Thomas Keneally and Aging

I sat on a chair at the Sydney Writers’ Festival a few years back, not long after I had sat on its committee as vice-chair, and listened to what Thomas Keneally had to say. That day he was entertaining as usual, mindful he was there to promote his latest book. Then, without warning he veered sharply off-topic and began talking about ageing.

‘You know lately almost every time I’m in a crowded room I look around and surmise that I am probably the oldest person in that room, it’s not always the case but mostly it is,’ he said, nodding and blushing as he scanned his readership before him.

Acting on his cue, I looked around at his audience, others did too, many bore fixed smiles, lingering on his every word. He was right, at least to me they did appear younger than him. But they also appeared younger than me!

My God, what had happened to me. My God, I had grown old. But only last year I was a youthful person playing touch football at Newport. Or was it the year before …



I went off and checked into this aging thing. According to the 2003 Australian Bureau of Statistics census, males who were fifty years of age had 9,667,600 younger than them and only 1,948,600 older. It was official, I was older than 80% of the population.



You can protest all you want, with a little luck it will happen to you.



















Tom's latest book - The Widow and her hero

http://www.gleebooks.com.au/default.asp?p=displaybook_asp&bookId=222192&from=search