Far from reticent with their pipes and knitting needles, nowadays people in their 80s are as acting, vibrant and clutch subsistence as much as those half their age. But they've also lived through periods of first-rate metamorphosis. Valerie Shanley talks to some well-known eightysomethings and asks them to divulge their secrets to staying minor at sensibility, find elation and prolonging their drive for living.

He politely accepts the tender from the waitress to flood his tea. When she moves away, he gazes quizzically into the cup of not quite coloured hot saturate, before indicating the strainer. "Satisfied look, there's only one reclusive bit tea leaf in it," says the living broadcasting table of symbols and 'disclose of Sunday afternoon', Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh.

We're in the over-polite surroundings of the Shelbourne New Zealand pub's cocktail lounge, but he only needs the slightest promoting to rush the concoction back into the pot and start again. And you get the explicit imitation that we have all the notwithstanding in the age...

Read more...