A train journey into another age

Give Me a BreakI'm afraid of getting old. Now that I have fewer years ahead than I have behind me. I'm at that age. Or I think I'm at that age. Maybe you know the feeling.

So I find myself eavesdropping on old dears on the Dart for clues to how I might feel then, in 35 years' time, If I'm lucky.

The woman who captures my attention has just been to see her friend in a nursing home. She doesn't know him very well, but happened to have grown up in the same town as he. They know people in common, but few who are still alive.

Mostly, they talk about places they both remember, though they were never there together. She reminds him of the sounds, smells and tastes of their childhoods, which happened about 80 years ago.

"I don't know how much he remembers. He likes to hear me talk, that's all," she explains to her friend.

From this, it's possible to assume that the man has a dementia of some sort. The woman, whom he never met before she began visiting him, is his lifeline to the things he is able to remember when there is someone willing to jog his memory.

"You're very good," the woman's friend says to her.

The woman and her friend nod together and share a look of mutual recognition. "I'm not good. A friend from home asked me to look in, so I do."

After many decades living in Dublin, the woman on the Dart still calls her childhood town "home". Maybe she expects that someone from "home" will keep an eye on her, too, if worse comes to worse and she finds herself in residential care.

"It's all changed," says her friend.

The woman nods. "Very few of us left."

They start talking about home security. The night before, the woman on the Dart heard someone in the garden. "I keep the kitchen lights and the radio on all night."

"Do you keep the blinds drawn?"

"You have to."

"How do you know there was someone in the garden?" "I heard the side gate. I rang my neighbour. He told me not to move. 'Don't move,' he said."

"Don't move. That's right. Never move."

"He found him in the hedge." "Who?" "The lad who came through the gate. He was in the hedge. He told him he was looking for the family cat." "Told who?" "My neighbour. He found him in the hedge. Looking for the family cat."

"Your neighbour is very good, isn't he? Did you call the guards?" "Sure what would the guards do?" "Hmm."

The women contemplate this event for a few seconds. "I don't have any neighbours like that," says the friend.

"My neighbours are very good. They have a key. I have a key for their house. Anything I need or if I go away, you know." "You have to be careful," says the friend. "There was a lovely young couple coming by to see me. They wanted to buy my house, then rent it back to me. They said I could live in it until I died."

"Speculators," says the woman on the Dart. "Do you have land? Is your house on a corner?"

"No. I considered it, you know."

"Developers."

"I think they only wanted to buy my house." The women consider this as Sandymount Strand sweeps past. They don't say, "young people like that think we're gullible because we're old", but you can hear them thinking it.

"Everyone is gone," says one.

"Dead or in America. We stayed, didn't we?" "My entire generation went. Then my children went." I can hear the regret in her voice - her peers emigrated in the 1950s, then her children left in the 1980s.

"Sure, it's a grand place now, isn't it?" "They should be here to enjoy it." Another nod of understanding passes between them. They're talking about the people who left.

"I don't know these new people. The values are gone." "This is what they want. They created it. They're happy." "I don't know them. But, if they're happy, then . . ."

The women are silent again, the people who left like ghosts around them. At the next stop, another woman gets on, with grandchild in tow and she knows the other two. This is a pre-arranged cavalcade, obviously. Nobody understands a word the grandchild says, except "Hola", not even his grandmother.

"Your son coming home for Christmas?" one woman asks the other.

"Not since he bought the place in the south of France," says her friend. "That's where I'll be." "And you?" the woman asks the Irish granny with the Spanish toddler.

"Spain."

It doesn't seem too bad after all, to be a jet-setting granny, especially one with friends like these women have. It occurs to me then that whoever I am when I'm old, I'll still be me. Old age isn't a country where I'll become someone different.

The women sit back, smile at the grandson, watch the view going by, not worried about getting anywhere fast.

Maybe getting old isn't so bad after all.