lifespans post - now you’re getting all proprietorial about it.
I really feel this you-can’t-post-what-you-like-if-I-don’t-like-it tendency is getting out of hand.

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Sorry, but this is a thread that those of us who are interested in age outside the expected norms post from time to time when we find something interesting - extreme age, and youth. I’m sorry, but this is not the place to suddenly be discussing whether the UK NHS is broken or not. That is what I was asking @Flocreen to refrain from.
This is a gentle thread about age - as @Stella refers to and as I have done in the past.
This endless tendency to politicise every thread by some members of SF really frustrates me. And I was merely asking (in a way that I felt was clear but also polite) to find somewhere else to discuss with like-minded members what is the current situation with the NHS. Is that too much to ask?
There is absolutely no way I am asking anyone

Of course @Flocreen can post what he/she likes.

If we return to the analogy of the cocktail party, or whatever, imagine you and flocreen and others are in the kitchen discussing politics and the NHS to your hearts content and I come barging into the group and start going on at great length about my back trouble and how I’ve found this amazing osteopath who has treated me (which is true :slight_smile: ) Would you and your politically concerned friends deep in discussion not suggest that I go elsewhere ? You are not preventing me talking (at great length) about health and well-being, but just not with you.

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