Last week I went out and forgot that I’d left the dog’s rice cooking. Twice. Even though I’d reminded myself, out loud, just before leaving, to turn the gas off.

Help! Soon I’ll be needing assistance; someone popping in to help me organise my life and check that I’m not totally farmisht and storing my dinners in the broom cupboard, like Auntie used to do.

There will be some pretty complex organising needed, what with the government’s “personalisation” fad, AKA “sort–it–out–yourselves-you’re-nearly-dead–anyway-what-do-we-care?” Council will give me a weekly budget, then I can choose to pay a carer, which makes me an employer, who must pay national insurance; or go to a day centre, which will charge me a daily rate, once it has spent ages working one out. This is what the lovely Great Croft day centre in Camden has had to faff about doing. To help the old persons to decide, it must pay a seven-hour-a-week co-ordinator to sort out 70 volunteers/befrienders (usually retired professionals), who need training, CRB checks, and to be sensitively matched up with, and sent out to, the elderly people, who are cracking up trying to work out what they want, how much they’ve got, whether their families or the local post office are nicking their money (yes, it does happen), and what the hell personalisation means.