I have always maintained that there are certain things which are best left unsaid, or unwritten. They are the things which I contend could be considered as taking from the sum total of human knowledge.

Very definitely into that category falls a recent piece written by writer Martin Amis in which he wondered what would happen to Britain in years to come because of what he termed ‘a tsunami’ of old people which would bring a crisis of major proportions with it.

Amis, who is now 60 and was writing in the context of the death of an elderly relative who had died in denial of death, made the proposition in a piece written for the Sunday Times that euthanasia should be a policy facilitated for old people.

In his words, there should be euthanasia booths on street corners where elderly people could visit and end their days – ‘with a martini and a medal’. In the piece I read, it did not make clear at quite what age a person might enter the portals of those booths . . . though he was writing in the context of that elderly relative of his, and of the death some years ago, after a long battle with Alzheimers, of writer Iris Murdoch.

Now, of course, one must make room for satirists – and maybe Amis fancies himself as one. Quite the best of satire is often cutting, wicked, over the top, and intended to be hugely provoking. But as someone into his 60s who would still be some years away from visiting that tent with the martini and medal, I want to hit back on behalf of the tens of thousands of us members of the ‘silver tsunami’ who consider we still have a contribution to make.

For instance, economists have written about where would that Celtic Tiger era have been without the contribution of extended families who played their part in keeping families going when the child-minding and preschool bills might have meant that, for many families, that Tiger might never have taken his first leap!

How many could have afforded the rocketing price of a place in which to keep children safe for a number of hours per day when dad and mom were on that enforced treadmill of repayments caused by the property bubble? In many instances, the cost of playschool, preschool, or Montessori, would have simply been impossible for hard-working parents . . . and it was there that the older generation frequently stepped into the breach.

Maybe Mr Amis comes from a society where the concept of ‘the extended family’ no longer exists. More’s the pity, it is on the wane here as well compared to many other countries who deeply value it, but you can see it is action at many of the schoolgates in cities and towns as grans and grandads wait to collect youngsters at lunchtime.
 

Read more on page 15 of this week's Galway City Tribune.