You know you’re getting older when……

[Gloster]

Exit doors from buffets that have heavy, inward-swinging doors. You have a stick in one hand, a cup of tea in the other and the door is much too heavy to be pulled open by the two fingers not holding the cup. If you try to use the hand holding the stick, the strength and weight of the door will probably pull you over.

 

[The exile]

I know just how much older that I am when on a family visit, both my twin sons were discussing their pension entitlements due in the very near future.

Ouch! It’s bad enough approaching bus pass age myself and have occasionally had a seat on a bus offered to me (very embarrassing - but nice in general to see that it still happens!)

 

[Killingworth]

When you cast your mind back to the musical "Stop the World, I Want to Get Off" and see how things are going today and think that may not be such a bad idea!

 

[Jon_jpwh]

I received a Jury summons today. On reading the notes I realised, as expected, that I can't serve on a jury as I was 76 in February. Obviously HM Courts & Tribunals Service doesn't have a system for checking peoples ages. It's quite easy to respond online and I've had an email reply confirming this. I have done jury service many years ago probably in the 1970s.

 

[Killingworth]

I received a Jury summons today. On reading the notes I realised, as expected, that I can't serve on a jury as I was 76 in February. Obviously HM Courts & Tribunals Service doesn't have a system for checking peoples ages. It's quite easy to respond online and I've had an email reply confirming this. I have done jury service many years ago probably in the 1970s.

I've been a householder since 1971 and never received a jury summons. My wife asked for one to be deferred and hasn't been asked again. We're both now age barred. Shouldn't that come on your electoral roll registration?

 

[Killingworth]

Reading the travel supplements this last weekend I realised I'm getting older. I wasn't reading them for places we're likely to go but more for memories of places we've been.

This Sunday I was reminded of Helsingor, near Copenhagen. We took our younger son and allowed him to drive on the right for his first time. No satnav in those days, just old maps. We found Helsingor without too much bother but the Hotel Hamlet defeated us. We found a large residential like building with HAMLET displayed. Nobody about but we were quite early. It was locked so I had to knock on the large plate glass door. Turned out to be a residential care home! Memories.

We did find the Hotel Hamlet and it was very pleasant. We got across to Sweden too. Good to see that over 30 years later the hotel is still getting good write ups; https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/europe-travel/denmark/helsingor-city-guide-what-to-do-where-to-stay-fchh9gw8m

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Being 81 years of age has its disadvantages in many ways but I've added a new one to my list of elderly foibles.

After my evening meal, I let an hour pass, then I take my six evening drug tablets with a chilled drink which is made with Robinsons double strength cordial. At the same time, I make a beaker of Nescafe Gold coffee with a spoonful of sugar added with milk added to have afterwards. Tonight to my utter dismay, whilst meaning to put the cordial back in its storage place, I found myself topping up the large beaker of coffee with a liberal dose of cordial ...

 

[Bald Rick]

Being 81 years of age has its disadvantages in many ways but I've added a new one to my list of elderly foibles.

After my evening meal, I let an hour pass, then I take my six evening drug tablets with a chilled drink which is made with Robinsons double strength cordial. At the same time, I make a beaker of Nescafe Gold coffee with a spoonful of sugar added with milk added to have afterwards. Tonight to my utter dismay, whilst meaning to put the cordial back in its storage place, I found myself topping up the large beaker of coffee with a liberal dose of cordial ...

I shouldn’t worry. One early morning last week I put the milk in the cereal cupboard and the weetabix in the fridge. Cue one very confused call from the Mrs about two hours later.

 

[zero]

Being 81 years of age has its disadvantages in many ways but I've added a new one to my list of elderly foibles.

After my evening meal, I let an hour pass, then I take my six evening drug tablets with a chilled drink which is made with Robinsons double strength cordial. At the same time, I make a beaker of Nescafe Gold coffee with a spoonful of sugar added with milk added to have afterwards. Tonight to my utter dismay, whilst meaning to put the cordial back in its storage place, I found myself topping up the large beaker of coffee with a liberal dose of cordial ...

I've done worse between the ages of 21 and 31.

 

[Peter Sarf]

I shouldn’t worry. One early morning last week I put the milk in the cereal cupboard and the weetabix in the fridge. Cue one very confused call from the Mrs about two hours later.

Since about 60 I have managed more than once to sprinkle my coffee on my cereal. I have once or twice managed to fill my coffee cup with milk when I should have been waiting for the kettle to boil. Strangely this has not happened for a while - or does it and I now cannot remember........

 

[GusB]

I shouldn’t worry. One early morning last week I put the milk in the cereal cupboard and the weetabix in the fridge. Cue one very confused call from the Mrs about two hours later.

Guilty as charged. I made a cuppa earlier and put the sugar back in the fridge.

 

[Cambus731]

Guilty as charged. I made a cuppa earlier and put the sugar back in the fridge.

I can’t be the only one here to have taken my mobile to bed (so I thought) only to wake up in the morning and find my tv remote control next to me.

 

[GusB]

I can’t be the only one here to have taken my mobile to bed (so I thought) only to wake up in the morning and find my tv remote control next to me.

My mobile and TV remote can't easily be mistaken because they're different shapes, but I have tried to change channels with my landline phone once or twice!

 

[4COR]

I recall the story of my late aunt who put an uncooked leg of lamb in the dishwasher...

 

[Peter Sarf]

I recall the story of my late aunt who put an uncooked leg of lamb in the dishwasher...

One of my great aunts when staying with her younger sister hung a few pieces of hand washing on the rails handily placed above the log fire. Very quickly they got hotter than anticipated and burnt because the log fire was fake and the heat came from the electric elements right behind the GUARD rails.

As a child I knew those elements could be reached by inquisitive fingers and they could be on (live) but not glowing hot before they heated up - I was wary of them.

Sadly I watched each of those great aunts go senile. Something for me to look forward to - later.
(but that shouldn't stop the humour, might make it worse though !)

 

[Purple Train]

I've tried to get through the ticket barriers at my home station with my front door key.

 

[SuspectUsual]

My partner's dad "celebrated" his 80th birthday by trying to get through the turnstiles at the Stadium of Light using his Covid pass

 

[4COR]

Sadly I watched each of those great aunts go senile. Something for me to look forward to - later.
(but that shouldn't stop the humour, might make it worse though !)

Yes - sadly she had dementia towards the end as well (though the leg of lamb incident was a good 25 years prior - maybe a sign!)

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

When you decide to go to Marks & Spencer for a pack of three pairs of men's underwear (the proper ones)and then find you have no change from the tendered £20 note.

 

[Dai Corner]

When you take a detour to the bank on the way to the shops to withdraw cash which the shopkeeper will take back to the bank a few hours later so you can withdraw it the next day and repeat the cycle.

 

[Harvester]

I recently pulled out my bus pass instead of my debit card in my local, and pressed it against their card reader.…and it was for my first pint.

 

[Dai Corner]

I recently pulled out my bus pass instead of my debit card in my local, and pressed it against their card reader.…and it was for my first pint.

I think if that happened to me in my Local the landlady would give me the pint free in return for giving everyone a good laugh and becoming a standing joke.

I've nearly done the opposite and presented my debit card instead of my bus pass and needlessly paid for a journey (tap on, tap off bus).

 

[Killingworth]

When you take a detour to the bank on the way to the shops to withdraw cash which the shopkeeper will take back to the bank a few hours later so you can withdraw it the next day and repeat the cycle.

What, a bank with a counter for cash? They're increasingly rare. In many areas you'd be lucky to find a bank to withdraw cash from although you may have used an ATM? The shopkeeper may have had to pay into a Post Office in a Banking Hub.

 

[Dai Corner]

What, a bank with a counter for cash? They're increasingly rare. In many areas you'd be lucky to find a bank to withdraw cash from although you may have used an ATM? The shopkeeper may have had to pay into a Post Office in a Banking Hub.

An ATM inside a bank, to be precise.
This was in Newport, a city which still has a good set of bank branches. In many areas the tenner may well have gone ATM, wallet, shop, post office, cash handling centre, ATM and covered tens or hundreds of miles on it's circular journey.

 

[Tetragon213]

You know you're getting old when you hear a song that you really like on the radio, and when the song ends, the DJ says something about going down Memory Lane or Golden Oldies.

Alternatively, when you play a video game and really relate to one of the characters, only to find that said character was written by the devs to be hopelessly out of date with modern times!

(I'll let the younger members of the forum take a guess which game or character I may be referring to...)

 

[Killingworth]

Following on in a financial vein, my first bank manager was an old friend of both my father and independently my future father-in-law, in the days when many bank managers played golf on Wednesday afternoons. In those days a manager was expected to rub shoulders with the local business community so all such opportunities were taken. Although salaries were quite good there was extra to be made from insurance agencies. This probably stopped in the mid-late 60s when the banks bought out the agencies but that was how I came to have endowment policies with Standard Life and NPI, both very good companies at the time. We used both to secure our mortgages.

Come the 1970s we bought our almost new first house for a horrendous sum of £5,650 matching the asking price to get it having missed an almost identical property a few weeks earlier that went for £4950. That was an excellent investment as we sold for £12,000 less than 2 years later.

Better than that we got tax relief on the mortgage interest. Better still we got tax relief on life insurance premiums and for very many years the potential surrender values, and thus expected maturity values, went up wonderfully.

I know I'm getting older when my sons express amazement at the prices we paid for our early houses when they were young. I know I'm now very old when my grandsons don't recognise what a good investment an endowment policy was. What's one of them? However I wish I'd surrendered them before maturity. I was too busy working to realise values were falling rapidly!

 

[Peter Sarf]

Following on in a financial vein, my first bank manager was an old friend of both my father and independently my future father-in-law, in the days when many bank managers played golf on Wednesday afternoons. In those days a manager was expected to rub shoulders with the local business community so all such opportunities were taken. Although salaries were quite good there was extra to be made from insurance agencies. This probably stopped in the mid-late 60s when the banks bought out the agencies but that was how I came to have endowment policies with Standard Life and NPI, both very good companies at the time. We used both to secure our mortgages.

Come the 1970s we bought our almost new first house for a horrendous sum of £5,650 matching the asking price to get it having missed an almost identical property a few weeks earlier that went for £4950. That was an excellent investment as we sold for £12,000 less than 2 years later.

Better than that we got tax relief on the mortgage interest. Better still we got tax relief on life insurance premiums and for very many years the potential surrender values, and thus expected maturity values, went up wonderfully.

I know I'm getting older when my sons express amazement at the prices we paid for our early houses when they were young. I know I'm now very old when my grandsons don't recognise what a good investment an endowment policy was. What's one of them? However I wish I'd surrendered them before maturity. I was too busy working to realise values were falling rapidly!

Way back in 1988 I was told no alternative to Endowment mortgage even though I wanted a repayment mortgage as I intended to pay is off asap. Anyway I went along with it. After all all the talk was about how much more you would get back than the mortgage needed and so look forward to holidays etc etc. Could even be double - in the end I got about HALF. It is only in this context that one hears mention of Endowments these days !.

You also know your getting older when you stepson thinks 4% for a mortgage is a lot. In 1988-89 I watched them rise from 8% to 16% !.
I must say 4% is worryingly low and people are so much more exposed these days as we could only borrow 3 or 3.5 times salary back then - now its 5 times ?..

 

[Dai Corner]

Way back in 1988 I was told no alternative to Endowment mortgage even though I wanted a repayment mortgage as I intended to pay is off asap. Anyway I went along with it. After all all the talk was about how much more you would get back than the mortgage needed and so look forward to holidays etc etc. Could even be double - in the end I got about HALF. It is only in this context that one hears mention of Endowments these days !.

I worked in the life assurance industry in the 1980s, in a relatively junior technical role rather than sales or management I hasten to add.

Originally, endowments were 'non-profit' which guaranteed to pay the sum assured at maturity or on earlier death. Perfect for paying off your interest-only mortgage. Alternatively there were 'with-profit' endowments which were more expensive but on top of the guaranteed sum paid a share of the company's profits ('bonuses').

Then somebody had the bright idea of 'low cost' endowments. Here you relied on a lower guaranteed sum assured plus bonuses being enough to pay off the mortgage at maturity. The higher the bonus rate assumed the lower the monthly premium but the greater the risk of there not being enough to pay off the mortgage.

Unfortunately, competitive pressures, less than scrupulous salespeople, lower than expected bonuses and poor understanding by customers often led to the situation you found yourself in. The industry did eventually regulate itself and stop making over optimistic assumptions but the damage was done.

 

[The exile]

Since about 60 I have managed more than once to sprinkle my coffee on my cereal.

Glad I’m not the only one (and I haven’t even reached that figure yet). Strangely enough, it seems to be an aberration limited to Sunday mornings, when I’m not in a hurry and am treating myself to “real” coffee.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Occasionally, I am asked to sing at sheltered housing events and I remembered all the words in the verses of the song that also features in old-time dancing....Peggy O'Neil.

Do any of my age group on this website remember that song?