I'm not very well. Thanks for asking.

Having intended to start the new year in health-conscious detoxing style, I have so far succumbed to a third bout of cold in two months and an arthritic ankle. The latter has seen me hobbling to the corner shop with a ridiculous splayed left foot, since dragging it sideways behind me is the only way not to endure ferocious pain in the ankle. This has given me an uncertain gait somewhere between the listing roll of an old sea-dog and Charles Laughton's Quasimodo. Much innocent merriment was caused at the office as I tried to negotiate the way to my desk with a brimming cup of coffee and not spill any.

Last week, in the course of trying to slice a lemon for my morning detox draught of hot lemon water, I stabbed myself in the finger. This called for a plaster, and then another after I managed to reopen the cut while attempting to get a shoe on to the arthritic foot.

I am old. Or at least not young. I've arrived at the sort of age where it isn't advisable to take on complicated tasks such as slicing lemons, or anything that involves much in the way of hand-eye coordination. I can't even say I didn't notice it happening. It happened in mid-air in the year 2000 en route from Barbados to Gatwick when, somewhere between time-zones, I turned 40. Since I continue to look anything between five and ten years younger than I am, depending on the quality of the light, the kindness of strangers and the strength of any intoxicants they might have taken, the state of advancing senescence doesn't quite connect in other people's minds. Whence this frailty? I battle a sense of being an old git trapped in the body of somebody who would look only a little weathered at the Jools Holland Hootenanny, or conversely thrustingly young and vital on the government front bench.

My curriculum vitae was of the blessed. Too young to be a hippie, spot-on for punk and too old for hip-hop, I nonetheless managed a seamless immersion into the Techno dance culture of the late 1990s. All bets are now off. I've started reading poetry again, and making lists of the books I always intended to read and still intend to (déclassé German maniacs, mostly). All these intimations of mortality notwithstanding, there is also the Prime of Life thesis to consider. Many people are taking on major new career responsibilities at my age, not bemoaning life's passing seasons, while my brother-in-law had a cardiac event at 39 last year.

So let's rally to the colours, order in the glucosamine and raise our sights to the sunlit uplands once more. There's life in the old dog yet, and, as the other proverb has it, there is no better learner of new tricks. Is that right? One forgets.