Now We Are Sixty (and a Bit)

Barely had the first copies of Now We Are Sixty landed in bookshops when people started to ask Christopher Matthew when he was going to write a sequel. "You could call it Now We Are Seventy!" Not being within a "fourpenny bus ride" of his Biblical quota, Matthew set his face firmly against the whole idea. Yet to his surprise, the temptation to try his hand at a few more poems proved, like life itself, irresistible. Before he knew it, an entire book's worth had been written. Here, then, is a further collection of verses, inspired by those of the great Milne. Once again, they follow the rhymes and rhythms of the master, to remind those of us who are getting on in years of the wit, wisdom, and whimsy he conjured up for the very young. Life continues to take its toll on the author, but the overall feeling remains one of cheerful resignation in the face of declining faculties, failing memory, and a maddening inability to come to grips with the VCR.