The best way to learn anything is by doing it - this is a maxim that goes back to Aristotle. Gordon McLauchlan agrees. He has concluded that the only way of learning how to manage growing old is by growing old. He doesn't believe that wisdom is necessarily a concomitant of old age but suggests that, while there is no fool like an old fool, it is also true that there is no sage like an old sage. Borrowing quotes from philosophers and writers collected in a Commonplace Book over more than sixty years, Gordon traces his own ascent into the eighties. Ascent, he insists, not descent as so many politicians and economists would claim as they discuss the concerns of the ageing the way parents sometimes speak to each other about their children in the same room.