Little Things... (Approaching Middle Age)

Signs that you might, possibly, be approaching middle age faster than you'd like to admit:

* Overnight your trousers have started to squeeze your middle with a vice-like pincer action. You're convinced that this can only possibly be because either the tumble dryer is maliciously shrinking all your trousers or some evil prankster has tiptoed into your room in the middle of the night, rifled through your wardrobe and replaced all your jeans with smaller sizes.

* Your mother casually asks how you managed to get that blob of white paint in your beard.

* You've completely lost all ability to understand anybody in a crowd without resorting to lip-reading and/or craning your head to the side like a deranged chameleon.

* It's become a point of pride that you only have to get up once in the night to go to the loo.

* You suddenly realise that getting up to go to the loo in the middle of the night is one of the main contributors to your daily step count and you decide that it might be a good idea to get more regular exercise (again).

* You pause at the top of the stairs or at the crown of a particularly steep hill to either 'think for a moment' or 'enjoy the view'.

* Chewy sweets are starting to lose their appeal.

* Small print seems smaller than it was in the good old days.

* The only stations you can tolerate on the radio are Radio 2, Smooth and Magic.

* You start to complain that modern music all sounds the same and can only listen to Capital/Kiss/Radio 1 for 5 minutes before raving like a deranged lunatic about how horrific it all is and scuttling into a dark corner to rock slowly backwards and forwards clutching a Bon Jovi LP.

* Your wife repeatedly insists on you wearing a hat in the middle of the summer so the thinning patch on the top of your head doesn't turn a lurid shade of red.

* One of your three-year-old daughter's favourite games is prodding your tummy to see how much it wobbles.

And many many more.

Please feel free to add your own in the comments and always remember that age is only a state of mind.