Julian looked at himself in the mirror with distaste. His face felt saggy and tufts of stray hair sprouted from his nose and ears. Growing old was an insult to the gods. He remembered the very first time he had gone to the barber's on his own as a child. How frightening, yet how grown up it had seemed. Now he might as well be invisible as the stylist went about her business.

He closed the door and walked to the day room. Oh God. There was that dull Swede who went on and on about some unconsummated 40-year love affair between Anders Boden and Mrs Lindwall. It was obviously meant to be a lyrical reflection on the beauty and sadness of the unexpressed, but it was just plain boring. Maybe it was just the way he told it, he thought in a moment of compassion. After all, old people do tend to repeat themselves.

Ah, there was Babs. "I bet she was a looker in her day," he muttered to himself. Not that he could do that much about it. He used to be able to fuck three times a day; now he'd be lucky to do it even once. He was reminded of the anecdote about the retired sergeant-major who had visited the same prostitute each year at the regiment dinner. The last time he went, he found out she had died. Julian sank back into a reverie as Merrill and Janice wittered on about their wonderful, adoring, long-dead husbands. He felt like shouting "shut the fuck up" because everyone in the nursing home knew that one husband had been gay and the other a serial adulterer. But what was the point? It kept them happy, he supposed.

"Story time," shouted the care worker. Julian groaned. Not another third-rate offering from Granta's latest list of Young British Novelists. "I was on that list once," he spluttered. "Of course you were, dear." Julian ignored her: "Writers today haven't even read Tolstoy, Turgenev or Flaubert, let alone dined with them."

He marched over to the gramophone, placed a 78 of Mozart K595 on the platter. Various old crones started hawking into their spittoons. '"Don't any of you know how to behave in the concert hall?" he yelled. "Fuck off," retorted Mart, the youngest care home resident.

Julian sloped off to his bedroom. He looked inside his bedside table for his fan letters. It might have been 20 years ago, and the fan had been rather elderly, but Mrs Winstanley had been a nice old bird. Shame she'd died.

Time for lunch. It was torture watching food being traduced in this way, but there was little he could do. Still, he might be able to get his own back on Mart by tripping him up in the dinner queue. And then it would be back to his writing. Everyone was waiting for his latest opus, but old age did slow the creative process. It was so hard to get continuity when you needed a nap.

"Wake up, Mr Barnes," said the nurse. "It's time for your medication."

The digested read ... digested

I simply don't believe it.