[wraymond]

We all have those moments when we are faced with an alternative view of ourselves that we hadn’t even considered and felt that creeping sense of an alternative reality that is the real one.

Mine was some years ago, on a train from Southend Victoria to central London (Tottenham Court Road). Celia and I were going to a pub in Oxford Street to a concert given by Richard Smith and his brothers. It was to be splendid occasion filled with artistry in the Chet Atkins fashion and expectations of superb playing were on offer.

The train was full, no seats available and plenty of passengers standing, trying not to look at each other for fear of having to smile at a stranger. We were hanging from the leather strap when a spotty youth, rucksack casually but meticulously thrown over just one milk-bottle shoulder, stood up and offered me his seat. Me.

Celia, blatantly displaying demure female characteristics, looked at me with that withering look she has spent our married life mastering, grinned all over the face that screamed “I told you so”. It was then that the carefully constructed assumption that she, being slightly ol... no, a year or two ahead, of me crumbled.

Life hasn’t been the same since. And I absolutely refuse to wear lipstick, powder and paint to mask the difference. So it didn’t happen.