I do love getting older. Here are five infuriating reasons why

A new scientific study has revealed what we all knew, deep down - you can't stop the ageing process. But it does come with some serious benefits

Apparently - brace yourselves - we can't stop ageing. Time to pack up my crucible and robes and cancel my subscription to Practical Alchemy for Beginners. A newly published international study has concluded, in essence, that biological factors will continue to constrain our attempts to prolong life. The trajectory towards death in old age has not changed," said Jose Manuel Aburto, part of the team that analysed mortality data, rather crushingly, like that kid who told you Santa wasn't real.

I could have told you that these flesh envelopes of offal have a sell-by date, simply from watching my husband (51) hobble around last weekend in a doleful cloud of Voltarol pain relief gel, having swapped his desk chair for an inflatable exercise ball for the afternoon in an attempt to strengthen his core". For me (46), a new orthopaedic chair was supposed to sort out my seized-up shoulder but inexplicably gives me aching buttocks in exchange: there is no combination of sitting, standing or lying that doesn't hurt after half an hour now, and no shred of grace or dignity in the transitions between these states. We have the built-in obsolescence of crappy white goods, not the perennial majesty of mountains.