In the modern world, if there’s one thing we’re short of these days, it’s time. The world seems to have sped up recently. It’s got Faster. There’s more happening. In more places. And there’s less time to see each things. Or more to see in the same time. However you want to slice it.

The end result is the same. We’ll all get to the same place. It just might take slightly less time to get there.

We’re young now. We won’t always be. But when we get old, we’ll know what its like to be young. We won’t make the mistakes the old now. Make no mistake, I despise pensioners. Not because they’re old though. I’d despise them no matter what age they were if they behaved like this. And in the interests of fairness and equality, I’ll treat them the same as anyone else.

One day, all of us will be old. Our flesh will sag. Our hair will turn white. Our minds will crumble. Our sense of style - if ever we had one - will become positively confused. Our movements will become arthiritic, and slow. The world as we know it will recede into memory. When things were more comforting, when you could still listen to music on Compact Discs.

Like a large animal - which tend to be the ones with the slowest reflexes and the longest life span - the old positively lumber and crawl through life. Despite having absolutely no pressing concerns - after all, when you’re retired every day is a holiday, in so much as you don’t have to go to work - the old just tend to fail to understand that other people might just have things to do. We might have places to go. People to see. And with so many demands upon our time, anything, anything that wastes our time is not going to be suffered gladly.

Just to make it clear, I absolutely fucking hate old people. I hate old people because they smell. I hate old people because they think the world should revere them just because they’re not dead yet. I hate them because they’re thick. I hate old people because they have all the time in the world, and they want to waste all of your time as well.

Mankind can only go as fast as the weakest, slowest link.

And the weakest, slowest link is waiting at a bus stop on a Saturday morning to go to the shops. It’s not just your life you're wasting. This is my life. And it’s ending one second at a time. You might not have achieved anything. But I intend on doing something, if I ever get where I’m going.

So a few points of guidance for the Old Folks.

For those who work, our lives have a lot going on. Say, if we have a desk job, if we’re lucky we spent about 42 hours either at, or travelling to and from, work. So we have less time. That’s almost two whole days a week. Do us a favour. Whilst we’re at work : Go to shops. Go to the Post Office. Pick up your pension. Whatever the hell it is. And when we’re let out of work, go home and hide. Even at your mogadon pace, two days a week is more than enough time for you to go and buy your fossilised livers, your old fashion raw kidneys, your weird skin ointments and rocks for your multitudes of cats to eat.

And don’t dare hit us with sticks in supermarkets you blind old fuckers. Pretending you’re blind and old is not going to let you off the fact that you hit people with sticks.

Don’t go into Music & Video Exchange, Notting Hill, trying to sell box sets of a 20 record set called Readers Digest Classical Classics 10” EP box sets. Nobody wants your old fashioned, worthless tat. Nobody buys it for the same reason you want to sell it. It’s useless and shit. So when the guy behind the counter laughs at you, don’t argue with him. It’s his shop. And you’re just some piss-smelling dinosaur in a cardie and flat cap the wind blew in. Behave like a man who just got refused a date. Pretend it didn’t happen and leave. Fast.

Don’t walk around these new fangled shops trying to pay for things with rent books, old ration coupons, and bits of twig you found on the floor. Buy whatever it is when I and most everyone else is at work, and leave those of us with lives in front of us alone.

Get your beloved grand-daughter to pick you up to and from the shops. Don’t take your old green cords and puke green jackets into town in the height of summer. Especially not by bus. Don’t wander on the bus with dribble coming out of your mouth, movements like a Parkinsons’s sufferer, and waste all of our time.

Don’t take an indeterminable age to climb up three small steps. Don’t ask the driver of the bus where its going. You already know! It’s in huge yellow letters on the front.Time drags. A second passes. A pin drops.

We’re only interested if you’re over 30 and the bus is taking you to The Carousel (fans of “Logan’s Run” should know what we’re talking about here).Do yourself a favour. Don’t ask him how much it is. You have a pensioner’s bus pass. So get on the ride, shut up, and leave us alone. You’re going to die soon. Don’t hasten the inevitable end by making us busy people angry. You wouldn’t like us when we’re angry.

A simple request. At least once a day, I find myself racing against the clock. Running for a train, against a deadline. It’s the way of the modern world. I don’t say I like it, but that’s the way it is. Ducking, dodging, weaving: creating ‘The Critical Path’ between Points A & B. Cutting corners, snipping edges, trying to achieve the minimum distance and time to reach the same place.

And always I find myself judging if there’s enough inches between Incredibly Slow Old Woman With Huge Wheeled Trolley-Bag Dragging Small Yappy Dog Wearing Jumper and the The Small Gap In The Pavement Next To The Bin. If I cut those seconds, if I leap beyond that obstacle, I can be home sooner. Already in my mind I have created my paradise, my personal nirvana, whereby I can enjoy a good film, a pint, even just time to relax at my own pace in my own home. The preciousness of these moments is lost completely to someone who has nothing to do with the rest of their lives except grow wrinkles. Weekends are meaningless when you’re retired. Every day is a weekend.

So do yourself a favour. If you don’t want to get knocked outo the way by someone who wants to make the most of their minutes left on the planet try not to get in the way. Think about where you are standing, where you are going, and how long its going to take you to get there. Don’t try to cut us off at the point. We'll cut the breake leads on your wheelchair.

Our noses work. Yours might not. But we can smell things. We can smell old clothes. We can smell dried piss. We can smell mothballs. We can smell decades of dirt and cheap washing tablets from Aldi or Netto. We can smell pants that you fell asleep in, pissed yourself and haven’t washed with white stringy elastic exposed and holes in them. We know your bodily functions. But we haven’t lost our self respect. Or our sense of smell. Just because you’re old doesn’t mean you should let yourself go. Wash regularly.

Do it for us. Just like all those sacrifices you made in the war. Protect our freedoms and fight the evils of foul hygiene.

Or wear make up. Or make jokes about sex. Imagine layers of wrinkles on top of wrinkles grunting. Oh -urgh!-. There’s nothing that makes you look older than trying to be young. And nothing makes you look younger than trying to be old. Please. Don’t try and penetrate our lives with your smutty allusions. Joking about flashing us with your underwear getting out of cars. We don’t want to even think about how many wrinkles you have down there.

Just don’t wear lipstick, nail varnish, or be suggestive. You’ve definitely had sex. We know this, because you’ve got children. But please don’t think you should do it again. Have you seen your children? You tried your best, and they turned out like that. And don’t go asking when you’re going to be a Grand Mother. Some people don’t want children you know. We don’t want to turn out like you. I’d hate to think that my sole mission when I hit 72 is to act as a stage in the Obstacle course known as the High Street of 2045.

I want to remember old people, like Elvis, at their best. I don’t want you to suffer - or me for that matter. I don’t want to spend my Sundays watching pale heartbeats travel imperceptibly around withered limbs with more things stuck in them than a voodoo doll. And you diseases and afflictions are NOT the Most Interesting Things In The World. We don’t want to know about your hip replacements, your Alzheimers, your cancers, your prostrate problems, your weird Adult Nappies, your blotches in strange places, or anything like that. Please be quiet. Shut up. Use your ears more, your mouth less, and your Shopmobility Cart not at all.

Your brains been dying since the age of 18. But please, you don’t have to prove this by asking the price of something when it says in big letters (red on yellow normally) “18P FOR THIS CAN OF COD LIVER OIL!”. You know how much it costs. Don’t ask. And don’t go to college at the age of 65 and try to learn something new. There’s no point. You’ll never use it for anything apart from boring us all half-stupid about this new-fangled thing you’ve heard of called The Internet, which is like a big library that you can access using a thing called a Computer. That's so 90's.

So you saw the Second World War, Elvis Presley and The Beatles. So what? It wasn’t half as good as you thought it was then. Everything was in sepia in those days. Remember? The miracle is not that you are alive, but that you haven’t yet been killed by angry people with places to go, people to see, lives to live, or a low flying Skateboarder. You have been warned.