Keep Calm and Carry On

My dad will be 99 this year. Talking with him is like experiencing living history. Or talking with an old tree that’s seen a lot. He recalls watching Crystal Palace burn and the Battle of Britain being fought in the skies overhead.

Dad has lived through his fair share of tragedy. His mother died when he was 12 years old, just before WW2 broke out. Subsequently, along with thousands of other school children he was evacuated to the countryside to live with a family he didn’t know. He hated it and ran away, finding his way back to London. He lived with his father who was busy at work, as an engineer repairing hospitals damaged in the Blitz. A bomb dropped in their back garden and the windows blew in. They survived, but many others they knew didn’t. His own grandfather died in a bombing raid.

After serving briefly in the Fleet Air Arm at the end of the war he joined the New Zealand Air Force and escaped London’s devasting post-war damage. Life here has been good, but he has never forgotten those early experiences and counts himself a lucky man.

Another thing about my dad is that he is healthy in mind, body and spirit. What’s his secret people ask? Well, I think a lot of it is his mental attitude: Keep calm and carry on. Evocative of British stoicism, inherent in his character are self-discipline, fortitude and remaining clam in adversity. Traits that are perhaps almost quaintly out-of-date now, but have definitely served him well. We could do well to recapture these in today’s world.

What other secrets does he have to explain his health and longevity? We discovered a few when we visited recently. We stayed, as we always do, in his serviced apartment, sleeping on a pull-out sofa bed in his lounge. It’s quite fun – we can play being older and living in a retirement village. We go at old people’s pace. As we venture out his door, there are inevitably a few elderly folk on their walkers to navigate in the corridors and lifts. Everyone stops for a chat. Everyone knows Dad. He’s one of the oldest residents, and yet one of the most sprightly and social. He runs the village shop, is the postie for his building, and trouble shooter extraordinaire. He fixes broken toasters, helps others with managing their affairs, vehicle issues, property transactions, you name it.

He walks every day and has done for as long as I can remember (my mum used to garden, but never really joined him on his walks – she passed away at 94). I wonder whether this is his greatest secret? He has told us he does 5 kilometres per day and I’ve been somewhat sceptical, but I know he has a health app on his phone, so maybe he’s right? This visit he said he’d like to take us on one of his walks. We love walking too and were willing participants. He gave up his car a year or so ago – too many crazy drivers on the roads. Now he takes the bus everywhere. We caught the bus at the village gate and wound through the local suburbs, alighting at a spot where a rough gravel path led down into the bush. It was quite steep. Dad navigated it slowly as we made our way into a wonderland of urban regeneration. The path meandered through the bush corridors threading between the suburbs, finally emerging onto board walks tracing the coastal wetlands at the edge of the city harbour. We met a few other people along the way – dog walkers and cyclists, no-one within 20 years of Dad’s age. We sat and rested briefly on a park bench overlooking a lake. Dad talks to the ducks and geese, says they are his friends. He talks to the people too of course, and their dogs. It was uphill from there so Dad said he would go home via the footpath and we could go on through the wetlands and back up the long way.

According to my step counter I had done nearly 10,000 steps by the time we got home. Dad had too. That’s pretty typical he said. He showed us his recorded steps for the last month – 9,353 steps on average. Boom, there’s a clue to his longevity right there. He also touches his toes every morning and practices standing on one leg at a time. He does exercises to prevent neck pain every evening just as the physio told him to do decades ago.

Dad's monthly step count and winning at wordle yet again

Oh and Dad does Wordle every day and often beats us in the family chat, even though the rest of us look up past Wordle words and he doesn’t. He loves cryptic crosswords and bamboozles us with the speed of his decoding of the most obtuse clues. He has learnt to play new card games since being in the village and plays with a group of friends regularly. He’s a member of the quiz team and represents his village in national competitions. He reads voraciously – usually having at least two books on the go, watches documentaries, and listens to classical music. He’s mastered video-calling, social media and various forms of messaging so he can keep in touch with family and friends.

I should probably add that he has always had a healthy diet. Not a flash one – he likes basic food – a lamb chop and three veges. He stopped smoking when my mother started just after they met… they stopped together. He does love a glass of red wine in the evening.

Of course, life is not all a bed of roses. He misses my mum and feels lonely at times. Almost every time I talk to him another one of his friends or acquaintances has died. He learned how to live with death at a young age and even though losses clearly affect him and he feels sad, he’s philosophical about the circle of life.

We asked him what he thought about what is happening in the world at the moment, given his century long view. He said it’s terrible. He doesn’t know what the outcome will be. I asked if it felt like the lead up to WW2 and he said not really, it’s different. He said we’ll never forget this, it’s a once in a lifetime experience. I took from that that he sees it as a blip in time, this too will pass.

It seems to me there are so many life lessons from the way my dad lives his life that I felt compelled to share. Certainly, he ticks all the boxes of lifestyle habits in the longevity literature. I wonder though whether the key factor is his mental resilience… keep calm and carry on.

Maybe this is a motto for our times. We don’t know what’s coming. No-one does. We just have to develop resilience and get through it. Hold on to our values and our healthy daily habits. Appreciate our friends and family, our communities, look after each other. Allow the ups and downs, keep learning and enjoy small pleasures. Embrace it all.