Take a look at
this from the online Daily Telegraph today. Viagra is the most widely dispensed medication on Saga cruises. OK, just stop sniggering there at the back. Aside from the widely publicised medical risks for anyone with high blood pressure or heart problems taking Viagra, this story perhaps illustrates the outlook of a generation who grew up in such a rapidly changing world after the somewhat staid post-war fifties. We are the generation who broke the mould in many ways, as we were the ones who were launching ourselves on an unsuspecting society in the magic sixties. This was the age of the 'Pill' which, in itself, heralded fundamental changes in attitude and morality. Granted, the much trumpeted 'Swinging Sixties' complete with drugs, free sex and continuous partying was perhaps more in the mind than in reality throughout much of the country, but changes were afoot. For women, particularly, there were choices available in their lives and certainly, the argument can be made that these choices were the forerunner of women trying to 'have it all' and ending up exhausted and unfulfilled but at least they were no longer expected to assume the role of the little woman at home. We are the ones who have consistently pushed back the age boundaries over the years. 'Fifty is the new forty' soon became 'sixty is the new fifty' and we'll keep on doing it.
We refused to disappear into the invisibility of grey-haired middle age, we'll keep dying our hair, sporting our jeans and being just as outrageous as we want to be and we'll keep on doing it into the old age that we refuse to acknowledge.
And when the unthinkable does catch up with us, we'll be the ones organising chariot races in our wheelchairs - so there!