In the firing line

12:42pm Wednesday 18th June 2008

It's a dangerous job, but someone's got to do it. Welcome to the world of the sports day referee

PARENTS beware! Any day now - if it stops raining - your child's teacher will make an apparently innocent request.

"Do you think" she will ask (We're talking primary school here, it's nearly always she) "do you think you could help out at sports day?"

Don't. Trust me on this one and just don't.

OK, make the teas, serve the squash, dish out the coloured sashes and round up the tinies for the sack race, but when it comes to saying who came first, second, third or who was disqualified, then take my advice and don't go anywhere near it.

Leave it to the experts. Like Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela, or the chap who brokered peace in Northern Ireland.

There are some seriously scary parents out there and none of them as scary as the one whose little darling you have just told came second, when mother is convinced he came first. I know. I've been there.

It's the sack race, for goodness' sake.

He's five years old. Does it matter? Of course it does. Not to the child, particularly, who's already in the queue for the ice cream, but to the parents. And if one of the infants runs the wrong way round the bean bag, they'll be demanding a stewards' enquiry.

If not excommunication.

"Someone's got to come last," I say brightly.

"But not my child!" snaps a mother, moving in for the kill.

If you do find yourself trapped at the winning line with a clutch of coloured place cards - some of these infant school teachers can be terrifyingly persuasive - then I'm afraid you're stuck. But you must not give in.

Because if you do, do you know where it will end up? At a performance of Snow White and the Twenty Four Other Snow Whites, that's where.

That's what happened this month in one Tokyo school where parents rule the roost. These monster parents sneak recording devices into the classroom, demand results be changed to their child's benefit and if a teacher reprimands a child, then they get the teacher sacked.

And when it comes to being star of the show, then, of course it has to be their child. Each parent insisted.

But junior school teachers make powerful enemies, and they hit back in style.

Brilliantly, they allowed all the children to be Snow White, every single one. No dwarves, no prince, no wicked step mother.

I guess it must have been a pretty boring show and I hope the parents got the message. We need Snow Whites. But when it comes to putting on a show, then everyone else is just as important too.

In the meantime, if any of you are off to sports day, remember, play nicely...

WHAT exactly is wrong with people working longer into old age?

Not, of course, the really old or those who do heavy physical work or who are suffering from ill health, all of whom are more than entitled to put their feet up or sail off on a Saga cruise. But those fit and healthy in their late 60s, say, maybe even early 70s.

Many already do, of course. My mother worked part-time until she was 74.

Others carry on working - not as long or as often but still working occasionally - while many more do unpaid work, for charities, their communities or helping out the families.

Long retirement was a recent and short-lived phenomenon. Historically, people worked until they dropped. The idea of spending maybe 20 years or so with nothing to do would have just been bizarre.

And these were people who had started work at 12, 13 or 14.

There is certainly something to be said for giving a pension based not on age, but on length of years worked. 45 say. So people who started work at 18 could pack up at 63, while those who didn't start until 22 go on to 67. Sounds fair to me - and I'd be one of the 67-year-olds.

Even better would be a tapered retirement age. In Norway, for instance, you get extra holidays as you get nearer to retirement, partly because you probably need them and partly to get you used to the idea of more free time.

But if there are jobs to be had and you're fit enough to do them, there's a lot to be said for carrying on working, if only part-time.

When you're working you're still in the world, still involved, still part of it all. It's somehow easier to have your say and be listened to.

Beats being ignored.

AND while we're thinking ageism, especially when relating to healthcare, I offer you my late aunt's splendid response when a doctor decided that there was nothing to be done. At 75 years old, he said, the reason her knee was so painful was simply down to old age.

"No it isn't," said my aunt. "My other knee is fine - and that's exactly the same age."

Three months later she had the operation for the replacement knee, and ten more active years.