Alan Franks marks the 60th birthday of the Prince of Wales by writing about how it feels for children of the 1960s as they begin to qualify for the 'freedom bus pass'. This article first appeared in The Times on 15 November.

By turning 60, as he did yesterday, the Prince of Wales is, of course, typical of his generation. It is what has been happening these past 11 and a half months to all his fellow baby-boomers who were born three years after the end of the war. In another sense, however, his case is unlike any of his contemporaries', and not just because he is Royal; his career is all back-to-front, with the last few decades taken up in the passionate but amateur pursuit of his interests - architecture, polo, organic farming - and the real job, reigning, still to come through.
His situation is tragic-comic. He has been trained for a position that might not fall vacant until he is 80, while his contemporaries look forward to retirements with greater expectations than any previous generation. Their health is rude and their awareness of it is at unprecedented levels. If ever they smoked, they don't any more, at least not like they used to. If they drank too much, they've probably taken action on that one too. Likewise fatty food. No good digging in for a long third age if cholesterol, weight and blood pressure are all over the odds.
Martyrs to hedonism
The ones who did not modify their behaviour in the light of raised levels of health-consciousness are possibly dead, or getting there, unsung martyrs to the hedonism of their youth. There is 60, and there are the Sixties, and to be the one entails having lived through the other. Yet the resemblance between the two is nominal, or numerical. Doing 60 properly means looking soberly at your condition and its fitness for the still-long future. This may be a practical means of prolonging your capacity for fun and leisure, but it is also a violation of the instant gratification that amounted to a creed for the young of that decade.
Who could blame them? For many, particularly the sons and daughters of the consolidating middle class, everything was on offer. The war was over and there were to be no more such eruptions in Europe in the course of their lifetime to date; at least, none close enough to impinge on them. They were the literal children of the National Health Service. Higher education was expanding and you weren't even going to be lumbered with a loan that would weigh you down into the foothills of your middle years. An unimagined window of opportunity flew open between the arrival of the Pill and the coming of Aids. You clambered through it as you would through the windows of a fascinating and long-forbidden house.
Inside, everything was a splurge of colour and the best bands in the world were playing. Some of them haven't stopped. Your parents' eyes were so dimmed by the monochrome of austerity that they could not begin to envisage it, although you could catch the most enlightened of them humming “When I'm 64”, and naturally getting it wrong. You did the Hippy Hippy Shake. They did the Shaky Shaky Hip.
One of the most ardent self-images of the newly 60 has them as being far closer, socially and emotionally, with their own adult young than was the case in the previous generation. You see a version of this in the Royal Family: Prince Charles is more au fait with the pressures on William and Harry than Prince Philip ever was with him. Gordon Brown - still only 57, it's true - doesn't sound quite right when he says he likes the Arctic Monkeys, but you can see what he's up to.
The newly 60 have not lost the taste for partying (see panel). Not all of them can afford to do it like Elton John, who threw a 400-guest bash at the Cathedral Church of St John Divine in New York. But they use their ingenuity, often to fulfil long-standing ambitions, such as an evening defiantly devoted to the tango. One party I went to this year was crammed with ageless wigged hippies obeying the Sixties motif of the invitation. Parties like these are acknowledging the Big Six milestone, but they are also thumbing their noses at it as it flashes by. At another a close friend of mine sang a version of Little Eva's hit from that time, The Locomotion, to the backing of his musician sons. But he had re-written the lyrics so that the refrain became “Come on baby, do the Freedom Bus Pass.” It was such a hit that I got him to do it at mine.
Those who are now 60 have rolled through half a century-plus like a mighty wave, swelling first the maternity wards, then the schools and universities, then the workplaces, the suburbs, the timeshares, the fitness clubs, and then, ultimately - but not for a while yet, oh no - the old people's homes and the cemeteries.

Photo by Sylvan of Alan Franks at his 60th birthday party at the RamJam in Kingston.


Old? Who said old? It's not a word you hear in Sixty Street. Very bad form to use it. Five years ago there was this notion that 50 was the new 40. The call was taken up by an advertising industry eager to tap grey spending power, but it was eagerly echoed by the The Generation itself. At 60, they don't so much claim as grudgingly admit to being the new 50. They would rather it was still 40 because they remain greedy for youth. Youth was their prerogative and they are not going to surrender it without a struggle.
Laudable in many ways, but potentially embarrassing too. Prince Charles's contemporaries might be in the condition of denial that walks hand in hand with indulgence. Age for them is the place where their mothers and fathers lived, and perhaps still do. For it is now the lot of the 60-year-old to be slung between parents of apparently infinite age and technically adult children who stay at home for a similar infinity. Both categories go on in this way partly because they can, but also because they have no choice. Longevity and the economy are the respective causes.The world is having the nerve to be passing from their control. Prince Charles may not yet have attained the office of his destiny, but he is not entirely alone. Hillary Clinton's failure to get the Democrat nomination was a bell that sounded the passing of the Boomers' dominance. It has happened in our own capital too, with Ken Livingstone, 63, being replaced by a Boristocracy nearly 20 years younger. Quite right too, say Mr and Mrs Sixty, but, well, damn it.
By having paid off their mortgage and drawing an earnings-related pension, they might be recession-proof. But they might not be; if their future income is derived from a defined contribution, or pension pot, it's looking hazardous, stressful even. Whether gambling was a weakness of their youth or not, they have now been turned into punters on a turbulent stock market. There is a bitter poetic justice in it.
Still, the house price slump is not all bad news. Obviously you don't want the value of your home to drop too humiliatingly; self-esteem is inconveniently vulnerable to crashes in your financial worth. But it could bring the low rungs of the market into your children's reach.
The spectre at the table
Nasty old Alzheimer's stalks the scene. Between them Mr and Mrs Sixty probably have a parent who has been kept going for years by the care at Downview, but who hasn't the faintest idea who anybody is. This is straining beyond endurance the fairly new commonplace of a relationship with a parent that stretches into your own late middle age. They see a spectre of their own future and privately pray that someone will come up with a cure in the next 20 years.
After all, there's glucosamine for those joint pains that you thought only other people got; now there are statins that will stop you getting heart attacks. If things get sluggish downstairs, there are “apparently” those little blue pills whose name you pretend to forget. Surely they can come up with something, anything, to stop you going ga-ga and failing to recognise yourself in the mirror. Surely it will be all right in the end. Won't it? It always has been up to now.