There isn’t a lot to be said in favour of reaching your 70th birthday. Most of the “funny” cards and gifts (like the “OAPs’ Sex Manual” filled with blank pages) are presented by unfeeling friends at 60. When you begin your eighth decade (which is what it is) the hints are more subtle.

They started in September when the bank wrote to remind me that, with effect from Christmas Eve, their travel insurance policy would no longer apply. The same week the DVLA asked me to return my driving licence so that it could be replaced with a 3-year version.

Then the Samaritans rota-secretary called to say that from now on I’m excused full-night duties (I’m grateful for that, because they’re very tiring). And when I dropped into the surgery to inquire about a swine-flu jab they said that over-65s are at the very back of the queue.

People feel a need to reassure you. “Seventy? You don’t look it,” they tell you. “Clean living,” I reply, “you must avoid that at all costs.” So far no-one in a bus or train has offered me their seat (I shall probably snarl at the first person to do so), and nobody’s yet suggested my joining Eventide or whatever.

But there are constant reminders. People I knew - including contemporaries - keep appearing in the obituary columns. OK, most are in their mid-80s - but Brian Barron? … it makes you think.

Each year now lasts about 9 months, people in extraordinarily responsible positions seem extraordinarily young, and in the past decade I’ve attended more funerals than weddings, (including, sadly, another one yesterday).

So what do you gain from reaching three score and ten? Well, I suppose the main thing is experience (though for that you could read “disillusioned cynicism”). It comes as a shock to know that events you lived through are to many people (including our leaders) just bits they’ve read in history books. Or not bothered to read about at all. The lesson of history is that we learn nothing from history.

On the whole mine have been 70 pretty good years. Even the bad times were good, as the song says. So I can’t really grumble. Except that I do, of course. Normal service will be resumed when this blogger has recovered from his birthday hangover.