Age is just a number. Unfortunately, that number is on a thunderously-ticking clock that creeps with ever-increasing velocity towards a bigger number each year, and when the number is big enough you fall over and die.

So: Happy birthday to me.

The worst thing about being middle-aged is that half the people I work with were somewhere between filling nappies and gasping in wonder at sproutings of bodily hair when I started my first job in journalism, and though I mentally stopped developing about the age of 23 there can be no doubt that I am viewed as the old bloke in the corner who sits there pulling weird faces while he writes cheery little missives about slouching towards the grave.

And make no doubt about it, I am middle-aged. If I’m lucky, that is. I’m 43 today, which means if I get to live my whole lifespan so far again I’ll be 86. If I’m still alive I’ll probably be a hideously cantankerous old trout gabbling on about typewriters and vinyl records as I try to get to sleep in a cardboard box.

On a whim I put “43” into Google to see whether it was an auspicious age. It isn’t. It’s largely a vile, depressing nowhere age where some people finally give up the ghost and crawl into their coffins because they can’t take any more or alternatively achieve things that I haven’t a snowball’s chance in Death Valley of matching.

For example, there’s still time for me to become a world leader, on paper, though it’s not really going to happen, is it? David Cameron was 43 when he was elected... sorry, when he became Prime Minister, and John F Kennedy was the same age when he stepped into the White House.

But, by and large, it’s all about shuffling off this mortal coil. There’s actually a website called “Dead At Your Age”. Do you want to know some of those who carked it at the age of 43?

Louis Braille. Beat writer William S Burroughs. Actor John Candy. King Edward II. Tragic actress Natalie Wood. Stuart Adamson from Big Country. Barbara Bates, who starred in All About Eve. Scott of the Antarctic.

But enough about death. What about the actual number, 43? Last year, when I was 42, I was at least cheered by the fact that this number was the famous answer to the question “What’s the meaning of life?”, at least according to Douglas Adams in the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. What mystical delights could Wikipedia impart to match that?

“43 (forty-three) is the natural number following 42 and preceding 44.”

Well, yeah. Thanks for that.

But the most terrible thing on the internet about the number 43? Some stupid youth actually dragging themselves out of their pit to type the legendarily idiotic question into a website: “What year were you born if you are aged 43?”

Young people. I despair. Youth is wasted on ’em, seriously.