The Pigeonhole Years

The equity release letter turned up on my sixtieth birthday. Not the week of. The actual day. Some database somewhere clearly ticked over at midnight and decided I was now ready to start selling bits of my house back to myself. Straight in the bin. Two weeks later, another one arrived. Different company, same assumption: you're 60 now. Time to start winding down.

Which was odd, because I wasn't. I was training for a half-marathon, still working, still trying to work out what I wanted the next decade of my career to look like. Funny how one birthday changes how everyone else sees you.

It's not just the letters. It's the GP who now blames everything on your age. Knee hurts? Age. Shoulder stiff? Age. Bit tired? Definitely age. Never mind you played football the night before and didn't stretch. Never mind my knee was knackered years ago trying to tackle a man everyone called Freddy the Fridge. The appointment that used to end with a plan now ends with a shrug and the suggestion that this is just how it is from here. You leave with a leaflet and a polite smile. The leaflet has a stock photo of someone walking slowly by a river, looking entirely at peace with everything.

There isn't an abbreviation for it, which seems like an oversight. Everything else gets one. JGO. Just Getting Old. Straight into the notes, saves everyone the conversation. Diagnosis complete, no further action required, see you in six months.

And then it starts creeping into real life. Someone gives up their seat for you on the bus. You used to trip over something and your mates would laugh. Now they're asking if you need an ambulance. People stop inviting you out after nine.

It's the financial adviser who quietly switches from plans to protection, as if you've already decided the direction of travel — and fair enough, that's his job, but he could at least ask. The conversation that used to be about building quietly becomes a conversation about preserving, as though ambition comes with an expiry date, like a taste for very loud music or staying up past midnight. The investments, you later discover, have been moved into safe mode rather than growth mode. Nobody mentioned this. It was just done, on your behalf, based on the number.

The job adverts that say energetic self-starter and dynamic team player mean don't bother if you're over 45, which everyone knows and nobody says. The targeted ads appear for things you've never searched for, all based on the single data point of your birthday. Stairlifts. Funeral plans. Supplements with names that sound like they were discovered deep in a rainforest by someone with very specific beliefs about inflammation. Walk-in baths advertised by someone who looks genuinely delighted to be in one, as though this was the thing they'd been waiting for all along.

And then the language. Have you noticed the language. Winding down. Taking it easy. Your golden years. Finally putting your feet up. All very polite ways of saying: you're done now. Sit over there and be grateful.

On the leaflets. In the emails. The words start to change. Supportive. Low impact. Preserve. Safe. Freedom. Legacy. The word finally does a lot of heavy lifting. Finally relax. Finally slow down. Finally enjoy life. As if the preceding forty years were merely an obstacle course you've been permitted to stop running. As if enjoyment was something you had to earn and are now, at last, allowed.

Finally? Who said you weren't already?

What if you're not done? What if you still want to start a business, change your job, climb a bloody mountain? What if the standard-issue retirement package the cruise, the garden, the gentle hobby genuinely doesn't fit?

That's when you start to feel the pigeonhole years.

Still working? You can hear the thought process. Ah bless him. He can't afford to retire. Thinking about what's next? They don't mean promotion. They mean the transition. The handover. The graceful step back that you're presumably building toward. Keeping busy? Translation: found enough hobbies to fill the void yet?

Nobody asks what are you building anymore. They ask how are you filling your time.

So you ignore it. You bin the letters. You tell the GP it's the lack of warm-up, not the birth year. You keep building whatever you're building, and people get uncomfortable. Not openly. Just a flicker of something across the face when you don't play along. When you say you're starting something new at 62, they smile and say good for you in a tone that sits somewhere between encouragement and concern, as though you've announced you're taking up free solo climbing and they're being supportive about it. When you turn down the cruise and book the hiking trip instead, there's a pause. When you're more interested in the next decade than in consolidating the last one, it doesn't quite fit the model.

The letters keep coming. They've started to pile up because I can't be bothered to open them.

Might pop to Argos to get a bigger bin.

Dispatches from a life still in progress