Wrinkly rebellion: Let my people go!

I GOT carded today.

When the guy in the corner shop demanded ID, I told him I only had my old age pensioner’s Freedom Pass. “That’ll do,” he said. “I just wanna check you’re not too old to buy cigarettes.”

He must have been only half-joking since he finally surrendered the 20 Silk Cut at the lockdown price of only £13 and change.

Three cheers, then, for the British Medical Association, which has come to the rescue of us over-70s by warning Boris Johnson’s government not to discriminate against wrinklies as it scales back the lockdown measures.

The threat to single us out was splashed in the Sunday Times, much to the annoyance of boy health minister Matt Hancock (b.1978 – 1978!!!)

“Sad to see another factually wrong & misleading article on p1 of the Sunday Times,” he Tweeted. “The clinically vulnerable, who are advised to stay in lockdown for 12 weeks, emphatically DO NOT include all over 70s. I’ve asked for an urgent correction.”

Tell it to your granny, Mattkins! Even before the lockdown started, the government was leaking that over-70s would be ordered to stay in strict isolation for four months under ‘wartime-style’ measures.

Read you own advice, Twattcock! On the government webpage, updated on May 1, oldies are listed as a “clinically vulnerable” group. So what is it? Do we stay indoors, or do we go out?

One of the worst things about being young is having your elders telling you they know better, thanks to their years and life experience. Worse still is getting old and being preached to by the young.

They can’t wait for us to fall off the perch and yet they daily lecture us about how we can extend our mortal span by avoiding any activity that might make our dwindling days bearable.

Even those ostensibly on our side don’t always strike the right note. Eileen Burns, past president of the British Geriatrics Society, advised against isolating the healthier oldies who might not want to sacrifice “one of the precious years they have left”. Thanks, Eileen.

No one wants old people littering the streets. Most of us are unattractive and we’re all grumpy. Nevertheless, it’s a free country – so far – so let’s drop the idea you can tidy up post-lockdown Britain by forcing us to stay at home.

Our lives have already been blighted by a later generation that has never got over the fact they just missed out on the sixties. Johnson only came out in the same year as the Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night and Hancock was still in nappies when Margaret Thacher came to power.

Get over it! You won’t suddenly become cool by giving us a hard time.

They’re going to announce this week their measures for a loosening of the lockdown. They should beware, as they do so, of the prospect of a wrinkly rebellion. Johnson, you’ve been warned.