I am both astonished and horrified by this.

Astonished that a bloke 19 years my senior can have accomplished such a stupendous feat of endurance; horrified that my equivalent Everest, given the state of my aching limbs and a tendency toward middle-aged spread, is to reach my toe nails with a pair of scissors.

I read about the Nepalese mountaineer who broke the record by five years, in an article about Dame Joan Bakewell.

You may remember her from the 1960s when she was labelled "the thinking man's crumpet" as a result of presenting some high-brow programmes on the telly.

As a spotty teenager, my idea of crumpet was more Faithfull than Bakewell but only one of them is about to become Gordon Brown's Czar for the Elderly and it isn't our Marianne, God bless her.

Yes, that's right, a czar for the elderly; a coffin-dodger's champion ready to scrutinise government policy in case it discriminates against those older souls whose ranks I am scheduled to join in another decade or so.

Those of us who recall that the last party we went to was to celebrate the new millennium, know only too well how quickly decades can pass.

Anyway, there still being no crumpet-style holes in Dame Joan's 75-year-old grey matter, she has interpreted the job as an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of older people, such as septugenarian mountaineers.

Scoff you may but there is evidence to suggest that the appointment of czars for this and that, is a good thing.

For example, when Tony Blair appointed a "drugs czar," drug-taking immediately took off. Suddenly there was no more popular pastime in Britain and the policy was voted a resounding success.

So Dame Joan's intention to convey to the nation that qualifying for a bus pass is in no way a pointer to destination Scrapheap, seems bound for success.

I do hope so, because I've spent the last couple of years becoming increasingly aware that, if I am here at all 10 or 20 years from now, I may not be fit for purpose.

I think it began under general anaesthetic. I'd more or less assumed I was immortal until, two years back, a consultant physician eyed the results of my scan and decided to remove a section of my internal plumbing without delay.

Having thus been made aware of my mortality, I am also acutely aware of every cough and splutter; every muscular twinge and internal rumble. And it is most unsettling.

Sadly, I have failed every resolution to undertake more exercise and to eat and drink more sensibly. Once more, these things are on ice until the New Year.

Which is particularly worrying this week, as the health police have been chirping more stridently than usual.

The economy has gone bust, so what are they going to do? Ban happy hour. What marvellous timing.

What gets me are all those health "maps" you see in the papers. You know the ones...where the areas of Britain in which you're most likely to suffer some killer disease, are coloured dark.

And the darkest of the lot always engulf my house and yours.
No wonder we have the highest suicide rate as well. The urge to top ourselves is entirely map-induced.

Except...

I saw a map in a Sunday supplement last weekend purporting to show the least tranquil areas of Britain in deepest crimson.

The biggest blobs were over London, naturally, but also over this neck of the woods.

Over Rivington Pike, the Trough of Bowland, Formby Point and, if my O-level geography continues to serve me well, over Arnside Knot as well.
Each of them being the very definition of tranquility

In other words, my friends, ignore the health maps. On the road to old age, that's tip number one.

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