I have just made the happy discovery today that I can go to the chemist and be given all the drugs I need for absolutely nothing.
There is no charge at all.
I am very pleased indeed about this unexpected beneficence.
It turns out that it is a Government free gift. They give it, generously, to everybody who is over sixty, which I am, and actually have been since last July.
I had no idea that this was a thing until the pharmacist told me when I went in this morning to collect my replacement hormones, and I was completely astonished, not least because it was only last November when I last gave the Government a wallop of cash to cover a year’s worth of drugs, although I don’t imagine that they are likely to give any of it back.
I don’t mind this really. A beatific lifetime of state-sponsored druggedness stretches before me. It won’t matter even if I get ill. I will no longer need to rely on begging half-used packets of drugs from recovered family members.
The surprise continued five minutes later when I popped into the optician to collect our new glasses, and discovered that they don’t charge me for eye tests either.
It is absolutely brilliant, this getting old, no wonder old people have things the matter with them all of the time. I can have absolutely any ailment that I like now, and it won’t cost me a bean.
Sixty seems absurdly young to be classed as an old person, how splendid that you can be old whilst still being sufficiently youthful to enjoy it. All the same, I can’t help but feel mildly guilty at not being more deservingly decrepit. I do not find that I have very much patience with people who are pretending to be past it at my age. They stand next to the taxi and tell me that they can’t manage to lift their legs over the doorsill to get in, and I have to be very self-controlled not to say It’s Because You’re Fat And Idle.
I am getting a bit decrepit, but only in the corner bits like my shoulders, certainly not enough to stop me doing anything just yet. I mean, I won’t be running any marathons now, but since I have never run any marathons anyway this does not feel like much of a disappointment.
Cheered by these discoveries I thought that I would investigate further, and when I got home I looked Old Age up on the mighty Internet.
I have always thought that around seventy would be a jolly good age to retire, and it appears that if we don’t retire until then, which is only ten years away, the Government, true to this unforeseen spirit of generosity, will give us five hundred quid between us to live on every single week.
Five hundred quid.
I had always had a vague impression that the old age pension was some niggardly hand out that the Government reluctantly gave you, probably because it was cheaper than having to invest in workhouses, and had imagined it to be about sixty quid a week, probably between us.
Five hundred quid is absolutely loads. We won’t have a mortgage by then, and of course we have already finished with the school fees. The children are almost all buzzed off already, and we have been stashing cash into a pension fund whenever we have had any spare, which hasn’t been very often, but it will be a helpful extra all the same. We won’t have to fork out for drugs and eye tests, we will be wealthy beyond imagining.
I am feeling very cheery indeed this evening. We are going to be old with lots of cash, a house in the Lake District, some independent children, and if we get on with it, we will have holidays in a camper van that looks just like the Orient Express.
Old age is suddenly looking wonderful.
