Need a hand sonny?

When do you become "old"?

30? 40? 50? - I've noticed lately I get wound up very easily when people leave lights on upstairs that cost about 1p for 20 hours to run - in short I'm turnining into my father.

When did this happen? - I'm not sure because for as long as I can remember I've felt about 16 in my head. This theory however has been disproved many times over by my own teenage kids who regularly insist I untuck my teeshirt before I go out or get outraged when I turn MTV off to watch Corrie.

Theres obviously a common denominator in all these proceedings and thats your own kids. Do they get embarrassed when they realise you quite like some of their music and start singiing in front of their friends when not in total posession of all the correct lyrics? Does the mess in their bedroom start to become a battleground even though they are right that you never really have to go there yourself?

Your only as old as you feel and thats true - but you feel a lot older when you become the establishment to someone younger than yourself when you still think you are the young, free and easy guy of your youth. I feel an attack of poetry coming on

Into my heart an air that chills from yon far mountain blows
What were those blue remembered hills, what farms , what steeples those?
That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain
The happy Highways that I walked and cannot go again.

Someone pass the lager.