'This place', said my friend the other night, 'is going to make you feel very old'.
We were on our way to pick up someone from a local wine bar, having had a sedate dinner at a local pub where the only sounds in the bar were the satisfied groans of the customers who couldn't possibly eat another mouthful.
Any thoughts that a wine bar is a place to sit around sipping a cold glass of Chablis discussing the latest literature were dispelled when we opened the door and were hit by a cacophony of sound fit to wake the dead.
As we pushed our way through a throng of youths all clutching designer beer bottles and hell-bent on having a good time I thought how right she was, it did make me feel very old. I had a feeling that even the building was younger than I was.
Age is a funny thing, isn't it? We spend the first part of our life wanting to be older, the teenager years pretending to be older, the middle part pretending to be younger and then a short period of desperately trying to look younger. Then in old age some pretend to be much older so that people will say they look good for their age.
And yet through it all you don't feel any different. Your mind is stuck in some kind of time warp, perpetually young and alert. Fortunately commonsense and a full length mirror leads you past the mini skirts and the diamante boob tubes in fashion shops. Or at least I hope it does.
As if a short time in the wine bar from hell wasn't depressing enough, a lot of my holiday proved that however young and alert the mind is, the body doesn't always play ball. Who was that creature who skipped lightly into the garden each day only to return several hours later bent double like a little old lady and aching in every muscle? My daughter got so fed up with the sounds of my joints cracking like pistol shots that she bought a giant sized box of Radox and silently handed it to me each evening.
The rest of the week was spent planning to do a great number of things in the house and not getting round to any of them. Instead I read eight novels I had never read before and several I had.
I cleaned out three handbags and my tights' drawer which when I started had 18 pairs of tights and when I finished had only two wearable under a skirt, and two more at a pinch under trousers. I decided to be ruthless with my make-up, dumping anything that looked vaguely toxic because it has been in the drawer for years.
Out went all those wonderful matt foundations which claim to hide every blemish but which send you out looking like Marley's Ghost. Out went anything marked as a 'liner' - ie lipliner which is supposed to line succulent looking lips but without a steady hand to guide it makes you look permanently drunk. Ditto eye liner because I can think of less expensive things to poke myself in the eye with. Halfway through the task I found a paperback I hadn't read so will have to tackle the dried up mascaras and the collection of lipstick stubs on another day.
By the end of the week I felt so guilty at not doing much that I sank into a depression and didn't do much over the weekend either until the sun came out. What a difference that makes, the plants perk up, the birds sing and everything that was a depressing grey the day before takes on a golden haze. I love spring, cracking joints and all.
Talking of birds, our juvenile feline duo Oscar and Jefferson have been displaying great interest in them - watching from my sitting room as little sparrows land on the newly flowering quince outside the window. In the garden they both leap feet into the air every time a bird flies past, looking very disappointed when they fail to land with a bundle of feathers in their mouths.
Indoors they have developed a clever ruse to get from the utility area into the kitchen when the door is shut. One of them jumps on the recycling bin by the door, leaps at the door handle while the other one pushes the door to open it. We watched in amazement as they did this the first time, thinking it was a coincidence, but it's been repeated too often. They are also terribly inquisitive, wanting to go into anywhere that is shut, so every time you open a drawer, a cupboard or even a suitcase, in they go. Both love shopping bags too, and on several occasions have nearly gone to the shops.
Jefferson's favourite sleeping place in my room is a wooden salad bowl, just big enough for him to curl up in it. Oddly enough, this was Genghis Fluffy's favourite too. And no, I don't serve salad in it any more.
The only cloud on the horizon is THE operation, which is looming for the two boys.
Last week a friend who has numerous cats visited and Oscar got very interested in sniffing her clothes, no doubt picking up the smell of her animals. Perhaps this nudged latent hormones into action because later he began to pay far too much attention to his brother, if you get my drift, and we realised that THE operation may be overdue.
My daughter was horrified at this behaviour, but I pointed out that it could have been worse, they could have been dogs and we all know what anti social habits they can have. It's not nice trying to detach a Scottie from your leg as you get up to go home . . .