No growing old gracefully

'Do not go gentle into that good night,' wrote Dylan Thomas in 1952. 'Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.' The Welsh poet was as good as his word, pegging out from alcohol abuse at the age of 39 after a brief, tempestuous life.

He never reached old age but, by a nice irony, provided an entire generation with an image of what old age should be. Carpet slippers out. Wild parties in.

There have probably never been more middle-aged hell-raisers raging against the dying of the light.

A recent study of the babyboomer generation by the thinktank Demos found that people in the 39 to 59 age range were united in one thing: their refusal to be put out to pasture the way their parents were.

They do not want to be the elders of the tribe, respected for their sagacity.

They do not want index-linked pensions, mortgage-free houses and all that junk. They would rather grow old disgracefully than risk becoming pillars of the community.

If they can pass for 45 when they are 65, they will. If they can retain the looks and libido of their younger selves, they will stop at nothing to achieve that Holy Grail.

Do you think they will take up golf and gardening when they retire? Not a chance. They will be too busy backpacking around India or bungee-jumping in New Zealand.

No challenge will be too great for these silver-haired Peter Pans. 'You're as old as you feel,' they parrot, throwing away their Zimmer frames, hopping onto Harley-Davidsons. The first nonagenarian on the moon is only a matter of time.

Whole forests of newsprint are devoted to the problem of the young behaving badly, trashing our town centres, etc. But what about the excesses of their parents, those relentlessly hedonistic, eternally self-deluding types whose refusal to age with any kind of dignity is such a blot on the English landscape?

I am still reeling from the Leavers' Ball I attended at my daughter's school on Saturday night. My own role, I had assumed, would be to pay for the tickets, then get quietly sozzled in the corner, while the young took over the dance floor.

Dream on! The young were bursting to take over the dance floor. Beautifully dressed teenage girls, in the pink of youth, took their first nervous steps towards adulthood, leading shy, pimply boys onto the floor.

But whatever romantic dreams they nursed were rudely dashed by the antics of their parents.

Balding men who would never see 60 again lurched across the room, squiring stout matrons in tight skirts. Sweat was pouring down their faces, but they danced till they dropped, modelling their styles, variously, on Mick Jagger, mating rhinoceroses and Egyptian belly-dancers. Their poor daughters were too embarrassed to look.

And the mothers, if anything, were even guiltier than the fathers. They vied with their offspring, New Age earring for New Age earring, cleavage for cleavage, short skirt for short skirt. I saw one red-haired apparition in fishnet stockings kick her legs so high that she nearly toppled into the ornamental fountain. Thirty years ago, such excesses would have been widely ridiculed as 'mutton dressed as lamb'. We all heard our parents use that famous phrase. It was not the biggest sin in the world, but a sin it was, a kind of blasphemy against Mother Nature. To dress like someone half your age was to advertise your own immaturity.

It is not a phrase you hear so often today. When a woman of 50 wears a leopard-skin mini-skirt, I'm sorry to say she is more likely to be praised for daring than censured for bad taste. Her friends may tut-tut, but they will be down at the gym the next morning, striving to emulate her.

When a grandfather buys his first leather jacket - as a sixty-something friend of mine has just done - he is seen as a bit of a card. I want to tell him he looks a fool, but the words stick in my throat.

I realise, sadly, that he belongs to the times more than I do. Twenty-first-century Man cannot grow old, as his fore-fathers grew old. He must end his days in a Chelsea nightclub with a spliff in his mouth and a blonde on each arm.

We live longer than ever, but seem, paradoxically, to fear death more. How else can one explain this desperate need, in middleaged men and women, to cling to the outward forms of youth?

It is almost as if the babyboomers, who were young in the Sixties, have never outgrown that heady decade, when revolution was in the air. They think that, so long as they can strum a guitar, roll a joint and stay awake till three in the morning listening to the Rolling Stones, they can cheat the ageing process.

They do not heed the natural changes in their bodies because, so far as is humanly possible, they preserve those bodies unimpaired. It does not matter if it takes dieting, plastic surgery or long hours in the gym: defying gravity is all that counts.

Youth is enviable. Of course, it is. To be young in heart, generous-hearted, optimistic about the future... These are fine qualities, whether you are 20 or 90.

But it is a hallmark of our shallow, looks-obsessed age that we prize those qualities less than purely physical attributes, such as girlish hips in a grandmother or the ability to run the marathon at 80.

When I think of the old people I have loved most - my parents, above all - it is not their physical vigour I admire so much as their inner serenity, their uncomplaining acceptance of the passing years. They are wise enough to know their limitations.

Yet that kind of stoicism, alas, is going out of fashion. In its place, among the baby-boomer generation, you find an almost arrogant belief that longevity and good health are our birthright; that life is one long party at which the beautiful people in their designer jeans can dance the night away.

In exalting youth so shamelessly above age, we have lost touch with the great truth which Shakespeare expressed in his Seven Ages Of Man speech: that each generation, from the cradle to the grave, has something distinctive to contribute to the human journey.

Even the justice, with his 'fair round belly with good capon lined', had his part to play. He could enjoy the sweets of middle age, respected by his peers, before slipping gently into his dotage.

His modern counterpart would probably be jogging to keep his weight down, hang-gliding in the Pyrenees and sharing Che Guevara T-shirts with his teenage son. He would certainly be physically fitter. But would he be happier - or wiser? I doubt it.

A generation which fears to grow old is making a rod for its own back.

The odd sprightly octogenarian is a joy to behold. But when every white hair, every wrinkle, every creaking joint is seen as an affront against nature, rather than as nature taking its course, we are all the losers.