High life | 15 August 2019

If it hadn’t arrived I’d be dead, but it was hardly welcome: another birthday — 38 years old on 11 August, but for any pedant among you, reverse the numerals and you’ll get it right. Thirty-eight came to me as I was sparring with a young whippersnapper from Norway recently. I was out of breath and told him that, at 38, I was having trouble keeping up. ‘You’re doing fine for 38,’ he said, and then attacked as if there was no tomorrow, the brute.

What’s that old cliché about being as old as you feel? I’ve never felt younger, but I have to stop giving advice to people. La Rochefoucauld warned about that: old men give advice because they can no longer set a bad example. Ouch! I try to be bad at all times but others do not want to be bad with me. Well, not always, but most of the time.