AGE HAS GOT ME BUT I'M NOT READY TO GIVE IN YET

LAST week in a café, I bumped into an old friend from the 1980s. I knew him when we both lived in the Calton in Glasgow.

He used to drink in my pub, The Weavers Inn, and I was secretly shocked at the sight of him.

His thin shiny white hair was swept over the balding pate that was peeking through the silver floss and he looked like he had been slowly defrosting since we last saw each other 21 years ago.

He used to be a big burly brown haired man. Now he was old.

Throughout our conversation all I could do was recall the tall, dark, fine-looking chap he used to be and, if he was this old, then it slowly dawned on me that I must be a shocking sight to him, as I had got old as well.

Time doesn't target some people and generously leave others out, unless they live in Hollywood, have access to a discreet surgeon and possess enough cash to pay for such a folly.

As we spoke, I saw him look at me intently: "Was your hair always that colour?" he asked.

I could tell he was confused as to where the Janey he knew had gone and was replaced by this older, more crumpled woman he was looking at now.

"Yes I dye it and I didn't have a moustache and double chin back in 1986," I said hoping he would laugh at my self depreciation.

He didn't laugh; he just stared horrified at the moustache that I seem to have grown. Then he gawped at my fat chin.

"I have had a heart bypass," he told me. "What have you had done? I had a catheter for six weeks and lived on morphine for a month."

What have I had done? Did I look post-operative?

I was horrified that he thought I, too, had undergone major surgery.

What could I say?

It was then I almost told him I had a prosthetic leg. Absurd, I know. But it was just to join in and be part of his need to share stories of urine tubes and pain management.

I thought better of it, accepted I knew nothing about long-term hospital stays and waited for a gap in the conversation to talk about my recent medical problem, however insignificant.

"I have a ganglion," I blurted out and held up my lumpy wrist near his face.

It seemed such a feeble medical complaint when comparable to a heart bypass and, on realising this, I was tempted to lie about having a prosthetic leg yet again but stopped myself in time and changed the subject.

"Are you still working in Dubai?" I asked.

"No, Greenock," he answered.

Then we spoke about people from my old Weavers Inn days and we swapped news of those folks we knew who had either divorced, had heart attacks or had died.

It left me feeling incredibly old and sad. I saw my reflection in a shop window and sighed.

I will never be able to wear a swimsuit that doesn't have a magic tummy panel that comes with a full skirt to conceal lumpy thighs and resembles a flowing valance on a king-size bed sheet.

Great for modesty, yet useless for swimming. A billowing skirt about your thighs doesn't work with water dynamics, it drags you down.

It's as if you deserve to be drowned for letting yourself get tubby.

Age came and got me. It got bored with making paper out of the skin of pensioners and scrawled blue-ish veins on the back of my legs when I wasn't looking.

It ran up to me in the middle of a busy supermarket, slapped its cold evil hands on my face, dragged the skin down and walked off without a word of sympathy.

In spite of this, I am actually looking forward to getting really old. I don't want to be sort of old. I want to be cranky and ancient. I want to be the old lady who wears dark brown holey tights and luminous ankle socks in cut-off wellies.

I will sport big flowery knickers that will have my dress tucked into them, with bits coming out of the leg holes.

I want to drag around a tartan shopper full of fat tufty cats that howl and hiss at passers-by. I want to swear and spout filth at random people in shops.

It is the ultimate revenge on age and it will be truly liberating. No-one messes with the cat lady!

SADISTIC DUCK LEFT ME IN A FLAP

MY HUSBAND and I went to the Lake District for two days to chill out.

We packed a picnic and sat at a beautiful lake.

Just as I went to eat a sandwich in the warm sun, a crowd of ducks started swimming towards me. It was so cute.

Then, in the water right in front of me, a big male duck opened its hard beak and grabbed a female duck by the face and started shaking it about really violently.

The noise was horrifying, the poor thing was flapping and screeching.

Domestic duck violence isn't what I went there for: I wanted serenity.

I threw a big stone at the sadistic duck's head and it finally let go.

The vicious duck just stared in my direction, got out the water and waddled towards me. I thought it was going to have a go at me as well, so I ran off.

So much for a quiet day out!

SUPPORT FOR McCANNS IS AN ISSUE OF CLASS

GERRY and Kate McCann have been under fire since they arrived back in the UK. Their daughter, Madeleine, is still missing and they are now suspects in the case.

Supporters are jumping ship in light of the latest accusations thrown at the two doctors who left their three kids unattended in their holiday flat in Portugal.

I always felt this was a class issue from the start. If a single mum from Dundee left her three kids alone in Blackpool to go and buy a burger and a can of lager from a bar 50 yards away and one vanished, would the Pope grant her an audience? I think not.

Class issues aside, I hope that wee girl comes home safely.

MEN, NOT WOMEN, ARE TO BLAME FOR RAPES

THERE have been recent reports that lap-dancing clubs in Glasgow may be partly to blame for the horrific toll of rapes and sex attacks on women.

Have we gone back to the days when women who wore short skirts were "asking for it"?

Women have the right to work as dancers and strippers; if it empowers them financially, surely that is their right?

To say men cannot control themselves when faced with this imagery and immediately leave a club and commit rape is a seriously dark view on our society.

Does this mean that women who hire male strippers are in danger of sexually assaulting men when they walk home from a girl's night out?

The problem lies in men who stalk the late-night city streets who are rapists and sexual deviants; they need to be caught and I don't think they are all sitting in pole-dancing clubs and paying good cash for a dance.