Farty, smelly and in love with Putin? You must be getting middle-aged

There are things that happen when you grow older — bad things, harbingers of death and decay. Past the age of 55, I mean. For example, a friend and fellow columnist confessed recently that upon rising from a sitting position he almost always unintentionally farts. A delicate little ‘glip!’ from his bottom, every time he stands up. I am a little older than him and have yet to experience this demeaning imposition, this additional whiff of misery as we trundle downhill, via the unctuous and grimly cheerful hospice attendants, to the crematorium. But I am so terrified of it happening that nowadays, when I stand up, I rise very slowly and clench my buttocks tightly together just in case. It will happen sooner or later I’m sure.

In the meantime there’s the other stuff to be going on with. Deodorant and eau de cologne, for example. They no longer smell like they did. These days, they smell acrid five minutes after they have been applied: you can’t gild a turd and still less a corpse-in-waiting. Hangovers nag and gnaw in a way they never used to and I can no longer eat the carbohydrate-rich prole food I so love without biliousness and indigestion intruding. Then there is the futility of watching attractive women in the street. Oh you can watch — but they don’t watch back. Some vindictive bastard recently carried out research about what age men are when women stop noticing them: it’s at 50. After you’ve reached that wonderful milestone, they don’t even see you — and our apparent invisibility is justified. After the age of 50 you have only about nine spermatozoa left in your testes and they’re all limp-tailed and wheezing imbeciles.