Editor's epilogue
Article Type: Editorial From: Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, Volume 14, Issue 4.
I am passing on the mantle to a very worthy successor my longstanding friend and colleague Fiona Poland, who has been with the Journal since its foundation and has been one of its most loyal supporters. I am grateful for her support in the past and I know the Journal will be in safe and competent hands when she takes over. I wish her and the Journal a long and healthy life. Although I have enjoyed working with Emma Steele at Emerald for only a short period, she has been a most helpful and willing Managing Editor – Fiona will be well supported by her.
I extend my heartfelt thanks to the Editorial Board members past and present – some having been with the Journal from the start. All have been helpful, supportive and constructive with myself and with authors keen to get their message out.
And, as a Board, we have worked with many publishers and editorial assistants but the most longstanding has been Jo Sharrocks. I have always been impressed by her dedication to her work, her interest in the field and her warm ability to support, guide and advise. She has a great career ahead of her and we, the whole Editorial Board, wish her success.
Some years ago my wife and I decided to ensure our minds continued to be “exercised” and so resolved to memorise some poetry that had become meaningful to us. I’m delighted to say these weren’t tasks assigned to us as schoolchildren rather something to “test” our more mature brains. Even 30 years later we recall a piece from A.E. Housman that, I trust, will never be lost to our memory – from A Shropshire Lad:
XLInto my heart an air that killsFrom yon far country blows:What are those blue remembered hills,What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,I see it shining plain,The happy highways where I wentAnd cannot come again.
I know there is something of a “lost youth” about that collection. Indeed the process of ageing is, I feel, a mix of loss and of opportunity. For most people early life contains more of the latter than the former, while the balance changes in later life. Our Journal has always tried to keep a balance – covering not merely the negative side to growing old, but seeking to report those positive features of “maturing” that we can learn from and even enjoy. I have tried to re-present that balance in this Issue. So while loss is to some degree a necessary part of the experience of ageing, in our caring for older people and ourselves as we age, opportunity must remain a part of that experience. Our authors in this Issue have offered some excellent examples of taking opportunities.
I am writing from our “new life” here in France; these days we wander on paths through fields of corn, poppies and sunflowers near our new house in France. There is a way to the top of a hill with a crucifix that one often finds in this “secular” country and it was placed on a former druid site. The view is to the villages, hills and fields for miles around – other spires and other farms. No longer the old “happy highways” but there are new ones and we look forward to finding more.
Scott and Helen Nearing gave us an outlook that could act as a guiding ethos for all of us as we age – for carers and cared-for alike:
Wherever you are, do the best you can and be kind.
