Toronto, June 29, 2025
All Remaining Passengers
Regular readers will know that I have gathered up about 70 Endgame columns and published them (lightly edited and arranged thematically) in All Remaining Passengers: Essays from the Edge of Eighty, available as a paperback or e-book from Amazon, and from Ben McNally Books, 108 Queen Street East, Toronto. Here’s the introduction to All Remaining Passengers, which gives the general idea:
“A lot of people are old (including me). Old age is a particular state of being that becomes more intense as time goes by. It brings with it distinct disadvantages and difficulties. Some suggest that it also brings special opportunities and pleasures. That’s a hard sell. For many people, being old is like having incurable cancer or a permanent disability. It’s all bad. You try not to talk or think about it too much. After all, there’s nothing you can do to fix things. It’s depressing. Best to try and forget about it and just carry on.
The essays in this book look at old age differently. An old person should engage with their age. They should confront its implications. They should reflect on what it means to be old, and on their unique life as it was and as it is. They should ruminate. Some of this might be painful, for all long lives perforce contain failure, sadness, even tragedy. Bad things happen, particularly when you are old —the death of friends, for example, or health crises. The incidents of old age can be hard to bear. But, if you’ve been lucky, and some of your luck remains, there will have been, and there will still be, until you die, beauty and happiness in your life—children and grandchildren that you love, birds in the trees on a bright spring day, good books, the music of Schubert...
The essays in this collection first appeared in a weekly Substack newsletter, The Endgame, that I began writing in December 2022. For this volume, these newsletters have been lightly edited and arranged thematically (a few have been omitted, ones I thought not good enough). I set out the general idea of The Endgame, a concept borrowed from the game of chess, in Substack Newsletter #1: “In the endgame only a handful of pieces are left on the board. Few moves remain. Victory or defeat is close. Player options are limited and diminishing... Zugzwang is a particularly important aspect of the endgame. Zugzwang exists when a player’s only available move is one which will worsen his position.” In old age, we may feel that our options are limited and diminishing. Sometimes, it seems, our only available move will worsen our position. But this is only partially true.
I have interpreted the endgame concept broadly, allowing me to write about a variety of subjects; animals, clothes, sports, walking, bullshit, travel, grief, regret, loneliness, anxiety... As time went by, the endgame newsletters became less general and abstract and more personal and emotional. I write about the death of my best friend, the longing for home, the importance of friendship and kindness, burial at sea, sadness... All sorts of questions arose unexpectedly from my musings. Are we, in any sense, the person we were many years before? When is the right time to abandon ship? How are we to be kind in the cruel world we inhabit? This collection of essays is something of a fragmented and oblique autobiography, factual and emotional.
I’ve tried to be realistic and truthful about old age, while retaining and expressing appropriate hope and optimism (and, sometimes, humour). A few newsletter readers have said that some of my essays are dark and depressing. Friends have texted my wife asking, “Is Philip okay?” Be reassured, Philip is okay. I don’t think facing reality is a symptom of depression. The clear-eyed confronting of problems is always a good idea.”
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Some reader comments on Newsletter #110 (“The sound of silence”)
Peter Figura, professional sports photographer who for years has covered the French tennis open at Roland Garros, writes: “I find restaurant noise very stimulating. I remember a few years back, when a friend and I were staying in the centre of Paris, we had our favourite restaurant, that we call ‘The Office.’ Good coffee, wi-fi... We often stayed for lunch or even later. Very often when discussing plans for the day we would say, ‘Let's go to the office to do some work.’ And we were editing our photos and sending them to the agencies. ... Upon returning to Toronto I was missing that restaurant noise, the noise of engaged conversations that never disturbed me but rather increased the concentration. And then my friend (who lived in Paris for quite a few years) told me that my ‘withdrawal symptoms’ are not unusual, and I can find special programs on YouTube that provide this type of sound...”
Pam Purves writes from Nova Scotia: “Like you I hate loud music in restaurants. But, there's always an exception. The first time I visited The Hermitage Plantation In [on Nevis] the great room and dining porches were filled with opera—starting with the great Pearl Fishers tenor duet. I nearly cried with joy.”
From Beverly Brooks: “I too love quiet restaurants and always walk out if the music is too loud. In fact, I love restaurants in which you and your companion are the only customers (although this is not financially feasible for the restaurant in question). Do you remember the soap opera Dallas where JR would reserve the entire restaurant for him and the woman with which he was having dinner? Although JR supposedly had other not so charming characteristics, I always thought that this gesture was so romantic. Where have all those men gone? Romance seems to have died.”
Alexandra Raphael: “You generally have to pay more for your meal if you choose a quiet restaurant where you can have a conversation. Maybe this has something to do with your observation that people eat faster in noisy restaurants. If a restaurant wants a high table turnover, they want to discourage their clientele from sitting and talking. Depressing but probably true!!”
From Geoff Ireland: “My wife and I went last summer, with my sister and her husband, to a popular new pizza joint in a trendy part of town with dozens of restaurants. Median age of our group about 75. It was a beautiful summer evening so I suggested we sit outside, but I was overruled because the rest of the party thought the traffic would be too noisy. The interior, we soon realized, was cold—they had the thermostat set at about 17 or 18°C—low to mid 60s Fahrenheit, dark—I needed my phone to read the menu, and loud. Furthermore, they served their red wine chilled, I mean right out of the fridge! We complained about all of these things and got a smile and: ‘The chef likes it this way.’”
Philippe Poussier writes from Bordeaux (Philippe is a retired medical researcher): “Members of the lab used to organize dinners or lunches for all of us to get together on a regular basis. Of course, they picked noisy places full of young people and musical background. When I asked them what was the point of having music that prevented us from having a pleasant conversation, their friendly answer was: ‘you are old.’ But another explanation for finding this musical background unbearable was given to me when I consulted for hearing aids for the first time. When one ages, hearing often deteriorates. And the first deterioration is at the level of our hearing system ability to select the wavelengths that are the most appropriate for our goal to focus on a conversation at the expense of the background noise (which BTW explains why hearing aids help but cannot avoid yet to amplify both the conversation and the background noise).”
Dr.David Goldbloom weighs in: “You left out one variable in the noise-versus-signal discussion: the declining hearing of us pensioners and the limited ability of many hearing aids to sort the wheat from the chaff. Many of your reader fans likely have—or should have—hearing aids. Untreated hearing loss is a reversible risk factor for dementia. For Toronto diners, the Soundprint app has been used to rate restos in terms of decibel level. Yelp, Open Table, and Reddit also provide listings of quiet restaurants. I'm looking for a place where people aren't allowed to photograph their food.”
From Marie Natanson: “A friend of mine said ‘Forget about Michelin stars, how about decibel stars?’”
Penny Kerr writes: “I went out for dinner with my BFF and we hadn't seen each other for a year. We were so glad to see each other but the table next to us was celebrating a birthday. OMG the squeals, the loud laughter and the yelling over each other drove us crazy. Ruined our lunch for sure. All we wanted to do was catch up but those entitled 20 somethings had no respect for anyone. BTW we are in our 70's.”
And finally, a kind word about my new book from the novelist Howard Norman: “I have ordered two copies of All Remaining Passengers, one for my family library, and one to take with me on the plane to San Francisco in the hope that the passenger sitting next to me in Mint Class will ask about it and I can talk to them about The Endgame; but I won't give the copy away, because I want to show it to the owners of the excellent Point Reyes Bookstore. Books should, I feel, be introduced word-of-mouth and because of conversation, and not only through podcasts and electronic shilling.”
Bravo on the book news. And congratulations. That's stamina and commitment, to write weekly since 2022. I applaud your appreciative approach to daily life. Let's enjoy what we have, laugh (sometimes ruefully) at daily hiccups, and keep going forward.
It’s possible to have incurable cancer and still have moments of great joy, laughter, and gratitude in the course of most days. I write from personal experience. Your weekly postings on substack have delighted me. Just ordered your book mere minutes ago. Thank you!