I will be 88 in a month's time and I have just noticed something about growing old. I cannot put a date on when it started but it certainly wasn't happening when I was 30. It was probably about the same time that people warn me kindly about "having a fall" instead of "falling."
If I tell somebody that I do a daily crossword, for example, the instant and universal response is that it's good for me. It keeps my mind active, they assure me. It gets my brain working. I do not doubt that is true and that my elderly synapses need all the stimulus they can get - but that is not why I fill in the little squares. I do it because I enjoy it.
Even worse is when I am actively composing my blogs, such as the scholarly one about word meanings and semantic shift. It contains interesting information about our language which is not readily available unless you know where to look. I do it to pass on knowledge - not to oil my own mental cogs.
People mean well - but I am old, not ill and in need of a cure. They wouldn't say it if I were decades younger and writing a best-selling novel. "Oh, well done, Mr Shakespeare, it did you good to write Macbeth" - said nobody, ever.
