Of wrinkles, rabbits and roadshows

'Watch the mirror, count the lines,
The battle scars of all the good times'

So sang Soft Cell. It’s Marc Almond’s birthday today, too; I wonder if he feels old? I certainly do after a weekend of carousing: out for a meal on Friday, out to make the repeated acquaintance of Mr Gordon’s and Mr Bombay Sapphire on Saturday, then rounded off with a barbeque (of course it rained) on Sunday.

I need a weekend off to get over my weekend. I just can’t take the pace anymore. I don’t know how I ever did. At one point, going out three nights in a row would have signified a good time; now it signifies that a week of early nights is in order if I want to catch up on my beauty sleep and forestall any more on those insidious wrinkles.

The most bizarre thing about my weekend, however, was the taxi ride home on Saturday night. We climbed into a car with an avowed killer: our driver’s day job was in vermin control. He claimed to own more than 35 ferrets. Apparently they don’t smell if you clean them out every morning.

I spend much of my time avoiding rabbits when I’m driving. The taxi driver, however, spent most of the time trying not to avoid them. I postulated that knocking them down on purpose wasn’t really very fair. On the contrary, he responded, he was doing them a favour: the ones he knocked down had myxomatosis. How he could tell in the dark, while driving, I don’t know. I certainly couldn’t: maybe I should eat more carrots instead of giving them all to the Grey Mare, or it could be that my age is beginning to tell on my eyesight.

The Antiques Roadshow is in Alnwick tomorrow. Perhaps I should take myself along …

Stay at home Saturday

There were two things I wanted to do today and I have done neither.

The first was to go to the Point-to-Point. I resigned myself yesterday to the fact I would miss it because I am skint. Ratcheugh is the coldest place in the world: it has its own weather system transposed from Siberia. Even on a beautiful spring day, you can be assured that the crowds will be shivering. However, today has been veritably hot so I imagine Ratcheugh reached a tolerable temperature.

It is a place of giant skies and stunning views, even for those who are not of a horsy inclination; you can see the sea and at this season’s first meeting in January, we saw Robson Green. He was smaller than I imagined and impossibly tanned for the time of year.

I should also now be at a birthday party. But my sister has decided she is too tired and as I am a wussy girlie, I am not going on my own. It’s probably a wise decision: there is bound to be a fight. There are always fights. When I was younger, it was the local lads versus those who had the audacity to come here from elsewhere for a drink. Then, there was a nightclub of sorts and police presence on a Saturday night to deter the drunken brawlers.

Now, locals fight among themselves. I have seen the trouble erupt from nowhere: no argument, no raised voices, just suddenly spilled drinks and tables turned over as some unfortunate is bashed about. Sometimes it is the local lads against the Polish lads. The shouting alone is frightening; then the Polish lads fetch a knife and the tension is ratcheted another notch. The police, however, are no longer on hand; they have to be called in from elsewhere and the damage has been done before they arrive.

Brawling upsets me. I don’t understand why they do it. I wonder if they do? Perhaps it’s a sign I’m getting old.

Twenty-one

My little brother has just celebrated his 21st birthday. He is much taller - and certainly more grown-up than I was at that age.

I hit the magic number in the middle of a heatwave. It was the summer of Nessum Dorma and Gazza’s tears; Madonna was Vogueing and I had a holiday job picking strawberries. The majority of my big day was spent in bed feeling sorry for myself – I had lain in the sun too long the previous day and had burnt my back. I was tempted out with cards and parcels that had arrived in the post from my far-away family and friends, and a proffered glass of gin mixed with champagne. It made me maudlin and melodramatic.

It was a summer of transitions: I was a month out of university and a month out of the relationship with my first great love. I spent a lot of time navel-gazing as I hovered on the cusp between two different worlds. It was a time of freedom and opportunity, but I felt the rug had been pulled from under my feet.

If Dr Who offered to whiz me back there in the Tardis, it would be interesting to visit my 21-year-old self. I’d like to tell her that everything would work out OK; but I wouldn’t want to swap places with her.