Me and the latest fads are poles apart

I LIKE to think that as I get older I become more sensible, or “old enough to know better”, if you will.

In the years since I passed 40 (much in the way Usain Bolt passed everyone in the 100 metres final) I have cared less and less about more and more of the things I used to care too much about.

Popular music, fashion, other people’s opinions, for example.

So I do not feel, as my seventh decade looms like a fat bloke approaching the seat next to me on a plane, that I will ever again be taken in by a fad that could see me justifiably labelled a poser.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case for everyone. Which is why we see wrinkly people rampaging down our streets wielding ski poles.

OK, they’re not ski poles. They’re trekking poles or rambling cromachs or some such marketing drivel, but they look more like ski poles than anything Harry Lauder would have recognised.

Their intended purpose is to help hill-walkers whose knees might be showing signs of wear and tear but who still want to tackle the odd Munro of a weekend. Fair enough.

But they’ve become the musthave

They stride along like Grenadier Guards on steroids

accessory for the type of people who wore leg warmers in the ’80s to indicate they were serious about exercise.

They don gilets and bobble hats, possibly pulling on a small backpack filled with water and Kendal mint cake in case they get trapped in a snowdrift between the house and the newsagent’s.

Then, ski pole in each hand, they stride off along the treacherous pavements like Grenadier Guards on steroids.

And the poles are more like a sergeant-major’s swagger stick than a help to weary knee joints. Most just drag them by their sides, barely brushing the tarmac.

One bloke was actually pushing lightly on them both at the same time, as if he was skiing. Yet, strangely, he never swooshed past his pole-free wife.

Meanwhile, people with real walking issues are driven to the shops where they transfer to mobility scooters.

No, the only stick the grey-haired need when out walking is a sword stick – picks up litter, fends off neds, unfashionable and probably illegal.

Just how I want to grow old.