What I learned from our 1957 Bentley

June 13, 2024 by Doctor Vernon Coleman

There are vital things to be learnt about ourselves, our bodies, our health and our attitude to life from dealing with old motor cars.

Our 1957 Bentley has a number of faults. So, for example, the temperature gauge doesn’t seem to work properly. After driving for a few miles the needle on the gauge rises into the red zone and stays there. The wise man at the garage looked at this and found a problem with the radiator, which had become clogged after years of little or no use. He put in a new radiator but found that this didn’t solve the problem with the temperature gauge. The fact is that the water temperature only appears to be hot and the problem, it seems, lies not in the radiator but in the transmitter carrying appropriate messages about the temperature from the gauge on the dashboard. And I was not surprised to hear that there is, or appears to be, something of a shortage of suitable replacement transmitters for 67-year-old motor cars.

The answer, I decided, is to ignore the gauge and to rely on other warning signs. So, if steam or bubbling hot water appears from the radiator then I will stop the car, wait for it to cool down and then drive home slowly. I can manage without a temperature gauge.

The problem hasn’t been cured but it has been side stepped.

Similarly the petrol tank gauge doesn’t work. The needle is stuck permanently at half full. I could take the car to the garage and leave it there for weeks or months while the mechanics hunt around online and find a replacement for the part of the gauge that isn’t working properly, and then fit the replacement.

Or I could just make a note of the reading on the mileometer when I buy petrol, and buy more petrol when I’ve done 180 miles or so. Since I already have to make a note of the mileage in order to know when to press the button to oil the chassis, this is no great problem. The trip meter is frozen but the mileometer still works (the car has done 59,000 miles since 1957) so keeping an eye on the mileage won’t be difficult.

The small lockable compartment (known as the glove box to most people though Bentley call it a ‘cubby box’) on the passenger side of the front of the car should lock but it doesn’t because the lock mechanism seems to be broken. Who cares? I have had dozens of cars with glove boxes which locked and I don’t think I have ever locked one in my life. The locks are usually fairly fragile and no match for a determined thief armed with a screwdriver.

What I am doing, of course, is merely adapting my life, and my expectations, to the car’s deficiencies. I am working around the problems rather than confronting them head on. If I take the car into the garage every time I find a fault then I will have very little time to enjoy driving it. At the end of two years I will probably have a pretty well perfect (and expensively restored) vehicle but I will have had very little fun with it. It’s too easy to own an old car which becomes the motorised equivalent of an old rock group – still blasting along, making a little noise when this seems appropriate, but having few of the original parts.

And it occurs to me that maybe this is a philosophy which we should apply to our own bodies.

As we age we all lose some of our flexibility, strength and skills. Nothing works quite as well as it did when we were 20-years-old. It is, of course, possible to get something done about most of the things that are faulty, or not working as efficiently as they did previously, but that can mean making quite a sacrifice in terms of time, pain and money. And there are risks in having surgery or taking pills.

I obviously don’t know what feeling old is supposed to feel like (since it’s nothing I’ve done before) but there are inevitably going to be consequences as the machinery becomes worn.

People deal with ageing in very different ways. And their expectations are important.

Many people find it difficult to accept that things aren’t going to work as well when they age.

A neighbour told me (with considerable pride) that he and his wife between them had four new knees and three new shoulders fitted. (I always feel surprised that whereas the knee joints we were given at the start of our lives can usually last 70 plus years before showing signs of wear and tear, the expensively crafted artificial joints which are provided as replacements last only a few years.) Neither the man nor his wife was in great pain before their surgery and they could both get around quite well, though he sometimes used a walking stick.

I find it strange that anyone would rather go through the pain, risk and expense of major surgery to avoid the relatively mild inconvenience of using a walking stick.

Many people’s lives are occupied by a constant search for surgery and new treatments as they fight the daily battle against decaying teeth, increasing deafness, constant indigestion, breathlessness, pain in every joint, backache, palpitations, forgetfulness, poor circulation, leg ulcers, hair loss, high blood pressure, skin discolorations and more. Millions go to an optician every six months to have their eyes tested, and to a dentist every six months to have their teeth and gums assessed. They have regular bowel, breast and heart checks. The slightest abnormality must be investigated at length and then treated (also at length) with the side effects of the treatment then requiring more tests and more treatments. Patients in their 60s and older are often taking a dozen or more different types of drug every day. They need charts and special pill dispensers to help them keep a check on what they have taken and what they need to take. Even varicose veins suddenly need attention. I knew a woman well into her seventies who insisted on having surgery performed on her hardly visible varicose veins. Dodgy knees, elbows, shoulders and hips need regular testing. There are endless procedures to be undertaken and regular screenings to be endured. There are injections to have and vaccinations galore to protect against the flu, shingles and a range of disorders. These constant visits to doctors and other health professionals create a sense of victimhood and passivity which the health professionals encourage. Regular praise is offered to those who remember their name and age correctly. On top of the orthodox care provided, alternative practitioners use the mainstream media and the internet to provide advice and answers for every known ailment, and some ailments that have not yet been defined.

It is no big surprise that no one over the age of eighteen wants to be older and many over the age of 50 have started working out how many days of life they might have left. In the country of the old there is no normal. It’s perhaps no surprise that suicide is highest among those over the age of 75.

I read a book the other day in which the author, no older than I am, confessed that she spent 80% of her time visiting doctors and clinics of one sort or another and that her friends thought that this was fairly normal. Gore Vidal called his final years ‘the hospital years’. There are well over a million people over the age of 80 currently living in the UK, and if they all spend most of their time queuing to see a doctor then it is hardly surprising that the queues are unmanageable.

But if you live another ten years and spend eight of them in hospitals or doctors’ waiting rooms you are arguably worse off than someone who lived another three years without bothering with doctors. And, of course, this ignores the pain, discomfort, cost and inconvenience of all the treatments that will be offered and doubtless accepted. There is no drug or surgical treatment that does not come without side effects. There is no screening procedure that is 100% accurate or reliable. I’m afraid that doctors and drug companies have a distinct tendency to oversell themselves and their products.

All this emphasis on illness and treatment means that most old people spend their days moaning about their ailments, talking about their friend’s ailments, attending funerals, remembering those who have gone, (feeling good about still being here) and abandoning all their hopes and plans because it becomes impossible to fit hobbies and interests in between all the hospital and doctor appointments.

It seems to me that the elderly are entitled to have a little more fun. As the responsibilities and obligations have lessened a little (maybe) then the time has come to be more daring and adventurous; to stop worrying about what other people think and to take on new challenges. It seems to me that there isn’t much point to being older if all you do is try to repair, to restore and to delay the inevitable aging process. Keeping occupied with projects that are a challenge, and fun to do, seems to me to be the only way to meander through old age with any sense of self-respect and purpose.

I am always astonished by people who want to retire at the age of 50 or 55 (or even earlier) and who genuinely seem to think that they will be satisfied if they spend their remaining years sitting on the beach, sipping cocktails and playing an occasional round of golf. I wonder how many of those who embark on a long, long retirement doing nothing eventually find themselves fading away from boredom and a lack of a challenge. Retirement is an entirely artificial concept and it’s important to remember that when pensions were invented in Germany, the age of 65 was chosen as the official retirement age because that was, at the time, the average age of death in Germany. In my experience, loafing is only enjoyable if you have a great deal to do.

And only if you don’t entirely fill your days with doctors’ appointments, visits to the dentist and the optician, sessions with a physiotherapist and so on, can there possibly be time to take on the sort of projects that are worthy.

The problems of being older are exacerbated by the fact that the elderly are often discarded or rejected merely because of their age.

So, for example, numerous extremely successful authors have had to start publishing their own work because agents and publishers see elderly writers as being of no value.

On the other hand, there are no limits to what can be done once the plunge has been taken. Lawrence Block, one of America’s most successful thriller writers, has become one of the world’s most successful self-publishers. He is not alone.

The comparison with my old Bentley seems to me to be a solid one. If I leave it at the restorers to be repaired I’ll never get any fun out of it.

If I had a pain which kept me awake at night and which wrecked my days, I would try to have something done about it. But if I could find a way around it then I would.

NOTE
The above essay is taken from Vernon Coleman’s latest book `Old man in an old car’. You can buy a copy from the bookshop on www.vernoncoleman.com