Bus passers’ highly active sex journeys come at a price

Older people are surging forward in the rate they acquire new sexual partners. Why? Thanks largely to divorce rates climbing (the gratitude isn’t meant literally, of course) the new singletons have discovered that new relationships can revive enthusiasm.

There are more reasons for the libidinal expansion of those born in the early 1950s. Freed from the responsibilities of children, they are enjoying the near orgasmic delight of seeing the mortgage dwindle to something smaller than The Donald’s hands. The dullness of relationship routine – and being taken for granted – has gone.

And while younger couples tend to be too busy to have regular sex

– work, child-rearing commitments, domestic arrangements all get in the way – those ankle weights disappear when singledom descends.

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The bus-passers feel they have arrived in Downtown Nirvana. The bingo hall, the golf club or the bridge night is no longer the only arena of excitement. Now, opportunity knocks in every singles joint, bar, gym and salsa club.

Dr Mark Lawton of the British Association for Sexual Health said: “Attitudes to sex are changing, thanks to shows such as Love Island, which makes people think that having casual sex with lots of different people is normal and they should be doing it.”

Love Island and its counterparts aren’t the only influence on the baby boomers out to have fun. Many TV comedies such as Back To Life and Fleabag feature older couples who’ve discovered jelly is not only a product served up to kids with ice cream.

Meanwhile, older celebrities such as Tom Jones and Priscilla Presley talk about their love life in a previously unimagined way. Scarcely a day goes by without Helen Mirren being written about in terms of her refusal to watch day-time telly and take up knitting.

Jenny Agutter says she finds growing older liberating and feels “sexier than ever” and is embracing her “naughtiness.”

Agutter points out that age expectations have changed. There was a time when women presumed their Sixties to be about wearing a “twinset and pearls,” (or if you lived in Glasgow, a beige cardigan, and perhaps a necklace bought with Embassy coupons.)

Post-menopausal purdah is no longer compulsory. Women no longer have to surrender to the short haircuts. Men no longer have to surrender to baldness. No longer does foreplay simply mean putting their teeth in first. Crowns and implants have changed all that. And, of course, there’s Viagra to stiffen men’s resolve.

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All of this increased bedroom fun the slightly advanced are enjoying is gratifying.

It wasn’t so long ago that Scottish women, who on finding themselves single, even as young as their thirties, often deemed their love lives to be over, no doubt a throwback to 16th century Presbyterianism when the post-Reformation marriage service underlined that a wife “is in subjection and under governance of her husband, so long as they both continue alive”.

And it’s less than a century ago that women in Scotland were too embarrassed to reveal a pregnancy, seen as too strong an indicator that sexual congress had most likely taken place.

The baby boomers have thrown those ideas out of the pram. They were teenagers in the 1960s who watched Woodstock and Hair and if they didn’t actually get to take part in the sexual revolution then this is the time to make up for it.

Yes, there will be those (perhaps the married, or the young?) who will suggest the only moans to be heard during pensioner sex is down to bone cartilage rubbing, or perhaps cramp. But that’s not an issue. What’s more interesting is will the lust last? Are the bus-passers simply content with a ride in the direction of romance?

Dating websites, of course, can expedite opportunity. They can point the priapic in the direction of carnal delight but is that enough? Sex on its own doesn’t sustain, according to sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann. And Lennon was wrong, it seems, when he once sang that all you need is love. Kaufmann claims in his book Love Online that if casual sex is to be a game, it has to be based on new rules that make at least some allowance for love. Or if ‘love’ sounds too off-putting, for a little affection, for a little attentiveness to our partners, given they are human beings and not just sex objects. Makes sense.

Yet, while we’re all delighted the older are doing their best to emulate the rabbit population, it’s less positive to learn that those enjoying the fun aren’t fully prepared. Promiscuity comes at a price. Gonorrhoea is up 24 per cent on last year. And syphilis is at an all time high.

So let’s rejoice in the bus-passers’ rejection of convention. But the jeans-wearing, nipped and tucked, weans-and-mortgage free should heed NHS advice. Safe sex isn’t only about avoiding tricky positions just in case your back goes out.