THERE are lots of things which are making me feel very old at the moment. For a start, I've started growing little tufts of hair on my back and in my ears. I've started listening to Radio Two - even Terry Wogan. And I can't stand to be in the same room when my daughter's playing her music.

"It's not music, it's just a noise," I find myself shouting - just like my dad used to during my years devoted to Top of the Pops.

I thought the sense of rapid ageing couldn't get any worse than when I joined five other dads on a golfing weekend to Dublin recently.

In a desperate search for our lost youth, we found ourselves in a nightclub. In fact, I think it was one of those rave clubs - the nearest thing to hell I could imagine.

It was too hot to breathe, so packed you couldn't move, the music was so loud that you couldn't talk to anyone and the drinks were so expensive that I had to stay thirsty.

To cap it all, I ended up being asked to dance by a bloke I'd never seen before in my life.

Having politely declined, I looked around, realised I was old enough to have fathered everyone else in sight, and began inching through the forest of sweaty arms and legs towards the door.

Oh yes, the Dublin experience was bad. But the passing of time really hit me when I got back home and took the kids to Grandma's house.

She'd promised to cook them lunch but there was a problem: "Oh no, I've run out of chips," she cried.

Looks of horror spread across the faces of our hungry foursome. No chips - the world had come to an end, how could life possibly go on?

To children, a house without chips is as horrific as a rave club to a dad, hurtling towards 40.

But Grandmas are nothing if not resourceful: "Don't worry, it won't take me long to peel a few spuds," she declared.

The looks of horror turned to looks of wonder: "What are you going to do with that?" asked six-year-old Jack, pointing at a potato in her hand.

"I'm going to make some chips," replied Grandma.

Jack laughed. "But it's round and hard."

Grandma got on with the job in hand. Jack couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"Quick, quick," he shouted to the others, "Grandma's making chips out of real potatoes."

"Wow," said Christopher, aged ten, as they gathered in the kitchen, watching her cut the real potatoes into chip shapes, and pour them into boiling oil. "That's amazing."

She wasn't splitting the atom. She wasn't creating a masterful piece of art. She wasn't even doing magic. She was just making chips - out of real potatoes.

I watched in wonderment too - amazed that I'm in the middle of raising children who've never seen chips that didn't come out of a packet.

"I like them even better than real chips," said Jack.

THE THINGS THEY SAY:

The 16-year-old son of a friend of ours had been given some holiday money by his dad and he kept it quiet when he begged some more cash from his mum.

Unimpressed, his older sister thought their mum should be informed about the lad's duplicity.

Equally unimpressed, the mum decided to speak to her son when he came home from school.

"Isn't there something you want to tell me David?" she asked.

"No," replied David, a little sheepishly.

"Oh I think there is," insisted his mum.

"All right, all right," he shouted, "I've been going to the pub."