Obviously, I am getting older by the minute, but it's hard to always see it that way. Personally, old age has much to do with the way we approach it.

My grandmother, Martha Douglas, taught me a valuable lesson on that score.

She worked as the forewoman at the Steam Laundry in Tatton Street, Knutsford, until she was 70.

She died 18 months later, a happy woman. Old age did not worry her.

An inspiration to me - and, no doubt, many others - unlike some of those featured in a recent BBC TV documentary, Through the Eyes of the Old.

Despite being in my sixties, I had always considered myself to be middle-aged.

Not so, it seems.

The programme implied that from 60 you are old.

It concerned me when one pensioner complained how, during a hospital visit, she felt they were not interested in her as a whole person.

But there glimmers of hope.

Despite severe health problems, John and Betty were proof that their deep and lasting love was as strong as ever.

Lady Joan still had a wonderful sense of humour and despite the fact her husband Sir Christopher was wheelchair-bound, she was still happy to take him to the races and other engagements.

In Knutsford, we are fortunate there are so many organisations and clubs to join, churches to visit and tea dances to attend. In the programme Connie and Joy were determined to live life to the full and went off on holiday to Tenerife where they danced the night away. Well done to them. I could not keep up with that.

TRAFFIC in Knutsford gives us all a headache.

So I have nothing but sympathy for the woman worried about the sequencing of the traffic lights at the junction of Brook Street and Hollow Lane.

I live in that area and use the road almost daily between 8.45am and 9.15am.

It's the worst possible time, but it is almost as dangerous in the late afternoon.

There is a constant stream of traffic - either using Legh Road as a short-cut to turn right into Manor Park South or to go along to the junction with Mobberley Road.

Add to this the non-stop traffic travelling from Chelford Road down Brook Street and it is almost impossible to turn right out of Mobberley Road.

I am extremely worried at what will happen when we have the traffic from Lilybrook, Hollow Lane and the Shambles added to the existing traffic.

Just think of it, cars wanting to turn right into the newly refurbished office block and finding the left-hand side of the road with a queue of cars travelling down Brook Street, and not prepared to give way, all that happens then is the cars cannot move and will block the road down the hill and across the traffic lights.

We have seen it all before.

We have also seen the surplus of cars, which cannot find a parking space in the office car park, finding that they can park at the end of Legh Road.

Do we have need to worry or can we rest assured the powers concerned will have taken all the problems into account and have all the answers?

AND FINALLY

UNFORTUNATELY, my father and father-in-law died before my sons were born so they never had a grandfather.

One day, while putting flowers on the family graves, my young son started to walk up and down one of the graves watering it.

When asked what he was doing, he explained that he knew you watered plants to make flowers grow, so he thought he would water the grave to see if he could grow a grandad.