I hate getting old. Sorry, I should say ‘I dislike getting old’. Hate is not a nice word and I correct the children if they ever say they hate something.

I’m 45 and I’ve been kicking my heels for 10 weeks. When you have nothing to do, it can be dangerous. You can spend too much time worrying about things that you otherwise wouldn’t give a second thought to. And getting old and not being able to realise the dreams I might have set 20, 30, almost 40 years ago begins nagging. Am I alone thinking like this?

Ah yes, there are the phrases like “age is only a number”, “you’re as young as you feel” and so on. But I still have to meet an 80-year-old who looks 30, or a 70-year-old who can still run as fast as at 40. Superficial stuff, but it actually gets to me.

I am running in the Phoenix Park and my knee hurts. My gait must have changed since I fell. I stop. I can’t run off the pain. Tears come to my eyes. This is where it starts going downhill. Aches, pains, forgetfulness, arthritis, ageism, the list goes on. I cop myself on. Better to be 45 with those challenges to meet rather than young and sick. But that too gets a bit on my goat. We are not allowed give an opinion nowadays without qualifying it for fear of offending. We can’t comment about anything because there are worse things going on in the world and we get pigeon-holed now for holding a view which isn’t populist. Is this crankiness creeping in? Will I soon be snarling at the kids kicking the ball over the garden wall? Oh no, please make me nice again.

Aging gracefully

I’m in Rennes, in Brittany. The SPACE show, the local equivalent of the Ploughing, is on. I am here with my colleague, Jef, among others. Jef from Brussels is 73, drove 700km to be here. Like me right now, he is slow on the old legs. But he still thinks young. He acts young. My father in his late 70s rings me looking for the green fees I got him last Christmas as he is organising to go play his weekly round of golf with his three mates. He says they solve the problems of the world over 19 holes.

The Pope is 82, Rene Russo (64) still looks the same as when I fancied her in Lethal Weapon and 76-year-old Paul McCartney is on the front of GQ magazine.

I’m over a quarter of a century, give or take, away from all of them and here I am moaning and worried. So what’s the problem? Is it middle age? Or is it being off work and feeling useless which has melted my brain to trembling mush?

The late Dr Pearse Lyons of Alltech always said that you must set goals you can’t achieve because you always have to have a goal, keeping those boyhood dreams just out of reach eliminates the worry of ageing. It is probably why people who work late into life live longer.

The past few weeks have proved to me that retirement certainly would not suit me. But listen, I am already halfway there working in RTÉ. Twenty years down and a little over 20 to go. Yikes. Can anybody stop this treadmill please? It’s just getting too fast.

I get knocked down and I get up again

The first interview I did on the first day of the Rio Olympics two years ago was with rower Sanita Pušpure. She was in tears having missed out on progressing after just one race. Now she is world champion. Get knocked down. Get up again.