I’m just back from my native land, where I saw my 90 year-old stepfather into a residential home which specializes in the care of the dementia from which he is suffering. It got me thinking about the way the old are treated in literature, on those few occasions they are allowed across its hallowed portals. At best they are treated with condescension and sentimentality. Rarely is there any attempt to get inside their heads, particularly if they are suffering from dementia. That’s hardly surprising, perhaps, since old people with dementia are not in a position to explain themselves clearly, let alone write about their experience and feelings. This opacity is touched upon in a rare acknowledgement of it in the book I’m currently reading: The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, so kudos to him. I’m as guilty as anyone else: the only really old character in my writing is the retired spook Franco Tira in Murder by Suicide, and he is largely a stereotype, and no more demented than he was when in his prime. To counterbalance this, I’m thinking of writing a tale about a very old person with superpowers, ones that will be put to no good use. That way I can satirise our attitudes both towards the “paranormal” and towards old age.