Shadow walks on fence.
"Elderly," says a woman in the Sainsbury car park. "I'm not elderly at 69. That's what I read in the paper: 'an elderly woman of 69. It makes me furious."
Better than 'old' I think to myself. Elderly is a gentle words less harsh and definitive than 'old'. I use it myself to define people who are no longer middle-aged but do not deserve a more extreme label. Interesting, though, how our attitudes to age change. Children tend to care a great deal about being older than they, claiming to be six and a half and six and three quarters. After that it is usually a question of wishing you were younger. Until that is true old age. when suddenly you hear old people declare there age with a note of pride, "I'm 91..." as though they have scored well in a cricket match?
"How do you spell "rectify ?" demands a young man of his friend while he taps into his smart phone. Yet again the end of a story. Or the beginning.
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