A B(l)oomer in West Sussex: Tech, Pets, Gen Z Slang and Why Older Voices Still Matter

There is a strange moment that arrives when people begin to talk around you rather than to you. It's a gradual thing. One day you are juggling work, children, bills, ageing parents, and the school run. The next, someone calls you “dear” in a tone normally reserved for spaniels and toddlers. A survey asks for the views of “working-age adults”, as though wisdom comes to a full stop at 65. If you're a Boomer, you get it.

It's why I started writing B (l)oomers for Sussex Times. A B(l)oomer is a Boomer who has blossomed. OK we're retired, or semi-retired, but that doesn't mean we've suddenly become just part of the scenery. We're still curious, irritated, amused, learning, forgetting, adapting, resisting and asking awkward questions. We have time and many of us have money to spend. And yet older men, and even more so, older women are often overlooked. It's why I write about older female protagonists, like Janey in my novel, Janey Mac. Older women make up the majority of all readers and we really ought to be featured as more than just comic relief.

In B(l)oomers, I write about sat navs and slang; medicine and dogs, grandchildren and patronising shop assistants and how retirement changes how couples relate to each other. The pieces are light, but with a serious undercurrent.

Here's one I wrote about tech and the differing views that my husband and I have about it.

 B(L)OOMERS (March 2025 Sussex Times)

Is there something you hate that your Other Half loves?  My beloved despises mobile technology and I love it.  Since retirement, this has become an Issue.  It irks him that I plug in ear buds to watch what I want when he’s glued to something boring on the telly.  Or if I check something out on the phone instead of looking it up in a book.   I’ll admit that I’m inextricably linked to my little Android friend.  It’s a camera, a gallery, a source of endless information and just occasionally, a phone.

               But it has divided us.  Consider the day we went out for lunch.  Beloved decided to show me a Dorset pub of which he had many happy memories.  I’d never been, but he’d hung out there with his mates when he was a Boomer.  ‘And now we’re Bloomers!’ he declared, delighted with his own joke. 

               As we set off in the car it began to rain.  He was sure he remembered the way, while I wanted to use Google Maps.  ‘I don’t take orders from robots,’ he insisted.  As he drove, I  glanced at my mobile, checking emails and earning a reproof for ‘not enjoying the countryside.’  But the rain was coming down heavily now making everything miserable and besides, I knew this area by heart.

               In time we reached Dorset and having clicked off our accompanying music on Spotify  I noticed that we’d passed the same field twice.  The one with the miserable cows in it, taking shelter from the rain beneath a tree.

               ‘You’re lost!’ I told him accusingly and although he denied it, he pulled up at the edge of someone’s driveway to study the Ordinance Survey map he’d brought along.  He unravelled it across the steering wheel and pored over it so that he didn’t notice the car making its way down the driveway towards us. 

               ‘Someone wants to get out,’  I said, and Beloved issued a curse.  The map refused to refold itself tidily and he flung it onto the back seat in order to allow one very irritated driver exit his own home.  When the car had vanished in an angry cloud of exhaust, I insisted on consulting Google.  Beloved couldn’t quite remember the pub’s name.  ‘The Stolen Fox’ he suggested, ‘Or maybe the Fox and Cub’.  Google drew a blank until Beloved managed to recall the village in which this superlative watering hole was located.  We were on our way!

               When we got there, the pub was boarded up and had been for some time, by the looks of it. Beloved cursed and my stomach rumbled.  It was well past lunch time.  Both our tempers were frayed and there wasn’t a tea room or restaurant in sight.  I pulled out my phone and did a quick search.  There was a gourmet pub in the very next village. 

               ‘Huh!’ Beloved exclaimed, reluctant to admit to being helped by a phone, but he reluctantly followed Robot Woman’s instructions.   The pub was excellent and we enjoyed a delicious lunch.  I  didn’t look at my phone once while we were eating, but I knew that it had saved the day.   Phone 1, Map 0.