IHAVE been thinking about getting old recently. Not like you'd think about getting your hair cut or your nails done -- "Oooh I think I'll get old this week!" -- after all, its not like I've got much choice in the matter.

No, rather I've been wondering how I'll feel when I've got decades more life experience under my belt; when I can carry off a spotted rainhood with panache, when I get to say 'I remember when it was all fields round here.'

Firstly I've got to get there, not an easy task in itself. What with the threat of biological weapons, the expansion of the sun and the amount of fun size mars bars I can consume in one sitting, it'll be a miracle if I make it to 30.

And yet, despite all our protests about not wanting to get old, we all do. Want to that is. (I have already established, if you read back, that we all have to get old. Please keep up) Getting old, let's be frank, is better than the alternative. After all, its easy enough to say 'I hope I die before I get old' a la The Who when you're 20-years-old and your deepest concern is what pants to wear while playing air guitar. It'll be quite another when you are 59 and still haven't got that loft conversion you've been promising yourself.

None of us can imagine what we'll be like when we are twice or three times our age. But I can't help but wonder how I will feel. Will I resent my lost youth? Will it annoy me that it takes me so much longer to get to the shops? Will I be bossy and rude or sweet and wise?

Will I develop a penchant for bingo and reading specs with chains on? Will I have grandkids?

I haven't got any living grandparents to compare myself to so it is tricky to imagine.

If I cast my mind back I can recall that my grandma was a generous, joyful woman with bad knees so perhaps I'll take after her. On the other hand my granddad was a bald headed cantankerous racing fanatic and that's not wholly out of the question, either.

The scary thing is that I remember asking my mum what it was like to be her age (I was about ten or so, which would make her 40-aeons old, it seemed to me at the time). She said that she almost forgot she wasn't still 17; that you never really felt any older, you just got older.

And of course it is the same for most of us. We none of us feel any different just because we have reached a milestone age or notched up another decade. So, by that logic, I will be pretty much the same when I'm old only with less hair and more inclination to say 'If I'm still here!' when people say they'll see me tomorrow. I think I can cope with that.

Mind you if, in 50 years, you see me clutching a copy of the Racing Post, I'd give me a wide berth if I were you.