We have yet to embrace the inclusivity of the elderly, says CAROLE ANN RICE
GETTY - STOCK Eight elderly ladies in Spain took their places with confidence in their community
Love-struck young couples with hopeful smiles, beautiful women with gleaming hair in wisps of dresses and families with newborns to great-grandparents head for tables and the gentle art of people-watching. My eyes are not focused on the tourists studying menus with clueless confusion nor the exotic accordian-toting pan-handlers who provide the aural back drop. I am fixated on the table in front of me.
Eight elderly Spanish ladies - clearly taking no prisoners, ordering the waiters to jump to it - demand the best table in the house and jugs of chilled sangria are briskly placed before them. Their ages range from late 60s to early 80s and they are all dressed in their finery: pretty floaty frocks with jewels gleaming in their ears. They were locked in laughter, camaraderie and catching up with gossip and supped heartily from heaped plates of fried sea food - no dismal diets and dyspepsia here.
They might as well have been unicorns because these fabulous beasts had me entranced. These indomitable women had a sense of authority and entitlement, they took their places with confidence in their community, they deserved to be there and relished their status. We may have tried to adopt the continental ways with our pavement cafés and coffee shops over the past two decades but we have yet to embrace the inclusivity of the elderly in our day-to-day lifestyles and afford them a place in society. The clement warmth may significantly help the gentle strolling through town centres and perhaps the streets in Spanish holiday resorts seem bright and safe, not dark and menacing as many of our urban developments have become. There was a sense of happiness and health among these old friends who were far from unique.
Many restaurants and bars boast similar tables of dear pals in their dotage socialising and getting the most out of life. Our own dreadful weather may not allow such easy living but all the more reason to create an indoor café culture that positively welcomes warm get-togethers and garners self-esteem and respect. Loneliness and isolation is becoming an agonising and fatal epidemic in the UK (and not just for the elderly) and something that could be addressed with community co-operation and a commitment to inclusivity. Putting out this story on Facebook it would seem I've already got a gang of willing girlfriends who want to join my club of glammy geriatrics when our time comes. It was lovely to see these fabulous elderly women not only being seen, heard and loving it but bothering to dress for the occasion and not fading into the grey and beige which is the fate of many who not only want to be invisible but also feel invisible too. -----------------------------------------------------------------
GETTY - STOCK A 90-year-old Russian woman in New York said she dances for two hours every day
The quality of our lives is almost always dictated by our attitudes. So take heart from a 90-year-old Russian woman who has been featured in a top list of humans in New York. She says "I'm 90 but I feel like I'm 50. I don't take any medicine. I never complain. I'm just happy to be alive. I tell people, 'Start with what you have, not with what you want.' "Every day I dance for two hours. And I'm still really interesting too. I love politics and literature. I love the sciences. And I've got a boyfriend named Alexander. We exchange books. I don't even know how old he is." What a lovely recipe for life: dancing, reading, a love interest and not complaining. I'll have what she ordered. -----------------------------------------------------------------
INSTAGRAM Ex-British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman