It seems that the older you get, the more you have the simple act of survival in common with people. The D-day survivors get together to share their survival.... The women of their generation also survived.
I look at elderly people in the street and on the bus in Edinburgh. I'm more objective because I'm not in the city that I live in; I think about the punk generation, and Poly and Ari who have died. I think about our generation getting older and taking our different memories of a common time through middle age and into old age.
Will we become friends with the Thatcher babies purely because we have spent many years side by side or will we be eternally irritated by each other?
I think about all this as I return to McMum's flat in Edinburgh. Lots if very senior people live in the building, and outside the door a very ancient pigeon nibbles at leaves in the flower bed. It has a scaly old beak and tatty feathers. 'You've come to the right place', I tell it, and try to feed it a croissant.
Suddenly I'm intrigued by the mystery of the elderly.
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