Policemen Looking Younger
We learned this week that both our dentist of 20 years plus and our GP, have retired. Policemen have looked younger for years now, clergy are going that way, even bishops! Officials at the train station call me “‘madam,” or worse...”Dear,” or “Love.” When I look at the news, the up and coming running the place look, if not exactly our children’s age, pretty near.
Is there anything else I should expect as I shamble my weary way along to three score years and ten?
Is there anything else I should expect as I shamble my weary way along to three score years and ten?

Comments
In the interests of positivity, guess I should ask: what are the upsides of approaching seniority?
Oh dear, yes!
Positives? Not many tbf - I recommend sticking at 50!
MMM
Last month I discovered that my doctor is about 7 months younger than me.
I wanted to ask them "Does your mother know you are playing with that thing?"
AFF
But the real shock is seeing new bands. Not that they are younger than me (I fully expect that). It is when I see ands who are 10 years younger than my kids.
Then I feel really old.
Benefits - you stop worrying about what other people think. You are no longer having to endear yourself to other people.
Gives the admin staff a giggle so a win all around
Yes. Quite often if I’m not sure if one’s still alive, I assume they might have popped off during those years that we lived overseas, sans internet or English TV services. Though I’m sometimes pleasantly surprised to discover that someone I’d thought was dead long ago is still around.
It took me several seconds to realise that he was referring to Yours Truly.😮
Or even worse - "Darling", which seems to be the default term of address in the UK to an older person from a younger. I hate it, it's not only patronising but far too intimate.
I have a photo of my grandmother on my dresser. She looks just like I remember her as looking. But every once in awhile it gives me pause to think that I'm older now than she was in that photo.
I passed on the chance of having my jab done in a fire station or I could have tested your theory. I have it on good authority that there are actual firefighters giving vaccinations. ❤️ Sigh...
What happens to me is bands I think of as new and current turn out to have actually been popular 20 years ago.
None of my kids are into popular music so I don't even have a proxy finger on the pulse. Despite following up various suggestions its decades since I've heard any recent music I've liked so I haven't a clue what's current really.
And I've never been bothered about stating my age. "Say it loud- I'm 66 and I'm proud!"
I feel very old at that point. And these are the ones who are still alive!
The other disconcerting thing is when I say something like "Do you remember when Bob Willis crushed the Aussies at Headingley?" Only for someone to reply, "That was before I was born!"
So, imagine my shock when she went on, "You know, like Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, those guys ..."
Those. Older. Actors.
Who are forever charming and boyish (and quite distinct) in my mind.
I was very much taken aback. But in the most recent role I saw Hugh Grant in, he was playing, well, an old man. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?
It's all downhill from here.
Yes! Then you read things like "Baby Got Back came out 20 years ago today" or "Nirvana's Nevermind album turns 30 this year" and feel like dust.
Happens to us all. By the time Al Stewart persuaded his record company to put Class of '58 https://youtu.be/yT6FXlCFGZE on an album they were making TV shows of aging rock and rollers.
Then an even younger colleague said to me "I'm too young to remember that really. Was it a big thing on the news at the time?" That made me feel really old, although I am only in my forties!
I'm in my 30s and it makes me feel old. You couldn't move for news of the Bosnian war.
Then I suddenly realised that was before the chorister had been born ...
Re: classic films - Chariots of Fire is older now than Whisky Galore was the first time I saw it.
It is something of a shock to realize that many people I deal with were not alive in the 20th century.
Possibly because the US was not the colonial power in east Africa in the 1950s. Various British possession gaining independence was a leitmotif of the news in those days. Anyone remember Archbishop Makarios? General Grivas?
And also Ian Smith, Haile Selasse, Hastings Banda and Idi Amin.
I was shocked when the kids at work (apparently functional adults with degrees and stuff) started showing up with birthdates in the 90s. It won't be long until our first new millenium baby shows up.
In my head, I'm still 23, which is why it comes as a shock to meet adults who weren't born when I was first 23.
My daughter is a HUGE Eurovision fan. A couple of years ago, she was genuinely amazed that I had watched Eurovision the year that Abba blew everyone away. Because that was soooo long ago......
Good friends of our in New York City had been told to leave Uganda in the middle of the night -- Amin was unhappy with them. (He was an Anglican priest, she was a deaconess.) They left -- on foot -- he was carrying a Bible, and she had a spare dress, and they gathered whatever money they could. They made it to Kenya -- where they discovered that Ugandan money was totally worthless. But, thanks to the Church, they made it to New York -- they studied at General Seminary, he worked at a local church, etc. Amin wreaked havoc in their home town, but after he left they went back to Uganda.
That was in the late 70s. Twenty years later I was at the Episcopal General Convention and met a Ugandan Bishop. I mentioned knowing this couple, feeling very silly saying anything since there are zillions of Anglicans in Uganda. The Bishop's face lit up -- he knew them well, they were in his Diocese, and the wife had just been made a Canon a few weeks earlier.