But why not put a more positive slant on the President-Elect’s nearly four score years? Joe Biden’s great advantage, says Sir Peter Westmacott, former British Ambassador to the United States, is his experience. He has been in politics a long time, learned a lot, and knows a great deal about how things work. This is a notion that certainly appeals to those of my demographic — born, like Mr Biden, in the 1940s.

We have the experience. We don’t always have the zing, the techie skills, the daring and innovation of all those clever young folk, but by heck, we have the experience. There are real advantages to being able to approach any problem and remembering how it presented — and was resolved — previously. Many of life’s problems are cyclical, after all.

Mr Biden will be the first American president to be older than I am since the first George Bush, who left the White House in 1993, and although I have no particular stake in American politics, his age seems symbolically cheering to many of my generation. Hey! Your dreams are not yet dead! Look at Joe!

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It is claimed that Chinese culture venerates the old, and indeed that is part of Confucian tradition. But America, and maybe American optimism, often allows the oldsters to claim their place in the sun (sometimes literally, in Florida) and their chance to show they can still make a contribution to society.

The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September was a pivotal event, not just for the personal loss of a remarkable woman, at 87, but because it created a vacancy in the American Supreme Court. As well as the succession’s political impact, it also revealed what a cult following this frankly elderly lady of the law enjoyed. There were RBG dolls, RBG posters, RBG tattoos and RBG badges, among a host of other celebrity merchandising. She was old, but she was cool. Until the recent election, Nancy Pelosi, at 80, was a feisty speaker of House of Representatives. And there’ve been plenty more active oldies on display.

Even in the world of film and screen, which — quite naturally, to my mind, must highlight the aesthetic of youthful beauty — older performers have held their place in the galaxy. Despite feminist complaints that “ageism” more usually discriminates against women, there seems no shortage of outstanding female thespians. Dames Judi Dench (85), Maggie Smith (86), Eileen Atkins (86) and Helen Mirren (75) are still going strong. Sophia Loren, at 86, has just appeared in a new film, The Life Ahead, in which, critics say, she gives an unforgettable and compelling performance.

It’s encouraging for this demographic that there’s visibility of older faces, and Joe Biden’s crinkley-handsome, well-worn visage is a pleasing exemplar. For the Covid pandemic has not only hit older people disproportionately: it has also psychologically enfeebled the self-image of the elderly. We have been repeatedly described as “vulnerable”, which may be clinically accurate, but is still, somehow, depressing. We have been messaged to stay at home, reduce social contacts, quit those stimulating encounters at art galleries, cultural soirées, church services, coffee mornings. Travel trips abroad, or cruises — much favoured by the older demographic — have been halted. And, of course, there is the ongoing sadness of older people being separated from their adult offspring, and their grandchildren.

Everyone understands that sensible measures have to be taken during the spread of the virus, and older people usually behave responsibly. But it’s dismaying that the typical picture of the 70-somethings has been degraded from proactive granny to frail little old dear who has to be “shielded”. In Ireland, the elderly were ordered to “cocoon”.

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The announcement that an effective vaccine is now on its way will, hopefully, change much of that, and the over-75s will be among the first in line to avail of it, we’re told. That’s a prospect to revive a feeling that there’s a dance in the old folk yet.

Piquantly, one of Mr Biden’s Covid advisors, Dr Ezechiel J. Emanuel, has said that “creativity, originality and productivity are pretty much gone by 75”. High creativity is indeed more usually associated with youth or early middle age: mathematicians and poets have often done their most important work by their 30s. But nothing is invariable — Yeats’ late work was magnificent, and Michaelangelo and Picasso went on into old age.

It’s true that experience has a negative side. It can make people more cautious: they know the dangers that lurk behind any decision. Not all experience is relevant, because times and circumstances change — when I was a youngster, a job in a bank was considered a safe, steady and reliably remunerative career. Paradoxically, age may give you the insight for a situation which you are now too old to command. It’s said that by the time an actress is mature enough for Shakespeare’s Juliet, she’s too old to play it.

Youth does have energy and creativity — often an excess of it, as Carrie Symonds seems to be demonstrating as she exerts a prevailing influence at No 10. But Boris will always need a few greybeards on board, too. Because experience really is valuable, and it can bestow judgement and perspective.

People sometimes suggest that the Queen must be appalled by events occurring within her own family — and in the wider world. There must be moments of distress but I also imagine she takes a longer view, informed by her years. Marital breakdown? Look at history. Difficult princesses? There’ve been a few. Tantrums among politicians? It happens. Tragedies and calamities? They are part of our lot. But all of it passes, and Elizabeth’s immense experience — why, her first encounter with an American President was when Eisenhower had a gushing, almost schoolboy crush on her — is what steadies the ship of state.

The bicycle is not only a clean, healthy, enjoyable, and efficient mode of transport: it has also played a key role in the emancipation of women. One of the founders of the American feminist movement, Susan B. Anthony, said in 1896 that the bicycle “has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel — the picture of free, untrammelled womanhood.”

The bicycle, as we now know the basic design, came into availability in the 1880s — the earlier bikes, like the penny-farthing, were uncomfortable and impractical. Up to the 1890s, according to Ray Strachey in her renowned history of the women’s movement, The Cause, it was not generally accepted for respectable woman to move about freely. It was the advent of the bicycle that liberated these late-Victorian girls, and virtually ushered in H.G. Wells’ “New Woman” for the turn of the century, (and the Suffrage campaign which subsequently arose.)

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But “the women who first began to ride upon this queer machine were thought to be incredibly adventurous, and most people also thought them shocking,” wrote Strachey. Only men’s bikes were available at the beginning, she recalled, and the early female pioneers were hooted at in the street, since they were often wearing “Bloomers”. These were the loose-fitting knee-length garments, like oversize knickers, invented by Amelia Bloomer, as an alternative to the crinoline and the bustle.

But whatever they wore, these bright young women thought the bicycle a stupendously good thing. Not only did they discover “the exquisite pleasure of rapid motion”, but the possession of a bicycle meant “they were no longer prisoners in their own houses”. They could “spin off” wherever they liked, assert their independence, gratified by the knowledge that they only “relied upon their own muscle”.

Still, bicycles were quite expensive at first, and such intrepid women bikers were usually from more affluent backgrounds. You don’t see archive photos or illustrations of women from mines or mill-towns riding bicycles until much later. My Edwardian uncle, born in 1908, recounted how the bike became cheaper after the end of the First World War: by 1920, you could buy a bike for just over a quid — he paid a guinea (£1 and a shilling) for his, in the mid-1920s, although admittedly that still represented a week’s wages for some working men.

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The bike also started to play a role in changing courtship habits. Before bicycles were avaialable, matches and marriages were often made within the radius of a community, or however far a couple could walk. This restricted the gene pool, and shared kinship was frequently quite high in village schools The bicycle enabled a healthy young man to cycle 50 or 60 miles to meet a more distant sweetheart (although girls rode bicycles, males were still expecting to do the courting.)

By mid-20^th century, the motor-car had reduced the status of the bicycle. It had been much-used, of course, during the Second World War, but subsequently relegated, somewhat, to the proletarian of the transportation world. In movies, poor Italians rode bicycles, while young Americans had fabulous cars with tail fins, à la James Dean.

But the bike has always had its fans, and it has always been invoked when petrol scarcity occurred. And that’s just what happened during the French students’ rebellion in May 1968. Due to nationwide strikes, there was a severe shortage of petrol all over the country, and public transport, as well as much car travel, ground to a halt. I was a reporter on the London Evening Standard at the time, and the Editor, Charles Wintour (father of the now more famous Dame Anna) took it into his head to despatch me to Paris, from London, on a bicycle. So off I went.

I look back now on the extreme informality with which all this was arranged. Health and safety wasn’t mentioned. There were, of course, no mobile phones — I had to find public phone boxes en route to transmit my reports. I didn’t possess anything as fancy as a cycle helmet. Neither did I actually own a bike: I just hired one from a Clerkenwell bike shop. Some French money was provided by the Beaverbrook accounts department, I bought myself a couple of maps and I set off for the Dover Road.

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I crossed to Calais, and rode towards Paris, via Montreuil, Amiens and Beauvais. It was a glorious May and the countryside was exhilarating. There were adventures: I encountered a couple who had sheltered a British airman during the Second World War, struck up a helpful conversation with a woman in Beauvais and was pursued through a dark copse by a Frenchman in a fast car, probably with a little light rape in mind — how did he get the petrol to drive? — but I somehow gave him the slip. Paris was in full revolutionary mode when I arrived, in the traditional manner of the French exuberantly taking to the streets. My most vivid memory was that the students were burning down the stock exchange — La Bourse — declaring the end of capitalism. I was 24 and thought it all terrifically exciting.

Then I joined Wintour and some other Brits at the Crillon Hotel for drinks and dear Robin Day made a gentlemanly pass. Then I was ordered to ride all the way back again. Which I did.

That bike was a modest little number, but it behaved robustly, across cobblestones and rough roads, sometimes traversing motorways briefly. I don’t remember any punctures, or problems with the chain.

Looking back, however, I’m alarmed at how under-equipped I was, and how casually I embarked on the assignment. (I’m even more alarmed to remember that I sometimes halted for lunch at some cosy bistrot and drank a good half-bottle of wine with the repast, without thinking twice about the consequences.)

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I’m glad that a younger generation today has much better facilities for cycling — cycle lanes and paths, adapted clothing and shoes, Google maps, and a more serious approach to the whole endeavour. It’s upsetting to read of the deaths of cyclists, who can be vulnerable in heavy traffic — people should be able to cycle in safety. Every city should try to look more like Amsterdam and Copenhagen for cyclists, and post-Covid, I believe many more will do so. The cleaner air of the traffic-free (or traffic-lessened) roads has also been a source of great bicycling encouragement.

And I can see the bike going from strength to strenth: a boom in electric bikes, which are getting cheaper all the time, and are terrific for older people. There’s something else I notice that seems rather enticing for the, ahem, senior citizen (“soixante-huitards” — 1968ers, as the French call our generation) and that is the adult tricycle. They look amazingly jolly, and that road to Dover, and maybe even Calais, seems really quite inviting on a trike.

During the period of lockdown, the feeling of being “imprisoned in one’s own home” — like those frustrated Victorian ladies — has sometimes been a little overwhelming. The bicycle is just the thing to set the people free.

Like Mildred, the stubborn old-girl character played by Frances McDormand in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri seeking restitution for her murdered daughter, I sometimes have problems with compliance. And I do think it’s a generation thing. Mine is the generation which came to young adulthood in the 1960s when the contrarian reflex was to defy authority, rather than succumb to it. Authority can often turn authoritarian. Give me the information, and I’ll make up my own mind about my conduct, thanks very much.

Contemporaries — some a little younger, some slightly more senior — seem inclined to react to all the rules and regs with a more laid-back manner than younger folk. Madeleine Grant says she cannot get her 79-year-old father to take the warnings seriously. Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday claims that the alarm about the spread of the virus is over-stated, and he doesn’t need to be told when to wash his hands, or whether there are germs on doorknobs. Here in coastal Kent, my friends and peers display a blithely stoical attitude. “If my number’s on the bullet, it’s on the bullet,” laughs Josephine, seventyish. “I feel sure I’m going to get it,” chuckles Colin, born, like me in 1944, and just off to join pals for a night-time pub session. “Face the music and carry on!”

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Many of the Irish — who are implementing much more draconian measures, closing down the pubs by diktat — have been complaining on Twitter that the Brits allowed Cheltenham to go ahead. Disgraceful! I asked a horsey friend (78) if he thought it should have been cancelled – 60,000 people huddled together for the legendary festival. “No!” he chortled. “I had three winners!”

No, I know I shouldn’t take a cavalier attitude to the coronavirus — and I promise my family that I won’t. I am diligently obeying all the rules. I am practicing “social distancing”. I am washing my hands on the hour every hour. I am monitoring my health for coughs or fevers — as it happens I do have a slight chest infection, picked up from an Easyjet flight from Belfast (airplanes are full of germs). Altogether, I am acting responsibly — to protect others, as we are told to do, as much as myself. And yet I am still not really aligned with some of the general attitudes around the Covid-19 alarm.

I know my dear family are worried since the “elderly” (please call us “old”, rather than use twee euphemisms) are more vulnerable; and because those of us prone to respiratory problems are particularly in the firing line. But whatever became of the virtues of fortitude and courage? In my convent schooldays, we were taught that in life it is really important to be brave. We were regaled with stories of heroic nuns who willingly embraced lepers — St Catherine of Siena drank a cupful of leper’s pus just to show that she didn’t entertain fear. If we were to be tortured to death for our faith, we should, like Joan of Arc, accept it with a soldier’s valour.

But safety, caution and aversion of all risk are now prized more greatly than these stoical values.

It need hardly be pointed out too indelicately that the graphs and statistics clearly indicate — in Italy, for example — that the greatest proportion of deaths occur among those over 80. The next greatest number are in my own demographic — in their seventies. I certainly think that oldies have just as much entitlement to medical care as anyone else, and speculation about leaving them to their fate is harsh. But facing death in your seventies and eighties is also accepting that nature eventually takes its course. No, I don’t want to pop my clogs quite yet, but I do want to have the fortitude to recognise that at our age, we are moving towards the departure lounge.

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I actually don’t mind being old: I can put up with the aches and pains: I don’t share the dislike that some women have of being “invisible”: and I thoroughly concur with the Greek philosopher who said that being freed from sexual desire is like being unchained from a maniac. The one thing I do dislike — even dread — is being patronised. I hate people asking me “Are you all right, dearie?” Or cautioning: “Watch the step, my lovely.” To the prudent counsel, “take care”, my instinctive reaction is to reach for Nietzsche’s “Live dangerously!”

And I know that all sorts of kind and good people are going to be asking me “Can you manage, dear?”, “Are you very lonely?”. I’m just going to have to be a well-behaved old gal, comply, and be grateful.

My philosophy of old age is to do as much as you can for as long as you can, and I fear that the Covid-19 house arrest will put a halt to my gallop, as the Irish say. I already look wistfully at our hi-speed trains, departing on the hour for St Pancras International. Will I ever see the inside of the London Library again? From the beach at Deal, we can glimpse the white cliffs of Calais and the twinkling lights of France: will I ever again board that ferry across the Channel? Will I never again walk by Galway Bay?

Food and loo rolls – who cares? It’s being deprived of the stimulus of life itself that’s so dismaying.