OAP reading matter

I have been targeted ! The BBC may no longer be interested in me as an oldie but the newspapers, particularly at the weekend, are definitely trying to woo me.

They ignore the fact that many of us  are rushing hither and thither and that is difficult to arrange dinner for six because everyone is somewhere else. But newspaper advertisers want me to buy a stairlift or three, a chair which will catapult me into a standing position at the touch of a lever, a few hearing aids or a lethal looking gun to get wax out of my ear AND I can get two ear wax blasters for the price of one! Since I have two ears and I am very pernickety about cleanliness, that seems to me a very generous offer.

Saturday newspapers are too bulky but the ads provide endless entertainment and food for the soul. I know we live in an age of plenty but isn’t it a bit of overkill - perhaps not the best word - to have eighteen illustrated advertisements on one page for stairlifts, mobility scooters and astonishing baths and showers with walls that disappear or things hidden underwater, which rise magically until, presumably, you just walk out of your tub, hoping the water does not come with you?

Most of the stairlifts show smiling models, about my daughter’s age, egging us on to call and arrange an appointment. And then there is a sobering full-page colour ad showing you an empty flat and the legend “If you thought it was hard leaving home at 18, try doing it at 72”.

We did consider downsizing soon after the empty nest syndrome hit us and then again every ten years or so. By the time we were 72, we had finally rejected the idea. By the time I am 82, maybe I will look at that ad again.

The scooter has definite charms! Do traffic wardens ticket them? Will they get clamped? Does the congestion charge apply? Could one add a sidecar for a spouse?

Of course the spouse is by now studying ads offering Xtra (sic) strong herbal pills for men, as well as special mens cream. (Is that mens as in mens sana in corpore sano, I wonder?) in which case he should buy the lot. He is also giving the once over to The Listening Aid that thinks it’s a Hearing Aid. Now that’s an interesting one, particularly as it calls itself the New Eavesdropper. Ideal should he consider a new career as a spy. And since they say there is no consultation, no fitting and no hearing test, why don’t we all get one? Maybe it would be a good Christmas present for the grandchildren.

Of course, I have so far not mentioned beds with bits that move up and down at will, raising your legs in the air or your head in the clouds. I suppose if I invested the odd thousand pounds for one of those, I should also get myself an angled pillow, so that when someone knits me a lacy bedjacket, I can sit up and look decorous and perhaps become a model for one of those ads. But I won’t model the incontinence pad I will no doubt be wearing by then.

I am running away with myself. For much less money I could acquire an extra long loo brush, so that I can clean the toilet without bending or straining. I must ask Manuelita whether she bends or strains when she cleans the loo.

But what, one wonders, is the Grout Pen doing among the Clip-on Magnifiers, the nose hair clippers and the infra red joint supports? Is it to magic away the lines on my face, in case the Lift & Renew serum fails to work? Must think about that one.

At the end of the day, it is a good thing that we don’t have any pets because the variety of devices and objects designed to keep them happy, clean and well protected and others to repel moles, fleas, other cats and maybe hippopotami, is endless. It would require so much in-depth study, that I would never get around to doing sensible things like watch East Enders.

Agony aunt's clarification

I may have taken too much for granted when writing my problem page letters.  For those readers who assumed that I had lost the plot, please let me explain.  Just think back to your childhood....think Baa Baa Black Sheep, The Owl and the Pussy Cat went to sea, Snow white and the Seven Dwarves and Cinderella and all will become crystal clear.