Sir Muir Gray, NHS ex-chief of knowledge – whatever that means – has announced that older people need a “bonfire of slippers”, for the sake of our health. Here we go again. Someone else telling us to take more exercise, eat properly, stop walking about like tortoises, burn our slippers and generally perk up. Doctors should prescribe Pilates instead of drugs, he told the Oxford literary festival, and our silly relatives must give us resistance bands and dumbells for presents, not cardigans or comfy footwear.
Oh spare me from yet another clever-dick dollop of condescension and bossiness. Who is he to tell us to burn our slippers? I like mine. I wear them when it’s cold, to avoid chilblains. Then I jump up, rip them off, pull on my stout walking boots and stride around the parks for an hour with the dog, every day, often passing a stream of elderly neighbours heading for their Pilates class, or out with their dogs. I frequently meet several elderly persons, with whom I have coherent conversations, and many of us wear cardigans, because the weather is still chilly.
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