I WAS just sitting here thinking that I can't think of a thing to write about this week when I glanced at the calendar.

The first thing that struck me was why, when everyone else has calendars with pictures of men with gleaming muscles on them (well the women do) (well, perhaps some of the men do, but that's none of my business), have I have somehow ended up with a calendar with a picture of a Morphy Richards' cappuccino expresso machine?

The story of my life really. And slightly better than February which featured a vacuum cleaner. Is somebody trying to tell me something?

But I digress. Firstly the calendar told me that small grandson will be four this week, so I had better quickly find out firstly what toys are in at the moment and secondly when his birthday tea is so that I can arrive back home just as all the other children are leaving.

Mean no. Self preservation, yes.

Then it struck me that not long after that I will reach the grand old age of 59 and we know what that means. It's downhill all the way to becoming an old aged pensioner.

It's not that I mind heading towards 60, except for all the silly remarks about bus passes and Saga holidays.

After all I don't feel very much different than I did when I was 21, except after a long weekend in the garden but that's only to be expected. Everyone looks different as they age, of course, but my advice is to stop catching sight of yourself in shop windows, get rid of full length mirrors and never, ever, buy one of those make-up mirrors which magnify your features and give you a heart palpitations at 8am in the morning. Do that, and only everyone else will know you are looking older.

The thing that I also find odd is that it doesn't seem all that long ago that I was being told by my mother that I wasn't old enough to do things, now I've reached the age when an awful lot of people are going to be saying I'm too old to do them. What happened in between? I can't remember. Perhaps I'm getting old

One thing I would like to tell the younger generation - and it is a little bit of wisdom I thought of the other day. I'm tackling all the things you take for granted; the Internet, e-mail, computers, calculators, mobile phones, microwaves, DVDs, video recorders (well perhaps not those), state of the art cars and much much more. I've had to learn all this while you grew up with it.

The difference is that I can do without them all because at one time I have done without them. You can't. Just see how far you get without an electricity supply and all your electronic wizardry. Cold beans and no toast, that's how far.

So for all you seniors out there, think oneupmanship.

Having read this through I realise I am already dispensing grumpy grannie advice. Soon I'll be mumbling all those totally unintelligible homilies my grandmother used to trot out at every opportunity. 'There's many a slip twix cup and lip' - 'Don't care was made to care' - 'Little pitchers have big ears' The latter always puzzled me, did she mean pictures? And if so, why?

Giving any sort of advice can be dodgy, and I know. One of my least favourite jobs in journalism was running an advice column for an evening paper.

It was at a time when several national papers started advice columns and somebody 'upstairs' thought it was a good enough idea to sideline.

So they bounced around all enthusiastic and for a moment or two I thought I was to become the Marje Proops of the South Coast. But oh not, it wasn't an agony aunt they wanted, it was someone to handle the various moans and mishaps of the consumer and I was that person.

On paper it sounds interesting, but it wasn't. It was basically a job which involved coming into daily contact with the sort of people who sent off £5 for a device which the newspaper or magazine had said would make them instantly taller and were then surprised when they got a block of wood in the post.

In a very short time I had bulging files full of details of people who had handed over hard earned cash on the doorstep to salesmen who had spent five hours extolling the virtues of an unknown make of vacuum cleaner which he claimed would do everything from sucking all the hairs off the dog to making the tea. Not only had they paid in advance, they frequently didn't get a receipt and in many cases had no idea of the firm's name or any contact details. When the machine arrived and surprisingly didn't always work in quite the way they had been told, or frequently didn't work at all, they headed for me.

I also had bulging files full of details of catalogue companies who were happy to accept cash but reluctant to part with goods. Companies who didn't really know the meaning of the word guarantee and failed to honour the most basic of promises. Plus dozens of firms which found the best way to deal with customer complaints was not to.

The only saving grace out of this was I became firm friends over the telephone with the Trading Standards Department of the local council and we used to spend many a happy half hour comparing notes on the activities of spurious encyclopaedia salesmen and rogue companies.

I didn't only get consumer problems. I got DHSS problems, mostly ones which every other organisation had failed to solve. I got landlord problems - 'would you like to come and see my damp bedroom?' I even got people who thought I was some kind of private investigator and wrote asking me to spy on their employees or their wives.

I wouldn't have minded so much if the results of hours of work got in the paper - but after one or two threatening letters from firms the news editor got cold feet and only printed fairly brief details of the real villains, but lots on my successes, such as the time I managed to get a cereal company to send a small distraught child the plastic toy which hadn't been in his packet of Cocoa whatsits when it should have been. Such is the power of investigative journalism.

My swansong was the long running saga of a woman who had paid quite a lot of money to mate her pedigree spaniel bitch with an equally impressively pedigreed male and then the bitch had given birth to a litter of puppies which didn't look entirely bona fido! I think it was the pricked up ears which gave the game away.

The owner wanted her money back. The male dog's owner said he had performed his duties by the book and it wasn't her fault the other animal had been 'got at' by another dog. The bitch's owner said her animal had most definitely not been anywhere near another dog, certainly not a mongrel. Perish the thought.

By the time I got the case the ladies had exchanged letters and telephone calls which were getting increasingly nasty. The bitch's owner sent pictures of the puppies, which were delightful but obviously not pure spaniel. The dog's owner replied with pictures of her male dog, looking all perky but fortunately not photographed doing his 'duty'. I tactfully suggested that perhaps the best solution might be that the bitch got a free seeing too next time, a suggestion which was not accepted by either parties.

I realised I was not going to win this one. Marje Proops might have done better. Besides I was sick to death of sifting through piles of moaning letters about freezers which didn't freeze, washing machines which didn't wash and miracle hair restorative treatments which didn't so much as raise a bit of fluff. So I left.

Advice? Don't ask me.

PS. I've just looked through the whole calendar and discovered that December's picture is a trouser press. Oh Wow, I can't wait. a trouser press and Christmas too.