Now I am sixty

Well, Blog, it has finally arrived. The dreaded 60 and I am not sure how I feel about this particular milestone.
So much seems to change and yet is it so much? At 59 people still treated me as if I was part of the scene and I didn't feel much different to the way I did at 58.
I am not sure if it's the hype that changes attitudes or not. After all chronology is man made, and 60 is a socio-political border-line created by the state as a means of production control, except that now as everything goes belly up it actually counts for little.
The last three weeks have left me somewhat confused. I can tell that age is exerting an influence on the workings of my body but how much is down to the advance of age or the effects of past exertions is not so clear.
I have to face the fact that I am entering a new phase of my life and, like it or lump it, it is the last phase.
I can jump two ways - sit and wait for decline or embrace the freedom aspects and minimise the negatives.
I know what the answer should be but my humanity is frail and I know enough about myself to realise that without conscious effort I will fall into the former rather than lumber ( no gazelle like leaping for me!) towards the latter.
The constant battle with this recalcitrant and anarchic body of mine has been going on for years. I win the odd skirmish but now I have to work harder and devise more sophisticated strategies just to stay in touch.
What I have found is that at last I may be debt free sooner than I thought now that my student loan has been cancelled due to reaching the magic age, my prescriptions are free and if I can carry on working and collect my state pension (once they've got their act together and decided my entitlement) then for once in my life I might be able to stop always having to make choices and have my cake and eat it, for a while at least!
To the medics I have become a geriatric, possibly to be assessed, on each meeting, for competence if not for crumbling skeleton or lackadaisical bladder. I am constantly listening for the change in the tenor of their approach and questioning. They forget, or are ignorant of, my knowledge and expertise in this area, and I for my part, am anxious they should not make assumptions.
My post war generation should not go quietly into the long goodnight of settling for mediocrity and patronage.
We will want atms and internet access, pasta and sushi, a little eclat rather than inconspicuousness, when the time comes for us to need social care.
Woe betide anyone who makes assumptions about me or talks over my head rather than to me. The proverbial faeces will definitely hit the fan!