WOW. What a NIGHT. Thanks to everyone who attended the Advantages of Age Awards and to our Substack writer winner Jane Duncan Rogers who writes about ageing with honesty and vulnerability. You are so deserving of the prize!

Although many more people here know me for Sex Advice for Seniors than for Advantages of Age, my interest in supporting people to try and live the life they desire started with co-founding Advantages of Age with Rose Rouse back in 2016. It was after a lively conversation, held in my hot tub, with a group of women ranging in age from mid-40s to 60s, that we had all agreed that we’d had enough of being portrayed in the media as saggy, invisible, uninteresting and useless.

None of us felt that way and we knew many others who had more spring in their step now than during their younger years. Being slightly drunk by 10pm, I googled whether advantagesofage.com was available to buy, it was and by the time the ladies had returned to the hot tub three months later, I’d built a website and started to curate positive articles about ageing. Rose came on board and AofA was born.

That was nearly 10 years ago and too much has happened since to write about in a Note. Our first awards that we held back in 2023 were the result of a long-held dream by the two of us to celebrate the many people and organisations championing pro-ageing, like ourselves. From Grooviest End of Life Organisation, to Pro-Ageing Social Club, Style King & Queen, our awards are an eclectic range of categories that defy reason, except if you happen to be part of AofA, in which case they make perfect sense! We are not easy defined!

Taking a break in 2024, we started working on this most recent ceremony in January, and last night they finally happened. Over 125 people showed up, many dressed up in the fabulous and flamboyant style for which many of us are known. It was a truly glorious celebration with many coming away saying how good it felt to know and to meet so many of the wonderful people trying to make the world a better place for older people.

I always come away from the awards chock full of ideas of what else we can do in the ‘ageing space’ to support under recognised organisations, so watch this space!

Mostly though, I want to give a big shout out to Rose Rouse without whom, the awards would never have happened. Both of us have never found someone else with whom to work for any significant period of time and it’s testimony to both our characters and our growth in that we’ve stayed together fighting the good fight for nearly a decade!! I can hardly believe I’m writing that. Here are a few images from the night of a selection of our winners Jane Duncan Rogers Justine Gaubert