I never used to think about mortality much, not mine at any rate.  I had the whole of my life in front of me.  I’ve still got the whole of my life in front of me but, perversely, there’s three quarters of it behind me.

It isn’t that I hide from the Grim Reaper’s scythe every day; it’s that bodily functions I used to take for granted start to mock me.  And I’m not talking about the expected ones – thin and greying hair, ballooning waistline etc but other equally unwelcome but unanticipated changes.

Toenails, for instance, have become hard enough to repel an assassin’s bullet.  Ankles and knees unaccountably swell and recede, swell and recede.  My gazinta, which I asked at one time to fulfil only two functions, now struggles with both, despite, that is, the increased demands put on it by my bladder.  I’m starting to sprout pre-cancerous sunspots and require the attentions of a dermatologist.  How long before I need a chiropodist and an undertaker?

When my daughter saw us one morning arranging our tablets at the breakfast table, she said “Blimey!  You’re like proper old people!”

Most alarmingly, I have become invisible.