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Alec called me "Young Blood" in the April mag. He's got it all wrong! You see deep down I know I am 34 going on 70. Yep, I found that the secret of avoiding any form of mid life crisis is to skip it altogether and move right on into grumpy old git territory. Let me tell you it's got its rewards.

Just think of it! Within days you too could get away with prodding young ladies bottoms with your walking stick, mumbling incoherently while affecting almost total deafness. Oh to be able to pass wind loudly in public and perfect that bewildered look as you do so. Even better I can take all those balls and toys lobbed into our garden by the neighbours brats and stuff 'em straight through the band saw in my workshop. Then I can chuck 'em back over the hedge and shuffle contentedly away to the accompanying shrieks of the miserable little urchins.

"And how do we achieve this geriatric nirvana, this elyseum of the wrinkled ones" I hear you clamour.

It's easy I tell you. All you have to do is buy yourself a great big old Rover P5 and baby you're on the senile super highway.Heck, it happened for me and mine doesn't even go yet! I tell you the thing's a barge. Its got that Gothic cathedral of a front end like the prow of some Jutland dreadnought. Slab sided, there is enough chrome to buff to keep whole British Legions of Majors/Wincos happy. The interior is the House of Commons on wheels (mine even has pale green leather) and there are glove boxes big enough to stash both my Churchill shot guns. I can't wait to terrorize Ngong road in this 3680 Ibs tank, shouldering impudent Corollas into the path of oncoming busses like a scene from Lethal Weapon 37.

And I owe it all to one man. You see I can slip straight into crusty old codger mode when I remember my old headmaster, Harry Wood. Mr Wood was of that old brigade, brown 3 piece wool suit and steel rimmed specs. His glare caused small boys to irrigate their underwear with distressing frequency, that booming "You Boy" rolled like thunder through the dark corridors with a power that could blister paint. He drilled us for hours at our handwriting and unashamedly pronounced Britain as TOP NATION simply for holding the world Land Speed Record more often and for longer than any one else. Mr. Wood was the "boy's own" headmaster of the Eagle comics. We worshipped him, and he drove a Rover P5.

So it was, I found myself dribbling that phrase so often used by the more ancient amongst us. At only 34 summers I found myself saying "When I were a boy". I went on to describe February frosts and walking to school in shorts towing my baby brother, and how on the coldest mornings this dark leviathan would glide alongside us to a silent stop. A door would open and the reek of warm leather and Wilton would roll onto the pavement. My brother and I would climb up into this craft and sit beside each other on that huge front seat.

Harry Wood would slip her into "waftmatic" and the old lady would gather up her hems and magic carpet us to school. Even now I can remember sneaking a furtive glance at Mr. Wood and thinking to myself just how much I wanted to be just like him ...... when I grew up.

Simon Stoyle