This afternoon, someone from Share and Care UK – the outfit that matches young people looking for somewhere to live to older house owners – is visiting to see how I and my companion are getting on.
They will be pleased, I expect, because I and the excellent young actor who lives here with me are getting on fine. This works for her because she enjoys a decent house, and for me because, being considerably younger than me, she can and does sort out easily all the ghastly difficulties I have with the computer.
My companion doesn’t have to help me with the computer very often, and maybe that is not of general interest. But when I see in the papers the discussions about education, whether college or apprenticeship is the best way to start being grown-up for most of people under a certain age, I can’t help thinking that it’s good that the young have too this excellent way of making themselves useful to established people who have something to offer in return. Not only residence but use of the garden, say, or, if they are not too young, using the car. Or even money: after all, offering a skill for someone else might very well be preferable to learning the skills of waiting tables as so many of us did – I can still hold a full dish on one hand, but so what?
My actor son in California has a brilliant “day job” writing software for a distant American firm. I’m all for the young having these skills, and especially when they share them so that we elders can benefit, too.
What do you think? Have your say below
