As a man approaches the age of 80 there’s one thing on his mind

I suppose it's one of the long list of things which go with getting old, in my case eight months short of 80; white hair (but at least I still have it a'plenty), getting up three times a night to pee (the upside being it gets your daily step count ticking over), losing old friends to the great beyond...and contemplating one's own mortality.

It's not permanently on my mind but it does occasionally suddenly interrupt other musings. Like the Where, When and How. If genes are anything to go by, I have 10 years left; both parents made it to 90 and so did my grandparents and assorted great uncles and aunts but, with the exception of my father, I've had a rather more rackety life than the older Frames and Lowrys. And very few regrets.   

I suppose it's the great unknown which both disturbs and fascinates.  What happens when we have taken our final breath; do we have a soul which floats off, hopefully to Happy Land, or is that it? We will know only when we cannot report back the results. Then again, a celestial Daily Drone might await for further contributions.

Being Irish, I've seen many a dead body, not through the terrible years of the Troubles, but lying peacefully in open coffins as is our way; my mother, father, grandfather, aunts and friends. But I have only been with two people when the dying actually happened. One was my 90-year-old stepmother who slipped away at 3am in hospital with me holding her hand. A minute earlier she had been saying the odd word, clearly aware that I was there...and then... well indeed, what then? 

The other was a man I had never seen before who had been unable (or unwilling?) to stop his ancient Volvo in heavy summer rain as he sped down the very steep Titsey Hill near my old home on the Kent/Surrey border. He went through the windscreen and we were the second people to arrive. The first had called 999 and then retreated while my then wife, a former nurse, talked and comforted him and instructed me to hold up his head until the ambulance arrived. Then he died with a rather theatrical last gurgle which I had assumed, when on TV, was written into the script. Now I know it really does happen.

That was 20 years ago and it affected me considerably because it was so sudden and horrific, a  victim of broken glass and mangled steel. Peaceful it wasn't, whereas my stepmother drifted away in a warm hospital bed holding the hand of someone in her family.

All of which brings me to a book, just published in English and called God, the Science, the Evidence, written by two French scientists who argue that all the science now points to the existence of a Great Creator. Even that career atheist Richard Dawkins admitted that, much as he dismissed the idea of God, it was a useful concept because fear of the Divine stopped us from doing terrible things. Really? There's precious little evidence of that at the moment.

I have no idea whether He/She (!) exists but I was brought up, like so many of us born just after WW2, not to question our faith. in my case a Christian one. Church most Sundays, morning chapel or assembly at school and I am still moved by great choral music and the art inspired by faith. What is the root of so much evil is not faith but religion, as in the intolerance of other people's faiths. And the equating of all Muslims as Islamic fundamentalists or, previously, all Catholics in Ireland as supporters of IRA terror. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Provisionals' war was the result of Protestant/Unionist domination of Catholics in the North and treating them as second class citizens for 50 years. And if there is antisemitism in the UK it's surely really anti-Zionism, a reaction to Netanyahu's genocide in Gaza. And yes, fundamental Islamism is wicked as is all fundamentalism.

John Lennon had it about right with Imagine:

"Imagine there's no countries / it isn't hard to do / nothing to kill or die for / and no religion too.

If only...

*****

Who said;

"No, no, no, a thousand times no. I will not carry an ID card. I refuse to enrol myself in any crackpot Labour scheme to control the British population". 

Or this:

"This is what I warned you against. Sir Keir Starmer was a hard anti-British Leftist who had so much contempt for us that he did not even try to hide the truth." 

Or this:

Sir Keir Starmer lumbered on stage, clerical and boxy... a plodder newly released from the barber's chair... for the next grinding hour he would pulverise the nation into a powder of boredom."

The answers are a) Boris Johnson; b) Peter Hitchens and c) Quentin Letts and what they have in common is that they are in various states of utter bonkerism and all write their pitiful nonsense for the Mail and MoS, rapidly becoming the nastiest newspapers in Britain. I was once so proud to work there in the 70s before finding my berth at the Express.

But now, it has just the one agenda, to rubbish anything Labour does as a legitimate government, twisting all political stories no matter how convoluted that may be. It is a one-opinion forum devoid of fun or humour. Unless something dramatic happens, it will endorse Reform come next Spring' s local, and Scottish and Welsh elections. So, I expect, will the Telegraph and the increasingly irrelevant Express.

The Mail's little Andrew Pierce all but said so on Radio 4 on Sunday when he declared both Labour and the Tories under Badenoch dead in the water.  

Newspapers, at least when we were working for them, entertained a panoply of opinion no matter which party they came out for come election time. Not any more with the honourable exception of The Times and Geordie Greig's Independent.

At this rate we will be saddled with a Trump government in this country in the form of Chancer-in-Chief Nigel Farage. God help us.

*****

My dear old pal Geoffrey Levy who graced the Express and later the Mail before it fell so grimly to the hard right has lost the love of his life Stephanie, his wife of 56 years. She died peacefully at their Wimbledon home in the early hours of Monday last week after a year's struggle. She was 88.

Steve, as she was known, was beautiful and great fun and, over the 45 years we have known them we have enjoyed lunches and dinners together including celebrating their golden wedding at a memorable party in the RAC at Woodcote six years ago. Geoff says: "We had a terribly wonderfully happy marriage though there is some doubt we were actually legally wed!

"In order for the wedding to be at Chelsea Town Hall though neither of us lived in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, we were rescued by dear old John Fitzgerald, the Express lawyer. He lived off King's Road and said we could use his address as ours! Nobody queried it.”

They went on to have three sons, Richard, Jonathan, and Andrew, the Mail's man covering East Anglia and based in Cambridge. 

Newcastle-born Steve was a nurse and when she retired helped young schoolkids with their reading, something both she and her little charges adored. She will be greatly missed, but most of all so fondly remembered.

*****

AND FINALLY

Talking of Geoffrey, hands up who knew he was brought to the Express on the orders of Lord Beaverbrook? He was reporting for the old Daily Herald in Manchester and was sent to Ashton-under-Lyne when word got out that Lord Snowdon, newly employed by the Sunday Times, was there taking pix. Once the local snappers got their fill they departed leaving Geoff and one freelance photographer who asked Mr Princess Margaret: "Hey, are you in the union?" "Yes" came the reply, "are you?" "I am lad, for 47 years".

Our hero wrote up the encounter and it made the Herald's Page One light piece. Duly read by the Beaver who immediately instructed the newsdesk to Hire That Man! 

A very good call. 

ALAN FRAME

7 October 2025