NOT FOR CISSIES.....

Someone (I think it was George Burns) once remarked that old age was not for cissies.
Growing old is something most of us prefer not to think about. With good reason.
We spend silly money on anti-wrinkle creams and kid ourselves we are investing in somehow avoiding the inevitable ravages of time.
My own delusional behaviour has been brought up short by several weeks to-ing and fro-ing between Hebden Bridge and Wythenshawe 40 miles away where my previously defying the statistics father is suddenly at 89 a very frail old man- surrounded by people often years and years younger but even more incapacitated by ill-health.
We always hoped it would never come to this.Regarding the consumption of a whole banana as evidence that things were somehow getting better. Truth is they are not. And they won't.
And yet the sheer bravery I've witnessed in this place which needs tons more funding from central government should serve as an inspiration to all of us facing a possibly similar fate.
My dad told me tonight that the whole room he's been in for three weeks suddenly erupted in applause when a stroke victim suddenly managed to summon reserves from somewhere and stand up on his own two feet. There are people in their eighties determinedly hanging on by their Zimmer frames - and they are not going gently . They still want to live.
Whatever happens to my father, and believe you me he is still fighting the good fight against the dying of the light, I pledge to do my best to lobby and fight for better healthcare for our elderly people.
Martin Amis wants euthanasia booths giving "Martinis and a medal" for those who choose to end their own lives.
I regard such obscene pronouncements as a call to arms for all of us who call ourselves socialists to fight for a better-funded, universal healthcare system for the elderly people we will all one day be. No-one shoukld spend the last days of their lives in poverty- and alone