A NICE PASTIME

The first rule of pastimes? Don’t call them pastimes. You might as well be eating a Marietta with a tartan rug on your lap, roaring ‘which one of them are you?’

But you should still get out there and do something youthful. Be very careful here. There is no shortage of snake-oil being peddled on the ‘New Thing’ front. For example, you might hear the latest whisper that bridge is massive again among young people. So you head along to the local bridge club. The good news is there are four or five people there under 40. The bad news is they are all wearing dickie bows. That’s the end of bridge. (You’ll get over it.)

You might be on safer ground with board games. The hipsters have been finished for 18 months, but most of them don’t know how to stop. So it’s still considered young and fun to invite people over to your gaff for an evening of pulled-pork and Cluedo. Don’t overdo it. We hear the fire brigade is flooded with calls asking them to pull apart groups of middle-aged people who got stuck playing Twister. That time spent with your face stuck in Fiachra’s thigh could be longest half hour of your life.

There is only one thing for it. A trampoline. It’s a fitness craze, spreading out like a plague from California. Let’s face it, nothing makes you feel five again more than bouncing around the back garden, trying to catch your neighbours in the nip.

A word of warning. Prosecco. You are unable to spend time in your back garden without a glass in your hand, what with being Irish and that. So be careful how you bounce. Because a person can grow old in the queue for A&E. Literally.