Never say never but the thought of electively cutting oneself is beyond my grasp and I also object to it politically. Denying the lines on our faces makes a comment about age and wisdom I don't care to make.

Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age.

From an early age I didn't buy into the value systems of working hard in a nine-to-five job. I thought creativity friendship and loyalty and pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable was much more interesting.

But look I was born in 1956 the peak year for births in US history. I think I'm very representative of many of the thought processes my generation have been through and by and large people of my age have had their imprint planted on the consciousness of western society for a long time.

I had the good fortune to be able to right an injustice that I thought was being heaped on young people by lowering the voting age where you had young people that were old enough to die in Vietnam but not old enough to vote for their members of Congress that sent them there.

I saw how many people were poor and how many kids my age went to school hungry in the morning which I don't think most of my contemporaries in racially segregated schools in the South thought very much about at the time.

'Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age' was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant's thought shows that Afghanistan is being if anything bombed out of the Stone Age.

Well I'm in my 60s now. I finally look it I think. People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger which I think without flattering myself I did but I think I certainly have as George Orwell says people do after a certain age the face they deserve.

People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger which I think without flattering myself I did but I think I certainly have as George Orwell says people do after a certain age the face they deserve.

Do you remember when you were 10 or 11 years old and you really thought your folks were the best? They were completely omniscient and you took their word for everything. And then you got older and you went through this hideous age when suddenly they were the devil they were bullies and they didn't know anything.