Getting Old(er)

I suppose by many people's counting, I am getting old. I have a free bus-pass which you cannot have until you are more than 60, and I didn't get it this year. But it really is different being 60+ nowadays. When my Grandmother was 60 she astounded everyone by insisting on continuing to play tennis - but she really was the exception. All around her, her contemporaries were sitting down and getting old. By 65, many of the men of her generation were dead - those who hadn't fallen on one of two World Wars, that is. Grandma was a widow for 50 years, and she certainly seemed to be a 'Merry Widow' in the true sense of the phrase. She traveled all over the place, by land, sea and air, and only began to settle after she fell down the stairs of a bus in her early nineties (she was going upstairs for a fag - you could do that then) When, at about 95 her marbles became a bit loose, it was certainly not premature senility- by that age you have earned the right to be senile.
My mother lived to be old, though she was not adventurous like her mother, and she succumbed earlier to senility. Nevertheless, she made it to 96 before shuffling off. I have uncles (well, had) who lived into their nineties, and my paternal grandfather lived to be very old as well.
So I'm not thinking of going yet. With medicine at its highest level of development ever (it's not going to get worse, is it?) I can expect to live well beyond 100. Many more people are doing so. It is nothing exceptional now for men to live into their nineties, and for women to exceed 100.
So I'm going for 120. I am very careful crossing the road, and I don't overdo anything. I gave up smoking over a quarter of a century ago, don't drink to excess and don't have the money (nor the inclination) for drugs.
I do travel a lot, but less and less by air, as it becomes obvious that planes are guzzling more fossil fuels than they are worth. And I have something on my side which other, younger travellers do not. I have plenty of time to take a slow route to somewhere. Last December I travelled to Northern Sweden, above the Arctic Circle, entirely by train. It took over two days and was a wonderful journey, even though some of it was done without the sun coming up at all. I'm going to do a lot more of that in the next few years. I've promised myself.