Whatever happened to Old Men? I mean proper Old Men. Men with a certain odour about them. Men with trousers so voluminous that they could pull them up to their chest and fasten them there with a length of rope - trousers that were worn shiny and thin by 30 years of continuous wear and bore the stains and marks of every drip, splash, dribble and spillage that had ever taken place in their vicinity.

Bent and shuffling old men who kept pocket watches in their egg-stained waistcoats, smoked pipes and pottered grumpily in gardens and allotments Men whose hacking coughs could rattle windows and whose noisy expectorations could linger stubbornly on pavements for days. Well

I suppose to answer my own question - they're all dead. They died long ago of industrial diseases and lingering war wounds. And from unidentifiable infections picked up through lack of basic hygiene. Their successors today are all neat and dapper little chaps, virtually indistinguishable in their easy-wash Farahs and slip on shoes and car coats and shiny Far Eastern cars. They give no thought to tradition - there are no snuff stains on their moustaches and their shoes aren't warped and bent into weird and unlikely shapes. Old men now are jolly chaps who spend their days learning to surf the net or jetting off to their Spanish apartments when they should be out planting root vegetables and shouting at urchins.

When my time comes I intend to become a proper old man and shuffle about being smelly, hairy-eared and unapproachable, muttering grumpily to myself, frightening children and spitting noisily on the pavement. I'm not going to bother about such trivial matters as health and appearance and changing my clothes. And the voluminous Old Man's Trousers I will sport will be unlike any seen these past 25 years, they will come up to here and, once I've worn them in a bit, will stand up on their own and attract interest from members of the medical, legal and scientific professions.

And I want a shed to potter in too - something that will be condemned by the council. But damn my youthful good looks, positive outlook and robust health - that day is still a long way off.

But there's a horrible old man inside me waiting to get out.