As life moves on there are signs which tell us, without any chance of doubt, that we are getting older, going downhill, coming off the final bend or generally ready to turn off the lights, lock the door and depart gracefully. What is/are your particular tell-tale symptoms?
Rosie - Your contemporaries have become High Court Judges.
Falstaff - Your waistline has crept up to within centimeters of your nipples. [Meanwhile laughter erupts in the Elysian Fields as St Peter demonstrates his signature wedgie to another school of cherubic recruits.]
Bob the dog - There is a noise of hammering, then ray of sunlight appears. A silhouetted figure comes into sight whom you later discover to be Howard Carter.
plump - Your breakfast is mostly tablets
irach - You to Mick Jagger as "that young whippersnapper".
irach - should have read You refer to Mick Jagger as "that young whippersnapper".
penelope - It's more than five seconds between you getting to your feet and starting to walk off
RedSnapper - Your compatriots who referred to you as "Hop-along-Cassidy" now call you "Hobble-along-Cassidy.
widey - Your wee (urine) begins to smell like a bowl of sugar puffs!!!
gabrielized - Your wee is too wee to smell like anything.
irach - You are mercifully spared from toothaches, having no teeth left to ache.
Kim - You realise that, when he/she says "Shall we go upstairs and have sex?", you'll only be able to manage one or the other.
RedSnapper - Your damn hearing aid sucks, so that when he/she says "Shall we go upstairs and have sex?" you hear "Do you know where the heck are my specs?", to which you reply "No, dear".
Widey - You can't fine the stairs to your bed room even though you have lived in a ground floor flat for the last 40 years!
irach - You can't tell whether it's your knees or the stairs that are creaking.
widey - The Sexpistols and The Buzzcocks are getting played on Radio 4!!!!
B.C. - You blame the viagra for your eyesight going.
irach - You can't even remember what you're taking the Viagra for.
Simons Mith - We're suspiciously good at this game, in my opinion.
penelope - [SM] We'll only get better at it too. I'm going to the garden centre today in my LUNCH HOUR ffs, to prepare the garden for my 40th party... yikes.
Raak - It doesn't help any more to ignore your round-numbered birthdays.
RedSnapper - Your reflection in the mirror resembles the Plasticine (or Playdoh to the Yanks) human figures you made in Kindergaten class
Falstaff - "Whats that ye say, dearie........yes.....yessss......it is getting cold in here."
irach - You stay up at night deciding whether you should talk about your lumbago or your arthritis with your friends at tomorrow's bridge game
Botherer - Your back goes out more than you do. Ouch.
Raak - You stop feeling seventeen.
Tuj - You stop feeling seventeen-year-olds. oblig
Dandalf - You stop feeling.
irach - You stop and forget why you've stopped
RedSnapper - Life in the slow lane seems pretty fast to you.
Raak - You realise you'll never do the things you always thought of trying some time.
Effable - You stop to think ... and forget to start again.
irach - You think you had, but you hadn't
Rosie - You die.
Raak - You look for the latest news of your friends in the death announcements column of the local paper.
RedSnapper - You are surprised each morning not to find your own name in the obituary columns of the local newspaper
rab - ... it's all gone dark and quiet and cold. Or is that marriage?
rab - Or even, ... its all gone dark and quiet and cold. Or is that marriage?
Audience - *shouts, screams, generally goes wild for rab*
rab - Not only a completely unguessable winning move, but one with a apostrophical error. Grrr.
Bob the dog - ...you return to find that the game has ended.
This is the end of the line. There is no more.