It is, in one respect great to think that everyone is living longer these days, in the West, that is, but, and it is a big but, age has it’s down side.

Take simple things like household cleaning products. These products appear to be packaged only for those who have the strength of Hercules in their hands.

I bought a bottle of household cleaner the other day, and it took me all of ten minutes to open the bottle.  I twisted and turned the top, squeezed the sides and eventually after much annoyance ,I managed to open the wretched thing, by which time I had lost all interest in wiping down the table top and had a cup of coffee instead.

What really baffles me is that as the population is living longer, one would have thought that those who want to sell us stuff would give due consideration to our frailties.

In this Brave and bewildering new World, passwords appear to be of vital importance to enable us to access so many things from bank accounts to phone bills.

Our memories are getting worse so it is  not always easy to remember the different codes and passwords, particularly as we are warned not to write the numbers down, anyway we would probably lose the paper we had written on.

We can send a man into Space, but we cannot come up with a simple way to assist a growing and important section of the population.

Yes, we Are important. We keep the Doctors surgeries busy, usually overflowing, we keep the pill manufacturers working overtime, and many of the ‘Bus companies would be out of business if it were not for the free ‘bus passes for the retired.

For the more able amongst us, we keep many a local restaurant full at lunchtimes  with Special Pensioners Lunches, often frozen Plaice, frozen Chips and frozen peas, which I suppose is what many Restauranteurs think would be a special treat for us poor old Buffers.

I think we deserve more consideration and we should all start lobbying to make life a bit easier for us Oldies.

We need bottles and jars that are easier to open, another method for security other than forgettable passwords, computers which do not baffle us and  generally more consideration for a large section of the Population.

Is anyone listening?