IT only seems two minutes since I was 60. I turned 61 last weekend, but I feel in a better state that I have for years.

For the past twenty, I’ve been caring for kids or parents and only now it seems I have a bit of time for myself and that’s invigorating.

Sometimes we just get squeezed out of our own lives and that’s not good because we wouldn’t expect a car to run on empty and yet we expect ourselves to.

I’ve lost friends in every decade (including my little pal Martin in the first one who was only six).

We can’t turn the hands of time backwards, so it’s forwards or… the alternative and I think I know which one I’d rather. So to all my old schoolfriends who are going to be ‘early sixties’ this year, keep on keeping on.

Still plenty of petrol in the engine. Maybe occasionally dilute it with some champers to celebrate that our lungs are still going in and out. Every breath is a privilege, not a right.

I dropped something off at my old family home last weekend and the people invited me in to have a look.

I said no, I thought it would be too hard, but they were so obviously proud of what they’d done to it and I found myself saying: ‘Oh go on then’.

I’m so glad I crossed the threshold. I could barely recognise it. There were a few stamps of my parents still there but they truly had made it their own – it was absolutely beautiful.

The people are settled, happy in a house that carries so many happy memories within in, like a watermark and I couldn’t be more delighted for them.

I’ve never been able to walk past the old house before but now I think I can. It was ours once upon a time, it isn’t any more but I can keep the memories. And that’s exactly how it should be.

The other half’s most regular comment at the moment is ‘Not another bl**y parcel from Temu’ as the doorbell rings and the shape of a delivery man holding a parcel is framed in the glass.

Temu is my guilty pleasure. I have an office full of make up bags, stationery, shower caps, novelty rulers, heart-shaped jewellery boxes… all for charity hampers and newsletter prizes.

The fun is in the buying and the giving away, not the keeping. A friend told me that the company can afford to sell things so cheaply because they aren’t out to make a profit, it’s a Chinese device to collect data.

I don’t know how true that is but, in my case, the only data they’ll collect is that a woman in Barnsley has enough folding shopping bags with cats on to supply a small emergent nation.

Not sure how useful that will be to them for any plans in world domination…

Don’t forget I’ll be in the Book Vault at 10.15am - noon tomorrow morning and then onto Meadowhall Waterstones at 1pm signing my new book.

Shameless sales plug – but you would too if you had a column so no apologies from this ‘mature as strong cheddar’ bird.

Hope everyone who attended the library yesterday had a great time. Thank you to the little Sainsburys in Gawber for supplying ‘Ray’s Cookies’ – what a smashing, friendly shop it is.

And thank you people of Barnsley, as always, for supporting me.

Hope you find I give as much back as you give me. Lots of love.