So what’s been keeping me from the blog-o-sphere? Is the Twitter-sphere or Twotter-sphere or the Facebook-osphere tempting me into other spheres? It is not. Is it the life-and-small-children-osphere, tugging at my sleeve for attention and often biscuits? It is.

So despite a huge number of months elapsing between this entry and last, I have no reflections on age (that’s the point of this blog, after all). Except, having given up alcohol for January, I realise I look more tired than before. Which seems a bit unfair. And also, I like to cut my sanwiches into four now. I can’t see myself ever going back to just halving them. That must be an orbiting 40 thing.

But it didn’t upset me. I had my new 1970s mix on my iPod, courtesy of husband and just as Donna Summer came on singing I Feel Love, a girl in shorts rollerskated past. Perfect.

Towards the end of my run, I was lucky enough to come across a vision of buffed loveliness, ambling through the park. Yes, it was a Patrick Swayze lookalike only, in the true spirit of lookie likies, he was a less good and shorter version of the original. Here he was, just back from the shops, carrying lots of plastic carrier bags. Lest that emasculate the Swayze-alike overly, he had stripped to the waist, to reveal bulging and quite possibly oiled pecs. What finer signal can there be that spring has most definitely arrived than oiled pecs on a crazy Swayze in your local park at 9.30am?

Here’s an example on my son’s school newsletter. ‘The whole of year 3 have delighted audiences with their show.’ Shouldn’t that be ‘has delighted audiences’? Year 3 being a singular thing?

On the radio, you are forever hearing that the labour party want one thing and the army need something else, when they should be wants-ing and needs-ing, really. Shouldn’t they?

But what hope do we have when even David Attenborough is up to it. When referring to lemurs on Madagascar, he says: ‘the whole troop head off’. I think they head off to eat some mud, but let’s put that to one side. Lemurs can eat mud if they want to, that’s their choice. The point is, the whole troop heads off, doesn’t it, being a singular thing?

By the way, while we’re on the subject of Madagascar, has anyone else noticed that eventhough Attenborough’s voiceover goes on about the massive diversity of wildlife on the island, I feel like I’m watching an awful lot of lemurs and chameleons, and very little else. Nice waterfalls, though.

It struck me that you only go for massages and facials when you’re orbiting 40. It never crossed my mind to do so in my Thirties or before. Then, I could wake from a night of strong lager and chips looking charmingly dishevelled, not haggard, as I do now. So I’m still a novice when it comes to spa etiquette. It’s all about relaxing, but I spent the first 10 minutes of my massage worrying about whether I should have taken my knickers off. And all that wandering about in a robe and slippers makes me feel a bit self-conscious, too, but perhaps that’s just a sign of immaturity? Bet Kylie doesn’t blanch at wearing a waffle dressing gown in a public-ish space.

The facial, which I naively thought would be all soothing swishing and cool lotions actually involved what my 12-year-old beautician termed ‘extraction’. That’s spot picking and pore dredging, really, using your nails. It hurt so much it made my eyes water. Once finished, she informed me that my eye area was ‘very dry’. It’s not dry love, those are just wrinkles. Silly! You’re still about three decades off getting your first, it’s true, which must be why you’re so shocked.

This firm-skinned imp then managed to flog me some stupidly overpriced eye cream, despite all the chunterings of my inner sceptic. You only need a dab, she said, but its cynical pump action bottle means you get a generous squirt each time you use it then go about looking like you’ve been weeping tears of lard.

In short, I am old enough to need the services of the Treatment Rooms, but perhaps not mature enough to be able to handle them. And, just so you know, I shall be keeping my knickers on next time.

The mouse, I hoped, would run downstairs and find a chink in a wall or a floorboard and be gone. Sadly, it ran straight into the only place it really shouldn’t have run straight into – the sitting room, where the cat sleeps. She must have thought Christmas had come early.

How in the name of ruddy hell do you get a live mouse out of your living room without the use of a cat – and therefore violent mouse death – or a trap (ditto)? I laid a trail of outcakes towards a gap in the floorboards, but it remains there still. Does anyone know how to mouse whisper?

After Dylan’s night in hospital, we are back to normal, only both boys are tired. Before I had children I mistakenly thought they had boundless energy, but the five-day-a-week school routine takes care to grind that out of them. They have dry lips, dark shadows under their eyes and are permanently cadging for days off.

Other friends have colds that won’t shift and aggressive viruses that won’t back off and one batch of mates have had something I’ve never even heard of, possibly relating to their sinuses, but it laid both of them out. It ended in ‘itis’, which is never good.

Perhaps we just need to accept that we are fallible. Just because we don’t get polio or tetanus anymore, we sort of assume that we shouldn’t get colds and persistent bugs. And who has the time, frankly. Illness happens to older people, right? Well I went for a drink the other night with a great old friend who is going deaf and we chatted about that and then we chatted about me having cancer and the odds of it coming back and despite all this had a merry old evening. But neither of us is 40 yet. Bad health, from cancer to the common cold, is no respector of age or fairness, it seems.

But then today, in Sainsbury’s, my cashier didn’t even say hello. Didn’t ask how many bags I’d used. Barely made eye contact. She wasn’t rude, just detached. Good for her, really. Best way to cope with a six-hour shift on the checkout at Sainsbury’s. But I felt a bit short-changed, as it were. I think I will appreciate the chatty cashier in future. I suggest you do likewise.

By 2.30 am, after waiting three hours in A&E to be transported up to the Children’s Unit, only to be dumped in a waiting room (strip lighting on full, of course), I did rather lose my cool with a nurse, those posters reminding patients that Abuse of NHS Staff Must Stop seeming to loom out of the walls at me. We got to bed at 4am and were up again at 7.30. It’s best to get up early when you’ve got lots more waiting around to do, I find. Dylan requested toast for his breakfast and was brought just that. Two slices of white with one pack of butter and no drink. He was ill for God’s sake and had had nothing except a few sips of water since about 11pm. It’s all so counter-intuative, the way you have to fight for basic support, like a bed, rather than a waiting-room chair, and a drink, rather than no drink at all. There’s something so bloody unnurturing about hospitals.  The individuals who work in them can be amazing, but the system seems to be, for want of a better word, buggered.

Oh well. He’s better, that’s the main thing. And in the tradition of ‘big nights’ we both went to bed, together, at 8pm last night.

‘Look at this,’ he said very eagerly, bouncing a bit in his seat. I declined, feeling petish.

‘Just come here and look at this, will you,’ he urged.

‘I don’t want to,’ I sulked (career change conversations bring out the absolute worse in me).

‘Look at this, right now, come over here and look at this.’

I can see from where I’m standing that it’s just a web page, of no particular merit. But I go over and look.

There is a picture of a row of people, smiling, at the top of the page.

‘I could be one of these people,’ he says, eyes aflame, indicating the photograph. ‘In a few years time, I could be one of these people.’

It was almost like Dr King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech – full of hope and possibility. The row of people, smiling. The tingling sense of excitement that one day, he too could join their optimistic ranks. Job requirements and salary and hours are not the point. The point is, one day, he could be one of those people.