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.

Having come to live in this age is as though one were to have entered another country. Learn its language or risk being left out.

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.

At my age the only problem is with remembering names. When I call everyone darling it has damn all to do with passionately adoring them but I know I'm safe calling them that. Although of course I adore them too.

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.

Although it is generally known I think it's about time to announce that I was born at a very early age.

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.

I was born in ancient times at the end of the world in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me.

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.

Though the Jazz Age continued it became less and less an affair of youth. The sequel was like a children's party taken over by the elders.

Old age has its pleasures which though different are not less than the pleasures of youth.

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.

I cried on my 18th birthday. I thought 17 was such a nice age. You're young enough to get away with things but you're old enough too.

For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself though in another dress And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars invisible by day.

Old age comes on suddenly and not gradually as is thought.