Just imagine for a moment you have been in an accident.

You are lying there in your hospital bed with a temporary but total loss of memory.

A nurse is sitting by your bed filling in a form, and she asks you your age.

What would you say?

Your only clue to your age is how old you actually feel.  For the sake of argument, you have a [temporary] loss of sensation in your limbs, so there are no muscle twinges or joint aches to give any hints.

I would say somewhere in my early thirties.  I might dither a bit between mid twenties and mid thirties but I would probably plump for thirty.  I’d be happy with that.  It’s just about how old I feel, though sometimes I do confess to an odd relapse into my early twenties.

So here I am, happily enjoying life as a thirty year old when my phone bleeps at me and reminds me that it’s my daughter’s birthday.  So my thirty year old brain starts to calculate how old she is.

Fuck me!

She’s older than me.

There is nothing like having a daughter who is older than you think you are yourself for reminding you that you are in fact getting on a bit.

If the nurse asked me now how old I am, I’d say around a hundred.