I just turned 48 – for younger people this may seem old, but it is extraordinary how your perceptions change with age. I still feel 28ish, wouldn't be surprised to check and find I am in fact only 38. Forty-eight sounds old, and in a decade it will be old. But I bet when I am 58 I'll feel little different. Apart from being even more impatient with younger people who think that they know more than I do. Here's a tip; you don't! Experience comes with age, the less you have of one the less you have of the other. Maturity comes with age. Yes, you can fit loads of experiences into a short time, but that doesn't give you context, it just gives you a bunch of data. And there are things that take time to do – like live with someone for a decade, for example.

Looking forward (so far so good on this score) I'm anticipating finding it a bit unfair that physical decrepitude is a necessary part of ageing. It's about the only drawback. That and the tendency to feel like you can't be bothered to re-visit a previous experience. For example, starting another relationship. Having been pretty thoroughly married twice, I really don't feel like I care to go through the same experiences again. How can I pretend it's all new to me? How can I pretend that I care about this one person more than anything else in the world? It would be a lie, and I'm not much into lying.