Bumping into Peter Stringfellow in Mothercare in Palma just over a year ago was not such a big surprise, since we both have houses in Majorca where I now live most of the year. However, it was a scene that would have amused anyone who had known us both, or had read about us in gossip columns, in our heyday in the Eighties. There we were, two gentlemen in our 70s; me, a former newspaper editor and Peter a well-known businessman, with more than our fair share of silver hair. We were both pushing a buggy with a tiny baby inside: me, my son Ben, now four, who was born when I was 73; Peter, his daughter Rosabella, who arrived when he was 72. Our beautiful and much younger wives (a 40-year gap in his case, 25 in mine) were there too and it was smiles and congratulations all round. Donald Trelford (left) had his son Ben (back right) when he was 73 and his daughter Poppy (held by Donald) when he was 76-years-old . Since then Claire, 52, and I have had a second child, Poppy, while it has just been announced that 74-year-old Peter and Bella are expecting a sibling for their 20-month-old daughter. I was 76 when Poppy came along last May, making me, I believe, the oldest living British new father. So what advice could I give to other would-be septuagenarian fathers? Well, I know from experience that two children are more than twice the work of one. You have two minds and sensitivities to cope with, so to prevent jealousy equal attention is essential. For example, as she is only ten months old, Poppy’s cot is in our bedroom. Much effort is required to stop Ben thinking he is being excluded when he sleeps on his own. Then there’s the feeding, the nappy changing, the crying in the night and the wearying lack of sleep. The sheer physical effort of coping with children at this age can be demanding. So much so that I have to take a brisk daily walk and use an exercise bike and some modest weights to revive my shrinking muscles. After all, toddlers can be heavy and buggies even heavier. Then there is the manhandling of a mountain of luggage whenever we travel: suitcases, car seats, pushchairs, carry-cots and toys. Travelling with children is not easy, anyway, as I once discovered when I was bringing Ben back to Majorca on my own after a family trip to the UK. We were in the two seats nearest the window, with a rather formidable-looking lady, casually flicking through the pages of a style magazine, in the aisle seat. The plane had just taken off and was still climbing (with the lavatory off-limits) when I detected a terrible smell. Ben’s nappy had overflowed on to the seat (note to nappy manufacturers: make them higher at the back). I worked away frantically with wet wipes and a plastic bag, worrying about the people sitting nearby. Fortunately, the lady in the aisle seat appeared to be lacking any sense of sight, hearing or smell. Donald (pictured with Ben and Poppy) says the physical effort of coping with young children at his age can be demanding but he takes daily walks and uses an exercise bike to keep fit . Ben and I managed to edge our way to the loo without making eye contact with other passengers and thankfully things were soon put right. I know EasyJet has hundreds of planes; even so, if any reader is flying with them, I would avoid seat 4F, just in case. Besides the occasional blip, raising a child, no matter your age, is a huge pleasure. Feeding a baby its bottle is one of the great joys of life for a father and one of the few things one ever does that is unquestionably useful. However, when you are in your 70s, levering yourself out of a deep armchair afterwards and transferring baby to cot without waking it is quite a physical achievement. I think it should be included as an Olympic event for the over-75s. Now I am 77 and I can think of many moments I have shared with my young children which never fail to bring a smile to my face; mainly because I never dreamt I would be experiencing such moments at this age. There was the afternoon I spent catching popcorn fired from a cannon in a Spanish square while being jostled by screaming infants. One morning, I dodged moving traffic to rescue a balloon for my son before the car wheels crushed it — or me. During a lively fiesta I paraded one child dressed as an ant and another as a strawberry before bumping into my Spanish bank manager, herself dressed as a plum. Then there is the novelty of exchanging pleasantries in halting Spanish at my son’s school gates with yummy mummies who must be at least 50 years younger than me. Majorca is thankfully a marvellous place for bringing up children, and not only because the Spanish simply idolise them. Claire and I began going there for holidays shortly after we met in 1997 and eventually we decided to make a permanent move. We now live in a beautiful finca, or country estate, on the side of a hill with mountain views all around and the sea only a few miles away. There is a big garden with an orchard, in which Ben and I pick oranges off our trees and he takes them away in his little wheelbarrow and puts them though the juicer himself while standing on a kitchen stool. You couldn’t do that in Coventry, my birthplace. When Ben started at the Escoleta (nursery school), I used to take him there in a pushchair, then go into the main square for a coffee with the empty chair. On one of these journeys, a friend who understood the Catalan spoken there says she heard an old Majorcan woman say to her neighbour: ‘The old man has forgotten the baby again.’ Surprisingly, I have been mistaken for Ben’s grandfather only twice (at least to my face). I have four grown-up children from earlier marriages. Once, during a get-together in a restaurant, some pushy and very nosey British tourists at the next table insisted on knowing more about the puzzling family beside them. I declared proudly: ‘This is my son Paul — he is 44; this is my son Ben — he is two.’ In fact, the gap between my oldest and youngest daughters is even bigger: 49 years. Thankfully, the older children are very happy about the new arrivals and couldn’t wait to see them. The eldest of my six grandchildren, who is 14, sent his new-born Uncle Ben a note: ‘Hope the birth went well.’ My youngest grandchild is one-month-old. The biggest drawback with a baby at this age is the freedom it steals. The new arrival needs constant attention. Whereas before I could write if I felt like it, or go for a walk, or read a book, or watch some sport on TV, there is now a prior, and sometimes rather insistent, call on my time. Even though you have been through it before, there are always anxieties with tiny babies. Before Poppy was born, we were warned she might not survive due to a medical condition suffered by my wife. When Poppy arrived fit and healthy via a Caesarean, the doctors had to give Claire emergency pain relief for several hours, during which time I was left holding the baby. Talking to her during those first hours was a strangely surreal, precious experience. Before leaving the hospital in Palma we had to complete some forms but the officials flatly refused to believe my date of birth and wouldn’t let us go until I had dug out my passport to prove it. Thankfully, Claire and Poppy both emerged none the worse for their respective ordeals. There had always been a nagging doubt in our minds that, given our ages, there was a risk of abnormality, but both our babies are strong and beautiful. Along with the inevitable anxieties there are many small pleasures of late-life parenthood: the warming smile of recognition in the morning, that look of unconditional love, the noisy ecstasies of splash-time in the bath, the heart-bursting pride as baby takes its first steps. I look at Ben’s face sometimes, his stubborn assertion of his identity, and feel a surge of love that comes from somewhere very deep inside. There is a sadder side to having tiny children at my age, in that I won’t live to see them as adults, maybe not even in their teens. I also have to face the fact that they may hardly remember me at all in later life. For them, too, there is the inevitable trauma of losing a parent while they are young. But then some children lose their parents anyway; I have known two fathers who died at 51, one of them before seeing his child. To say that I should not have had children at my age would have left my wife childless, for she has not been married before nor had any previous children. That is a big call for anyone to make about other people’s lives. A curious family oddity is that my father was born in 1911 and Ben in 2011; my mother was born in 1914 and Poppy in 2014. We called her Poppy before realising how appropriate a name it was for someone born on the centenary of World War I. I have to admit that it can be a strange and unsettling experience being so old a new father, especially when both children look like me (friends call Ben ‘a little Donald’). You can’t help thinking: ‘In my end is my beginning.’ Whatever happens, one can only hope that these late-coming Trelfords will get as much fun out of life as their old man.
What's it like to become a new parent in your seventies?
Donald Trelford became a father for the sixth time aged 76 .
He shares the pain and pleasure of raising two toddlers in the twilight years .