OLDEST SWINGER IN TOWN!

Maybe it is because I am coming up to yet another birthday but I have been examining my life. Or what is left of it. I have been pondering what to do with my remaining time.

It didn't seem so bad when I hit thirty. I can recall talking with a friend a couple of years earlier when he said:

"28. We're getting old"

"Nah" quoth I. "40. That's getting old"

It was Bill Clinton who on his 50th birthday famously said: "There are more yesterdays than tomorrows"

30 to 40 arrived reasonably quickly. I had been at Radio 2 for nine years by then in one form or another.

40 to 50 flashed by and now with 56 on the horizon I am not liking the way this is going too much.

However I am not getting maudlin. Far from it. I am having the best time ever.

Admittedly there are the odd portents of mortality. I don't seem to be as bendy as I once was.

Sleep doesn't come as easily and the prospect of a very late session in the boozer with massive amounts of beer doesn't have the allure it once did.

Also at gigs I was always down the front standing or dancing like an idiot. Now I am more likely to be found mid way back, seated, tapping my foot roughly in time to the music.

My arms are now too short to read the paper so I have to have spectacles to help which make me look like a madman. Or an elderly professor, not sure which. You choose.

However inside, I don't think I have changed my outlook that much.

I'm still champion the underdog.

If someone says "white" I immediately have to say "black" even if the argument is unwinnable.

School teachers and policemen still scare the life out of me. Even though most of them are younger.

I still distrust politicians, although now I have more evidence to do so

Fart gags are still funny (is this just a boy thing?)

What has made me realise that I am raging against the dying of the light is the amount of hobbies and activities that I seem to have picked up.

I was thinking this as I was skating yesterday just prior to going to the gym. I was also irked that the weather had been so bad I hadn't been able to go on any long walks so far this year and my flying was way behind schedule. The Dark Lady has been responsible for adding the most joy to my life, and we find it difficult to have a weekend to ourselves.

There seems a lack of hours in the day and days in the week to do all the things that I want to.

Does time pass more quickly the older you get? Is there any way to slow it down?

We tried some time ago on the show to do this by trying to think of the most boring things in the world. Maybe the answer is to go back to school. I recall a 40 minute lesson lasting days as I stared out of the window as a kid.

In general I am having the best time and can only hope that it continues for a while longer.

As far as working out if time accelerates the older you get, obviously the person to ask is Her Majesty the Queen who has two birthdays per year. The official and her regular birthday on the 21st April celebrated her 172nd. She probably has to sleep in her clothes as there is so little time to get changed.