At Lunch
WHAT IN THE WORLD - Young people have a lot to learn about friendship─── 13:40 Wed, 01 Jul 2015
Can it be? Do we pensioners really have more friends than young gadabouts in their twenties? Is this true, even though many of us don’t subscribe to so-called social media, whose devotees have countless “friends” pouring out of their smartphones?
A report this week assures us that it is. Standard Life, providers of pensions and savings products, have surveyed 3,004 people of varied ages and found that one in eight pensioners have more than 10 close friends, compared with just a tenth of those in the 20-to-30 age group.
This must mean that Facebook friends are not regarded as real friends at all. Eliminate those, and you can see how older people have had many more years to establish friendships and, in their retirement, more time to cultivate them. Twentysomethings have some catching up to do. At least they should have plenty of time to do it.
My oldest friend is a man I have known all my life. He is a few months younger than me. Our mothers were best friends, and it is alleged that we occasionally shared a pram. He is now a retired doctor, living in Wales, and we stay with each other from time to time.
My wife Olga is still in touch with the head girl of her high school, who lives in the Midlands and stays with us when in London. Another occasional house guest is a man I met while we were serving Queen and country as National Servicemen in the 1950s. A horse-racing fan, he persuaded me some years ago to share ownership of a thoroughbred. It was a sensationally poor investment, but such are the bonds of friendship that we still see each other regularly and without rancour. True comradeship means taking the rough with the smooth.
As we progress through our working life, friends accumulate. I belong to a small group of former colleagues on various newspapers who get together most Friday evenings at a bar close to Fleet Street, where we served our apprenticeship. Like all old buffers, we endlessly recycle tales of youthful derring-do – and impose a strict limit on the time allowed to discuss our latest geriatric ailments.
We usually share the hostelry with several groups of much younger men and women, celebrating together the end of their working week. Unlike some of them, we do not raise our voices raucously or stagger out to fall senseless on the pavement. Although the Standard Life survey records that the elderly indulge in alcohol nearly twice as often as the young, over time we have learned the discipline of moderation.
We usually share the hostelry with several groups of much younger men and women, celebrating together the end of their working week. Unlike some of them, we do not raise our voices raucously or stagger out to fall senseless on the pavement. Although the Standard Life survey records that the elderly indulge in alcohol nearly twice as often as the young, over time we have learned the discipline of moderation.
Neighbours, too, become friends. As Olga and I have lived in the same house for nearly half a century, we have seen many come and go and still count several among our nearest and dearest. On Sunday, we said goodbye to the couple who used to live next door but are now based overseas. They stayed for a few days last week to catch up with neighbourhood gossip; they reciprocated by inviting us to stay for a wedding in October. That’s what friends are for. With twentysomething friends, you’d be lucky to get a sofa to crash on, and never a spare room.
Proper friendship can only be nurtured face-to-face, not online. Some of my more forward-looking contemporaries are on Facebook, but so far I have resisted blandishments to join them, chiefly because I don’t relish having to get to grips with yet another baffling bit of modern technology. I have learned to send pictures by email, but a few friends still have them printed out and send them by post. Olga communicates with friends and family by putting pen to paper.
But let’s not get carried away with the delights of being old. Let’s not kid ourselves that it’s as much fun as being young. It isn’t – it’s just that over the years we’ve evolved strategies, as the song goes, to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. That’s what lasting friendship teaches us.
