Clinging to the wreckage

Keith Wedmore says goodbye to his Friendly community

'Old age is a shipwreck'. | Photo: Joanna Poe / flickr CC.

Towards the end of 2015 The Spectator reviewed a book on the life of the great cricketer W G Grace (1848-1915). It described his last year as wanting: he ran to fat and was miserable. ‘Old age is a shipwreck’, it said. Indeed, the late John Mortimer entitled an autobiography Clinging to the Wreckage; the question is: in old age, how to adjust to that, to cling?

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