Well frankly sixty-four is nothing at all. My hero, the great and good J.L. Carr wrote two of his nine splendid novels when he was just under and just over eighty. My other hero, P.G. Wodehouse, died, pen in hand, at the age of ninety-three. The novels he wrote in his eighties and nineties are just as good, indeed they are indistinguishable from, the novels he wrote in his fifties or his thirties. The secret is to get into a groove, you see. I'm in one. A groove. Thanks one and all. The only one not welcome at the party is Death and I haven't spotted him - yet.
I write about him constantly. Buttering him up, don't you know.
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