I enjoyed a most pleasant evening at Villa Madama which as everyone knows is near San Anton Gardens in Balzan. I last went there some years ago when there was a jewellery exhibition and I have not been there since. Hosting the evening were Anthony and Nadya Abela and their daughter Katrina. What an attractive family! I believe the villa belongs to the Azzopardi family and Nadya’s maiden surname is Azzopardi but I did not get the chance to ask about all this. That evening the Abelas were launching Villa Madama, where wedding receptions are held from time to time, as an elegant Music Café, which will provide patrons with live performances and other pre-announced activities.

Villa Madama is elegant indoors but its gardens are also very welcoming and what a relief to be in such a huge open space after coming from Sliema where every window of my flat opens only onto other buildings or garages. I asked about the history of this villa and I was told that a Mr Grech had written one. The villa goes back to the time when there was nothing but fields in the vicinity. Legend has it that it was built by Grand Master Antoine de Paule who built San Anton Palace as a country residence for him and for his close friends, amongst them a certain Caterina Valente. As the legend goes it was Caterina Valente after whom Villa Madama was named as it is said that she occupied it. Mr Grech writes that an underground passageway which is now blocked, leads to San Anton Gardens and it is held that this served as an emergency exit for the Grand Master if he needed to leave San Anton in haste or undercover. This beautiful villa was passed on between different owners until, at the beginning of the 20th Century it was rebuilt in the Art Nouveau style of architecture. Mr Grech points out that the villa has a very old Norfolk Island Pine as a centerpiece in the garden. This garden was built at a time when people could afford the luxury of walking in their gardens, presumably with a platoon of domestics doing the dusting and cleaning indoors.

Villa Madama and its extensive gardens promise evenings of delight and relaxation. Guests, including myself, drank a considerable amount of wine provided by Marsovin and Attard & Co. I was also able to catch up with a few friends. There is little doubt that this new idea will attract many if for nothing else because the ambience is so attractive and it is truly an oasis and a real refuge where we can take the time ‘to stand and stare’.

I am delighted that Vera Lynn’s stirring songs are still popular enough to be in the Top Ten charts. She is 92 years old and her songs are still going strong. She was the Forces’ Sweetheart and her singing buoyed up those who were away from their families in World War II. Her songs are to this day an intravenous hit into your emotions. I may not play her as often as I play Piaf but We’ll meet again, Yours, The White Cliffs of Dover, Auf Wiederseh’n and so many other memorable songs can often be heard over the weekend, coming out of my living room. Someone told me that my flat ‘sounds like a brothel’ over the weekend with all sorts of music, including Al Jolson, being played. At least it livens up the street. Whenever I am people watching I get the feeling that most are unhappy and tight-lipped and often look like a block of stone.

If you watch Vera Lynn sing on U tube you will see that she was no glamour puss but the girl next door with an extraordinary voice. The comedian Harry Secombe was once quoted as saying: ‘Churchill didn’t beat the Nazis, Vera Lynn sang them to death.’ She sang real songs with real lyrics. And in my world she still does.

There’s Larry King the television and radio host with the quintuple bypass, married eight times to seven women and still doing his job at 77.

Mgr Philip Calleja who until recently was President of the St John’s Co-Cathedral Foundation has just retired at the age of 80 seemingly heading willingly into the sunset.

Mike Buongiorno, so much part of my teenage years, died, a working man at 85. I shall drink a little glass to them all this weekend.

It seems that society is slowly addressing its own negative stereotypes about aging but it is a very slow process. Only when this is done will ageism stop being more permissible than other types of discrimination.

In the States age discrimination claims are growing at a higher rate than all other types of discrimination except for those based on religion. The fact that a growing number of baby boomers – those born from 1946 to 1964 – are expected to work past age 65 ensures a continued climb of these claims. Of course discrimination based on age is the hardest kind to prove. There is rarely a ‘smoking gun’ that shows an employer’s intent to discriminate. Courts are apparently often quick to dismiss age-related comments as stray remarks. Of course as in so many cases – such as unfair tickets from wardens – many people see the futility of challenging age discrimination. Most don’t want to spend what remains of their life fighting in court and so do nothing about this kind of discrimination.

Many countries have legislation. In the States there is the 1967 Age Discrimination in Employment Act which protects workers 40 and older from being discriminated against. This Act covers around 70 million workers or nearly half the work force.

Age limits are allowed only in jobs where deteriorating faculties could adversely affect performance, such as for police, firefighters and pilots.

And I am glad to see that some employers are paying for their mistakes. The EEOC or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the US says that $55.7 million was paid to settle age discrimination claims last year, compared with $38.6 million in 1999. Those figures exclude awards won in litigation.

The whole scene is changing fast as we live longer and healthier and because of this middle age has a different meaning to what it had, say, 20 years ago. So the mindset will have to change too. Although some are relieved that they can at last stop working and spend the last chapter of their life doing whatever it is they love, others don’t appear to be heading willingly into the sunset. Many continue to want to work past age 65. The reasons for this are several but we also know that working keeps our minds healthy. Age discrimination is a sleeping giant which is slowly – but surely – awakening.

The EEOC – let me remind you that it stands for

the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (in the US) won its biggest age discrimination case in history this year, when it recovered $250 million in back pay for 1,700 public safety officers in California.

There is of course also ‘reverse discrimination’ where companies treat older workers better than their younger colleagues. It happens but I suspect it is rare that younger workers are victims of age discrimination.

The Society for Human Resource Management, an international organization, lists this trend of an older workforce among the most significant to affect the workplaces of tomorrow. Many companies when approached said they anticipate a loss of work ethic, company loyalty and increased customer complaints as older workers retire. Younger applicants tend to be more concerned about their leisure time and holidays as well as other perks and they have little loyalty for a company. Their main concern seems to be: What’s in it for me?

And then there is job hopping. We see it all around us. One moment I am speaking say, to a marketing manager in one firm and the next he is no longer there. The young seem to make job-hopping a hobby and according to research older workers are less likely to change jobs for a slight hike in pay.

What is the ideal in any organization as in a political party to name one example, is a combination of both the older employee who has ‘memory’ and experience and the younger employee with other useful attributes.

The government has been trying to attract more women to go back to work. But although that is another story it would be perhaps just as beneficial to attract more retirees. The over 60s are very much part of the demographic shift and they should not take age discrimination lying down. They too have a lot to contribute to society. Ageism should stop being more permissible

than other types of discrimination.