Pensions under threat, savings shrivelled, swingeing cut-backs in health services – these are extremely worrying times for everyone, not least the elderly.
We may no longer have the distracting buzz of family rushing through the house, nor the vaguely consoling trust that it’ll all be better in twenty years, but the electronic age has brought many real solutions to the loneliness that used to be such a major factor of ageing. Sure, there’s been radio and TV since today’s grandparents were children, but they are not interactive and do not allow for the vital stimulus of communication. The telephone does, but in a slightly distant way, like talking in the garden to an unseen neighbour across a thick hedge.
Perhaps the single greatest antidote to loneliness and its companion, mental stagnation, is the internet. Through it, you can travel the world, visit great cities, the Seven Wonders of the World, great art galleries, exciting old football matches. You can attend long-ago concerts by The Beatles or the Berlin Philharmonic. You can summon up dictionaries, encyclopaedias, reference works, biographies, watch your favourite films, visit the world’s greatest libraries, go inside beehives and anthills to see how the little creatures work, watch a 3-ton blue whale baby take its first suck from its mother. You can read any newspaper in the world, do the crossword, Sudoku. You can play hundreds of games, against opponents, or, if your choice is Patience, in any form, then you’ll never have to deal the cards again or write 7H on a joker to replace the card that has mysteriously vanished. And, apart from all these incredible abilities – and thousands more! – you can Skype. That means you can talk with, and see, face to face, anyone in the world, for as long as you like – FREE!
The Secret
But mention computers to most people over sixty and you get the ‘I-know-nothing-about-them’ block. Well, at 60+, neither do I – but I use them! The whole secret is: confine yourself to learning the few things you want them to do, and computers are as simple as ABC. Anyone, for instance, can learn to work the internet in under an hour. There are about five simple clicks, after pressing the ‘On/Off’ button, and you’re into Aladdin’s Cave, ‘surfing the net’ from one end of the universe to the other. It’s all there for you, merely awaiting your few clicks! Contact Active Retirement Ireland and see who their Silver Surfers are!
Size Matters
What medical science has done for ageing bodies, the electronic industry has done for improving the world the elderly inhabit. We can now carry something the size of a book in our pocket or bag, but this ‘thing’ has many, many thousands of books in it. We can carry thousands of pieces of music around in a little gizmo half the size of a chocolate bar. We can wear on our persons, the security of a locket-sized little alarm that will summon help from afar should we ever need it. And, for those of us whose hearing is not as sharp as it used to be, or we would like, there are now tiny, discreet little hearing aids that are barely visible to the naked eye – an enormous improvement on the traffic-cone-sized metal funnels that our great- aunt Agatha used to keep to hand, hidden out-of-sight, down beside the aspidistra. All these things are there for you to use. So use them!
