I'll have to go soon. She'll be asking about who I saw, who I met, what they said. I'll have to make up a whole lot of stuff again. I'll tell her I met Mickey McKenna. She'll like that. She still fancies Mickey like mad. He's dead fifteen years but that doesn't matter. She never reads the paper and she's never out the door with her agoraphobia. And she remembers nothing. Well, not much anyway. She hides things on me in case I'll steal them. Hid her eyeglasses in the wardrobe one day and found them two days after in the back pocket of her dungarees. Put her nail scissors under the dog on the mantelpiece and nearly got her little toe amputated when she came across them a week later in one of her house slippers.

                                                       STEAM4TEENS

                      NB: Personal photos will not be tolerated. True beauty is on the inside.

                                                A HARD NIGHT'S NIGHT

Sweet sweetest Huncan

I was working with one of the dildos you told me to use the ribbed kind though nothing's the same as you sweetie and I was trying to bring back that night out in Hawaii last September when you came to me in your beautiful bare pelt and carried me from the shower flat up against you and sat me on the window sill and worked at me softly with your lovely long fingers and then after you did that you lifted me even higher till my legs were round your neck and I felt your tongue reach inside of me and that's when the spasms started sweet heavens but before I knew it you had me on the bed and you bucked me away up off it again and again till I thought I could take no more O Huncan I wish you were here right now

"Did you get the bread Alexis? And the eggs?"

"I did Henry. They're all out there on the shelf."

"I hope you got the right use by date on the eggs."

"Course I did. Sure I always do."

"You didn't the last time. I was sick for two days after I ate one of them."

"That's because you let them lie for weeks before you even opened the carton."

"I did not. Anyway, you should have reminded me. But tell us this. You didn't come across anybody I know when you were out did you?"

"I did indeed. I was talking to Mickey McKenna."

"Ah. Mickey McKenna. It's a good while since ... how's he doing anyways? And how's he looking?"

"Great. Doing great and looking great. Actually I had a coffee with him in Costa. Never saw him looking better. Wearing a new brown corduroy jacket too. And he was asking about you, said it seemed ages since he saw you and he wouldn't mind seeing you again soon."

God but she's an awful sight. Sunken, empty-eyed and a hide like parchment. And those brown blotches all over her hands and arms and face. Liver-spots, isn't that what they call them? Funny they're called that when the people that have them are slowly dying. How does the saying go? You're dying near enough from the minute you're born? And the older you get the worse things get? Not for me though, not for me. Ageing doesn't bother me anymore. Just a matter of adapting. Like here I am going down the slippery slope, not sliding mind you, more like edging on my backside and stopping now and then as I dig in the old heels hard and watch all these others whizzing past me and over the edge, some fat, some obese, some slim, some as healthy looking as trout. And obituaries don't depress me either the way they used to. I've actually got to enjoy reading them, seeing ones younger than me going belly up. Did you ever notice? – these newspapers hardly ever give the cause of death when the dead person is over seventy, take it for granted you see that readers won't wonder at that because we're not expected to go on much longer after the big seven-o.

As for Henry, I try not to think about her too much now, those bristles on her chin and that open sore she has on her upper lip from trimming the moustache. I should never have married her of course. The day she sashayed onto the green wearing those blinding white hot pants and twirling her fancy parasol was the day that finished me. And look at her now, just look at her now. Not a tooth in her head and chin wagging like a freaking wart. I know I shouldn't bother myself trying anything in bed but sometimes the old urge gets the better of me and I'm shifting over in a sort of desperation hoping to cradle her big bum in my lap and if she wakens I end up getting a dig in the ribs or worse.

And then other times I put on the frillies and inch over when she's asleep, working on the logic that what she doesn't feel can't annoy her, though the last time I did it she woke up and nearly had a fit. I still have appetite enough but the way it is with her now she doesn't want to know and always ends up telling me to act my age. It's quite scandalous of course. As you and I know, seventy-one is far from being finished. Robert Mugabe had three children with his young wife Grace when he was over seventy. Rupert Murdoch was older than me when he and Wendi went at it ding-a deng-dong and had two daughters in two years. Not that I'd be looking for offspring at my age. Not like Harry Stevenson from out the Glen that got married again aged seventy-six and had his eleventh when he was eighty-two – all girls, not that that's strictly relevant. And he's still going. Last I heard his third wife was expecting again. And she's only thirty-seven – well capable of giving him another two or three children. Harry makes mincemeat of what some of these doctors say about men in their seventies and eighties getting heart attacks and strokes from having sex.

Mention of Harry reminds me of a letter I saw from this old woman to a sex adviser in some magazine I picked up at the dentist's. "I'm seventy-nine and in the last ten years alone I have been married twice to younger men and taken a number of lovers," wrote the geriatric. "They're all dead now and, although I had very exciting sex with each and every one of them, what I always enjoyed most was masturbation. Lately however I'm not getting the same pleasure from this and I'm wondering if you could advise me on suitable sex toys?" Well, what about that? I thought. So I stuffed the magazine down the front of my trousers and brought it home and left it lying open at the right page for Henry to see but the next place I saw it was in the rubbish bin.