Dear LPG,  

Please don’t ask me why but I recently found myself and Google doing a bit of internet exploring.  Have you noticed just how good it is at answering those otherwise rhetorical questions  and taking you to all sorts of places that you might never explore but for a random sentence that you read in passing.  One day not long ago it lead me to do a bit of research into the following subject.    

Statistics are my thing and a quick search on google tells me that just under one third of all people who live alone in the UK happen to be over 65, while that age group represent just under a  fifth of the UK population.  This tells me that there are a lot of us ‘loan agers’ around and it can be argued that we have quite a few reasons to be affected.   

As such we are most likely to be the ones that don’t have somewhere outside the house that we feel obligated to be each day.   We have reached that time of life that all the younger people are often jealous about  because we can do anything we want.  I defy any pensioner to not have  experienced many work-day mornings where they have literally dragged themselves out of bed, into their work clothes and to the commute,  but we oldies often forget that that very advantage leaves  many of  us disadvantaged in other ways once we have left the world of work behind.   

When there is no place that you have to be. it can be so easy to fall into a state of mind where we don’t bother to commit to things that we could do because those aches and pains are often beginning to get a bit stronger and our incomes don’t depend on getting out there and keeping busy.  It can be a slippery slope and, even though it was three or four years ago now, for so many, lockdown really helped us to get out of the habit of getting out.     

So many of us retire with so many plans and when I take a look at the people around me it does not take long for one of two things to happen.  We either commit to so many new activities that we still have no time for anything, or we take it so easy that we get a bit lost and left behind.   

I  have been living alone for a while now and during the days I am out about and busily happy most of the time.  So busy in fact that I occasionally pull a sickie in the same way that I used to when I was working and needing to organise something at home.   I try to make sure that I don’t let people down but there are occasional mornings when I need a day off from the outside world. 

I wonder how many retired people remember at least one would-be working  day when they chose to practise the ‘croaky, growly’ voice before calling in sick so that they could get something at home done?   I like to think that the difference is that when I was one of the world’s workers, they were genuine or unavoidable and very occasional, but I have been known to skip work because one of my children was not well or I just needed an extra day to do a bit of housework. 

The difference is that I can be truthful about it when giving my excuses for not meeting a friend or getting to the club on the occasional times that I do that these days.  So there is no voice disguising and the reason is sometimes that I just don’t feel like it.   

But I feel that it needs to be said that changing your minds and not turning up can get to be a habit that it is hard to reverse if you do it too often.  As we get older it can be something that our health forces us to do and it is inevitable that we will eventually have no choice.  Don’t let the inconvenience of having to get dressed and make the journey stop you from enjoying the experience you know you will have when you arrive. 

The activities and volunteering roles we take on often depend on us even when we don’t feel like going, the friend that we let down when we change our minds about a trip to the shops would have most likely been really looking forward to the trip. and those day centres and social clubs that we regularly attend often  only exist because of the number of people that use their services.  

It is also to be noted that getting out and about and staying engaged is one of the most important ways we have to stay in touch with the rest of the world.  We really need to do it for ourselves as much as for any of the people we would otherwise be letting down.  

DK, Downham.