David Welford

This September was seventy years since I first went to Loughton School in the autumn term of 1954; I was in Class 2 and sat at the back of the class next to Peter Carter who I still regularly see.

Accordingly to a recent article in The Times at the age of 74 a German University study has proclaimed you to be a Crumbly Biddy or an Old Fart… others say “Age is Just a Number”….or perhaps you considered when you got your Bus Pass was a rite of passage to being Old…

To me it struck me that this year I am really OLD as I get an extra 25p per week in my Old Age Pension; because I turn eighty; average male life expectancy in the UK is just under eighty…perhaps I’m getting near my Sell By Date!

I sometimes look at not very mobile people with their mobility aids Sticks and Scooters and think ‘Poor Old Person’… but when I look at them more closely I realise they are often younger than me!

When out walking young people often steam past me and I find these days I can’t keep up with them, though according to my phone I often daily exceed 10,000 steps (about four miles).

Sometime ago I was departing from Zurich Airport and was stopped by a Swiss Security Guard as I had triggered the alarm… He asked me if I had any metal joints, pacemaker or stents?.. I replied … ‘That I was all Original’.. He laughed…it was my glasses case that had triggered the alarm.

I used to reprimand my Father when he put Salt on his Chips…. ‘Dad you won’t Live to be a Hundred if you keep using all that Salt!’ I was right he died a few weeks before he was Ninety Nine!

The sad fact is that most of the attendees at the Annual Old Boys Dinner I guess are now in their seventies/eighties and very few alas are not eligible for a Bus Pass or Old Age Pension!

To me this year’s Dinner will be a special milestone for me being seventy years on from joining the School and being eighty!!

David Welford