Oldenland
Old age is a country, and we need to learn to walk through it. And that’s just what Roger Clough, former Professor of Social Care, lifelong hill walker, and current resident of ‘Oldenland’ spends his time doing. Where he used to study the terrain of ageing like a scientist, now he understands it as a farmer might, walking its contours every day from his retirement village in the Peak District, while still walking the physical peaks and troughs of the area.
Whilst there are a lot of books that cover the ‘how to have a good death’, there is little that instructs us on the time period that comes before that. How do we learn to actually be old? How do we spend our later years in a meaningful way that makes sense of who we’ve been and who we are now?