'Generation celebration!" proclaimed the leaflet someone pressed into my hand. It was aimed at all age groups.

But over 50s in particular were urged to come along and share their experiences with the younger people there.

We were promised an afternoon of fun, all for free, all accompanied by music from the 1930s and 40s.

Hang on a minute, I thought: music from before and during the Second World War? For the over 50s? Anyone less than 65 isn't even going to remember anything about that time, let alone what the music was like. Most of us weren't born then.

What's the music that's going to make us all misty-eyed and nostalgic? Certainly not We'll Meet Again or There'll be Blue Birds Over the White Cliffs of Dover. No, the music that sweeps us right back to our youth is Rock around the Clock, and Elvis; or the first crashing chords of A Hard Day's Night, the early Stones or A Whiter Shade of Pale. Those are the tunes that make me relive my teenage years: the first boyfriends, all the awkward shyness of adolescence, the adventure of student years, falling in love, marriage.

It's an odd thing. When you're 20, no-one would dream of assuming that you have the same tastes - in music or anything else - as someone 40 years older than you. They wouldn't even expect you to share the tastes of someone a mere ten years older. But, as soon as you get beyond 50, people start to pigeonhole you, to slot you into the niche marked 'Oldie'.

It doesn't work even for the over-70s, of course. When looking for a nursing home for my in-laws it was impossible to find one that didn't assume that everyone of their age (90 plus) loved the 'old songs'. Every resident would be wheeled along to listen to groups of younger folk doing them the great favour of belting out ancient music hall numbers, or those Vera Lynn songs.

For anyone like my in-laws - who would rather have had Handel than Vera Lynn any day - it was torment.

That's the trouble with pigeonholing people. We're all individuals, with our own tastes and needs. We want to be able to enjoy the things we like in our own way. On the other hand, in many respects the generation that lived, as adults, through the war were bound together by their common experience, and it shaped the way they looked at life. Because they often grew up with very little in a material sense, they were generally grateful for the small things that life brought them, easily satisfied as far as their creature comforts went.

But it's going to be another matter when my generation starts needing residential care. We weren't content to take what came to us, without question. We weren't meekly grateful for whatever came our way. We were rebels. We marched against war and nuclear weapons. We demanded rights for women and minorities. We demanded a say in how our lives were run. We threw out the old strict methods of child care, the conventional ways of doing things. Sometimes, in fact, we behaved very badly.

So when our time comes we're not going to go quietly into those old people's homes. We're going to want our kind of music, our kind of food. We're going to want a voice in how our lives are run, even if we need help doing it.

My only worry is - who's ever going to want to care for these difficult, demanding old folks?

Published: 15/09/2005