The Sixth Decade – what about love and kharma, what about sex and death?

This is the sort of conundrum that most of us hope will never happen…

Gone are the days of throwing one’s leg over one’s partner with joyful abandon, or hefting those nether regions into what can now seem impossible positions…

However, let’s leave the negative stuff aside for a moment. For a start, according to a recent survey, 73 per cent of over 50s reported having a healthy sex life. We are, after all, less inhibited and more experienced and so are prepared to give most things – and not just sex – another shot? Aren’t we?

Sex, we are told, makes you feel good and in those of us of a certain age, gets all that sluggish blood pumping around the body bringing a bloom to sagging old cheeks… According to an Edinburgh report, people who have sex at least three times a week can look up to 10 years younger than those who make love less frequently. Of course, three times a week may be pushing it a bit, but still… Apparently sex is often better than it was when you were younger: “I wish I knew” I hear you say… How do you know unless you give it a go?

Even dear old kissing is good for you – something the average man under-rates at his peril. Apparently it can stimulate more than 30 facial muscles, helping to smooth out lines and wrinkles, tone your cheek and jaw muscles and boost circulation to the face bringing a youthful glow. Better than Botox! Moreover, scientists tell us that it causes the brain to release oxytocin, sometimes called ‘the bonding hormone’. This hormone, which is also secreted at orgasm and by breastfeeding mothers, helps you feel closer to your partner, promoting feelings of calm and contentment. That’s got to be worth getting all those saggy old bits up to speed.

Many postmenopausal women report they can reach arousal much faster than they could before and some who, for whatever reason, never got there in the first place, finally do get there. Perhaps it’s a timing thing – I mean, taking more time and not rushing the thing. After all, we know that an irritating aspect of being young is about being impatient, or not being able to wait for more or less anything. I tell my daughter this all the time…

For men there has been the helpful development of Viagra which has probably opened up a whole new-ish world for those who dare to dip a toe in the water. Well, I hope it’s helpful. I have heard that it has more than ruffled a few feathers in some quarters…

I should touch on how, shouldn’t I? I mean if one does have dodgy knees or a dodgy hip, or exasperating stiffness, getting into a satisfactory position may prove dispiriting if it hurts before you even start. Experiment – and again, this is where our experience should come into play and a certain confidence to say to one’s partner that “this won’t, or will, work”. Perhaps going the whole distance might be a big ask for some, but cuddling and touching can go an awful long way to enrich our lives too.

A can-do attitude should make all the difference to a relationship – or, indeed, potential relationship. Currently I find myself cuddling up to a cross-chihuahua for instance, but you can’t have everything…

Stripping one’s clothes off can also be a bit of a challenge. We are not what we were, but again – what the hell? Your body has given you a damn good innings and should be respected and loved. Dim the lights if you must, light a few candles, close the blinds – whatever makes you feel more confident.

Personally I try not to look too hard when I’m confronted with a naked me, but as someone who shall remain nameless once said, we’re all in this together… Finally, we are all different, so I should add that there are some who don’t enjoy sex and have never enjoyed sex, a dear old friend of mine being one of them. It was a huge relief when she finally divorced her “every day and twice on Sundays” husband… Apparently she used to simply lie back and think of England.

Now she doesn’t have to, now she’s free – and happy.

I thought I was going to India to de-stress, but it didn’t quite work out that way, unless being swept totally out of your comfort zone qualifies. It probably does, in that what’s going on at home seems so distant that my front door could be orbiting Pluto… This is a good thing. I have slowly come to realise that I am not the centre of everyone’s universe, that the people around me do not need me to be in touching distant to carry on living, that I do not need to be on the other end of a mobile phone to survive.

It is also true that seeing a fellow human being emerging from a pile of garbage under a New Delhi flyover at 5 am concentrates the western mind wonderfully. Or, indeed, the three toddlers I spotted perched alone on a bench at more or less the same time, or the way the people at the very bottom of the ladder scrape a living in whatever meagre way they can, ways we can hardly imagine… Or the hard fact, so our lovely guide* told us, that the average teenager cannot really – ‘physically’ – mix with those of the opposite sex until their marriage is set up … So kissing or indeed any form of touching, is taboo. I tried not to raise my eyebrows.

*By the way, I can highly recommend India Personal Tours, they were perfect – and I’m not getting a back-hander for mentioning them!

What happens to all those racing hormones, all that curiosity, all that testosterone bubbling away like the lava in your average volcano. I wondered. And kissing is lovely and doesn’t need to lead to full-blown ‘naughtiness’. Does it? My old headmistress, Miss Ellis – a veritable Amazon with a magnificent hour-glass figure (she could have given those old ‘page 3 girls’ a run for their money if she’d been so inclined). Anyway, she used an ominous simile regarding kissing, in that it was rather like giving the signal for “traffic lights to turn from red to green…” Green meaning GO, of course. These days I would challenge her on this, if I knew where she was, hopefully not pushing up the daisies quite yet…

Nevertheless, there is something noble about the concept of purity, even in these stark, almost-faithless, plastic-riven days of the 21st century…

And, after all, God knows what the average parent over there would think of what our teenagers get up to over here where ‘traffic lights turning from ‘red to green’ happens on a regular basis… Recently alighting from a train at Brighton Station on one of the first warm days of the year, half of the passengers seemed to be teenage girls wearing impossibly tiny shorts that showed half of their, sometimes, unedifying bottoms. Clearly the phrase “does my bum look big in this?” hadn’t crossed their minds…

Back to India. Of course, there are ways around everything and when raging hormones are involved something has to give. There are ‘secret places’ like the Lodi Gardens in Delhi for instance where lovers, if they dare, can meet under cover of darkness – and if they’re lucky, they won’t get caught. Apparently the odd tree can actually be seen shaking with passion…