Did the Beatles Get it Right?

Yesterday was reading an article in the Sun Herald Tuesday, 25th September, 2007 by Bernard Salt 'Beatles got it just right.' It was discussing the question 'At what point in life do you stop being young and start being middle aged? and when do you leave middle age and become old?

The article said there comes a point in life when these questions enter your consciousness and refuse to leave. I guess that must have been in the last year or so as I had been thinking about this for that long.

Mr. Salt (love the name...salt of the earth and all that!) conducted an on line survey and it turns out most people think that youth ends on your 38th birthday!!! but more interestinly that middle age is entered on the 45th birthday. My question became what about the missing 7 years like an itch it bothered me, what is this gap called?

So where do the Beatles enter the picture Ah well most people thought that old age is not retirement at 65 but the day you turn 63! thus "Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm 64?"

So to quote a modern vernacular "is 40 the new 30?"


Mr. Salt believes that a word will tell if you have passed into middle age. The word? "chaperone"

He claims that word "only lives and can only live, amid the chatter of people in their mid-to-late 40's."

I have news for Mr. Salt I am a woman nearing sixty and never used the word or had it used in relationship to me, but the generation in front of me had to have a chaperone! So it really is applicable to people in their 70's not 40's. Mr. Salt should know this, he looks from his picture to be on the wrong side of 45. The same goes for his "I'll pop the kettle on for a cuppa before I toddle off to bed." My mum would say this and if alive today she would be 94! but I have never used that expression in my life.

I use the word chops. What else do you call loin chops but chops? and postie for the postman I worked for Australia Post and even the people twenty-five years younger than I referred to them as such. Those people would now be in their early 30's!!! so perhaps these are not 'old' words. As for 'wireless' no, for me it has always has been the radio.

As for the weather, with the drought it has become a major topic of conversation, will the rain fill the dams enough to loosen the water restrictions etc?

Let us look at these questions logically. The life span is approximately 81 years, which can be divided into three equal parts. Youth to 28th bithday, middlre age till 55th birthday and old age after that. I have explained my 'theory' to my two middle aged children Donald now 33 and Meg now 30 and my 'youth' child Kath now 26 and fast approaching middle age. But they didn't like it one bit. Too young I guess to get it, but give them another twenty years and they will see things differently.

Grow old gracefully.