When I’m Sixty-Four

Monday 6 January 2025

I had been intending to pen this short missive last week as a conveyance of New Year wishes, and in order to bid you all a happy and active 2025. However, a busy few days led into a fun weekend, where I really was made to feel the centre of attention (for once), as I reached my milestone birthday of 64! My local friend Mark attained the same feat just a week ago, and so we held some appropriate celebrations last night with our ‘Music Musers’ group and partners, Beatles fans all.

The above party was preceded on Saturday by a super winter walk with a few friends from our nordic walking group, finishing with coffee and cake back at our house. So, in the spirit of the song I certainly now feel ‘needed and feeded’! Thank you to Rachel, and to everyone who joined and contributed so much to my extended festivities.

So I will finish where I intended to start, with best wishes to everyone for 2025! Rachel and I have a short walking trip planned that I hope to report on later next week, and then I will be looking out for some cold clear days of winter walking back in the Chilterns later in the month – despite the early twilight (and once wrapped up warm) there are some great rambles to be had at this time of year. I am also hatching some plans for a longer walking challenge in the spring, and I will report back here on these thoughts in due course.

The song ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ is credited to ‘Lennon/McCartney’, but (allegedly excluding John Lennon’s later naming of the characters ‘Vera, Chuck and Dave’) the piece is pure Paul McCartney. The composition was written by the Beatle-to-be around 1956 when he was about 14 years old and, pre-dating ‘rock ‘n’ roll’, the song conveys a cabaret, almost music hall, feel. Perhaps surprisingly ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ was not recorded by the Beatles until December 1966 and released five months later on their seminal ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ album: nearly six decades on it still provides a kindly and humorous young person’s perspective on ageing. Whether such passage of time now makes me handy in mending a fuse is quite another matter . . .