Reaching the age of 61

(I wrote this piece a few years ago – on my 61^st birthday)

Today I reach the advanced (according to my son) age of 61.

There is nothing particularly significant about this number. 60 is much more of a landmark – you get free prescriptions and qualify for reduced charges on all sorts of things, but there is no difference between being 60 and 61. However, 61 is a special number for me.

This is because I grew up in a house that was number 61. I wasn’t born there, because I was adopted when very young and must have lived somewhere else for the first year or so of my life, but number 61 was the house in which I lived throughout my childhood and schooldays and which I really only left after I had been to university and started my career as a librarian.

Number 61 always struck me as being about half way down the road, which is not far off the mark in terms of the number of houses. On the “odd” side the houses went down to 119, but this was a bit deceptive because the houses at the top end of the road were older, semi-detached properties that took up less space than the detached houses further down. In terms of yardage, number 61 was probably about two-thirds of the way down.

This has got me thinking, and there seem to be several parallels between the road in question and my impressions of having reached the same age as my old house number.

The road sloped gently downwards, and I’m definitely on the way downhill! Touching lots of wood, I don’t have any major health problems, but I have to take pills to control my blood pressure and don’t have the same energy that I did thirty years ago!

The road had a bend in it about half way along, so the view from the house was in the direction of its end rather than its beginning – a bit worrying, that!

As I mentioned above, the houses at the top of the road were older and narrower than those further down. They dated from around 1900-10, when the tendency was for town houses to be built in terraces or semi-detached with narrow gaps between the house pairs. Very few people had cars, so there was no need to build garages next to houses. Numbers 1 to about 45 were therefore this type of house.

However, a few years later things had changed. After World War I had come and gone, people with a little bit more money wanted more space for themselves, with gardens front and rear and enough space at the side of the house for a driveway in which to park their car or build a garage. When my grandfather bought number 61 in the 1920s as his retirement home, the house was new and the last one in the road. He could also afford to buy the plot next door (number 63) and gave serious thought to number 65 as well. However, the extra land was enough for building a later extension to the house and giving my grandparents a larger garden.

The analogy of the pattern of house-building to a life of 61 years is interesting. One’s early years seem to go on for ever – time may march on but one is not so aware of it. A couple of years on one’s age don’t matter all that much, in that the “walk” from 23 to 25, for example, is only a few yards.

However, I seem to have swept through my 50s in no time at all. I have marched down an awful lot of my “road” during the last decade, and the next decade will also run away with me if I am not too careful!

So here I go down the road from 61. I appreciate that it is unlikely that I will get all the way down the road to 119, but I’m prepared to give it a try! Knowing that there is much less road in front of me than behind is an incentive to make the most of it, and tomorrow is another day!

© John Welford