Lucinda Holdforth

Three years ago.

So I'm doing those things.

I'm hoping to just be sensible, look after myself as best I can.

I will not be having Botox or, you know, facial surgery.

I will have my grey hair.

I'm going to be resolutely an old woman who just does her best.

I know, it's unbelievable.

And I've got friends who are retiring now and they're in a flat panic about retiring.

And the really big factor, and I talk about this in the book, is especially for those who are not going to have the money.

So it really is a haves and have nots situation.

And part of what determines how happy your old age is, is, let's face it, having financial security and the ability to do nice things when you're older and you have more leisure.

Very much so.

You see it in sort of funerals, which are kind of either overly maudlin and sad, because when somebody dies at the age of 89, it's really not appropriate to regard this as a failure or a disaster.

It's actually just they're very lucky to have died peacefully in their bed.

Or they go into these over-the-top celebrations where they start, you know, talking to the dead from a podium and running life videos of them that go on and on and on.

So there's a sort of anxiety.

We haven't figured out what to do about modern death.

So I looked to some wise philosophers and writers to think about this.

And there's a Scandinavian philosopher, Martin Hagland, and he said, we need death...

because that allows us to recognise that we have a stake in what we do now, that it matters what we do now.