Stephen Emms: ‘Rose Hacker was a socialist, campaigner, writer – and, at the time of our meeting in 2007, enjoying a late celebrity aged 101 as columnist for the Camden New Journal. She spoke with an invigorating honesty for a couple of hours in her residential home in Highgate, and afterwards insisted I stay for a sherry, whilst she asked me as many questions about my life. As I finally left, the sky outside darkening, she said: ‘I’m having a wonderful time. I’ve never been so popular. I’ve never been in such demand.’
1. Life might be about nothing, but it might be about something.
2. It takes me an hour to get ready every morning. My right eye socket oozes muck and has to be cleaned out, I’ve got false teeth, my gum is very sore and when I put my hearing aids in, they whistle and drive me mad. To cap it all I forget names, places and people I know well. But I’m so lucky – and I never forget that.
3. Being hugged is the fulfilment of the dream. My parents never touched us; we had a peck on the cheek at most. When my father died, however, he held out his arms from the bed and cried “Rosie darling.” That was the only time he ever hugged me, and I remember thinking: “I’ve been wanting this all my life.”
4. The most evil thing we have to fight is fundamentalism and nationalism combined. We have religious schools, which I think is monstrous. As long as we have them we’ll never have peace.
5. All the misery in my life has revolved around looking after the sad ends of people who smoke. Everybody in my family, including my husband, has died in their seventies.
6. I was certain I would go quickly after my husband. I was 76, and worn out. But I carried on dating until I was 90, and in my eighties fell in love with a gay man who I met on a Nile cruise.
7. Obesity is disgusting. All you do is eat less.
8. I’m an optimist. If I were a pessimist, I would have killed myself long ago. The best role model is my oldest friend Alice, who’s 103. Not only is she a concentration-camp survivor, she also survived the death of her son at 64. In the camps, every time they came for the children she hid him, but she watched everybody else die: her husband, mother and sister.
9. People can live without sex, but they can’t live without love. The more sex you have the more you want love. Love is the key – it’s the only thing that matters.
A longer version of this article first appeared in The Observer Magazine.
