Dogwash

I have just received the latest issue of a periodical I subscribe to. Like many periodicals, particularly those dispatched through the post, it is stuffed with a selection of third-party leaflets. Inserted into the current issue are eight assorted brochures, of which four are targeted explicitly at the elderly. Well, more precisely at the elderly and infirm.

Why this emphasis? Well it happens that, for perfectly justifiable reasons, the publisher knows my age. For the last nearly three years, since I turned sixty, most communications from organizations which for one reason or another happen to know my date of birth have included "magazine stuffers" or "bill stuffers" for stairlifts, step-in bathtubs, hearing-aids, burial plans and insurance offers illustrated with photographs of that smiling, fit, pullover-clad grey-haired middle-class couple sitting in their charming, expensively-furnished, oversized living room contemplating the difficult decision of whether to set off on a round-the-world cruise or just pop down the golf course for the afternoon.

I suppose I ought to be mildly grateful that my new copy of Cod Batterer's Quarterly was for once mercifully free of a Stannah Stairlift advert telling me just how much fun my cat will have riding up and downstairs on the contraption, available under the company's exclusive "Buy now, die later" finance facilities.

Sod this. I'm off out and find some teenager to give a bloody good kicking to.