The Sunday Times Magazine • 53an important part of their body had conked
out and that’d be that. They’d be worm
food. My grandfather, a doctor, came home
from work for lunch one day and felt unwell.
So he telephoned his partner at the surgery
and said simply: “I’m having an aneurysm.
Don’t bother calling an ambulance. I’ll be
dead by the time it gets here.” And he was.
Now, though, his bulging artery would
have been spotted long before it ever split.
He’d have had pills to keep his mind fresh
and surgery to keep his body functioning.
I was out for lunch with three mates the
other day and all they talked about was their
new knees. Later I went out with a singer
and all he spoke of was his new hearing aid.
We’re all dead men walking.
All this, of course, is tremendous, but
what are you supposed to do in the autumn
of your life when your body is held together
by medical Sellotape, you need a pill for
your penis and you can’t remember where
you put your spectacles? How do you fill
your days when you know you’ve outstayed
your welcome and that it’d be better for
everyone, and the planet, if you weren’t
around any more?
Some imagine that they should spend
their final years doing as much world travel
as possible. They want to see new places
and smell new things, and taste new fish,
and I can’t see the point because all you’re
doing is creating memories you’ll never be
able to savour.
There’s a similar problem with reading.
You’re filling your head with new things
that will never be of any use. Because while
you’ll have the facts to hand, you won’t have
the mental agility to use them to form
worthwhile opinions. And even if you do,
who’ll listen? You will be retired, so you’ll
have no colleagues or employees, and you’ll
know your grandchildren came round for tea
yesterday only after two hours of cajoling
from their parents, and some bribery.
They don’t want to spend any time with
you because you are an alien. A monster.
You lived in a world full of racism and dieseland meat and you did nothing about it. And
then they’ll bring up Greta Thunberg and
you’ll roll your eyes and there’ll be a row
and it’ll be six months of sadness and regret
before you see them again.
I like to think that over the past 62 years
I’ve amassed a great deal of information.
I’ve travelled further and more often than
most. I’ve read many books and met many
interesting people. I’ve dropped a laser-
guided bomb from an F-15 fighter jet, I’ve
climbed down the side of a giant oil tanker
on a rope ladder in the middle of a Cape of
Good Hope storm. I know what it’s like to
be in a helicopter that’s being chased by a
surface-to-air missile and I’ve driven to the
magnetic North Pole. But when I start to
speak, my children’s eyes glaze over because
I can’t name a single Stormzy hit and I need
help when I’m trying to tag someone in anInstagram post. All my knowledge, then, is
worthless because no one wants to hear any
of it. I’m a library in a world that has the
internet. A human typewriter.
Look at it this way. I’m writing all this
down so that it can appear in a newspaper.
And not speaking it out loud into a podcast.
Most kids couldn’t understand that at all.
They’d think I was “not sick”.
Hilariously, some people try to combat
the effect of age by adopting the speech
patterns, clothing and views of the young.
And some go even further by trying to get
fit. They join gyms and walk about in the
countryside with ski poles, looking like
Theresa May. What’s the point? Do you
really think that after a year of sweat and
grunting you’ll emerge into the light looking
like Chris Hemsworth? Because you won’t.
At best you’ll look like a pipe cleaner in a
ball sack. And you still won’t be able to run
the hundred metres in 11 seconds or do
pole-vaulting or swim a length underwater
or win the Tour de France. People in gyms
are chasing their youth but it’s gone. And it
doesn’t matter how many downward dogs
you do, it’s not coming back.
I know that I will never ski again and I’m
fairly sure I’ve dived into the sea for the
very last time. From now on I’ll be wading
in, or climbing down a ladder, possibly
while wearing some kind of tight-fitting
rubber hat. And I’ll swim like a dog, with my
head held far too high out of the water.
However, while ageing is mostly bad
news, there are one or two nuggets if you
know where to look. First of all, it simply
doesn’t matter what you look like. As a
young person you need to be attractive so
that you can have sexual intercourse, which
means you are forced to put stuff in your
hair and wear matching socks and
chancellor-style Italian trainers with
gold-foil serial numbers.
When you are an old person there is no
need to do this any more, so you can have
hair coming out of your nose and ears and
@EM_CLARKSON / INSTAGRAM, @JEREMYCLARKSON1 / INSTAGRAM you can wear a jumper with holes in
On a family holiday with his children, from
left, Katya, Finlo and Emily; with his
girlfriend, Lisa Hogan, in Zanzibar last yearWhen I speak,
my children’s
eyes glaze over
because I can’t
name the latest
Stormzy hit ➤