Fishing Lines: Saga of a little light music

YOU KNOW you're getting old when you start to talk about the music you would like played at your funeral. These morbid thoughts have been festering for months, I guess, but they were brought to the fore by three events. Just last week, I trotted along to a funeral (where the deceased was clearly a Bach fan), and a few days later attended the 25th wedding anniversary of my sister Valerie.

I didn't remember her wedding. Not surprising. I was fishing in Denmark (and my sister has never quite forgiven me). Still, I made an effort this time despite the offer of some top-drawer salmon fishing. I rather wish I hadn't bothered, not because the salmon fed avidly in my absence (I checked soon as I got back, and they didn't) but because everybody looked so old. My dad is frail and his memory is dodgy, my mother arthritic. The men are fatter, with less hair; the women elegant rather than glamorous. "You haven't changed a bit," everyone said, but they had. They could fool themselves, but I couldn't. Just 24 hours earlier, I had received a fat parcel that told me things my best friends were too polite to say.

The warning signs have been around for a while. The one that hit me most came in the Bahamas. I was on one of those jobs that comes once, at most, in the lifetime of most journalists. Jonathan Young, the editor of The Field, had received a letter from the Bahamas Tourist Board. Would the magazine like to send someone out to go fishing and generally swan around the Bahamas? Jonathan sent me the letter with a little note appended saying: Keith, do you fancy it? I replied by return of fax: "It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it."

Most of it was pretty wonderful and one golden memory will live with me to my grave (Aaagh! There I go again). The sun was blazing down. I was fishing on a big-game boat, four rods spread out. If a fish took, it was mine; none of this nonsense about taking turns. I had a beer in one hand as I lounged in the fighting chair. Then it struck me. I'm working!

But there was a downside. Much of my angling there was for bonefish, an elusive, hard-fighting fish so silvery that most of my pictures look as if I'm holding a mirror. Bones live in very shallow water. You have to stalk them. In the Bahamas, this is generally done from a shallow-bottomed boat, with a guide directing you to the right spots and locating the fish.

Good job he was there. My days passed with the guide pointing to the sea and saying: "Look at that shoal!" I couldn't see a thing. At first I thought it was a joke they play on gullible Englishmen. Eventually, I spotted the occasional ghostly shape, but only if the fish were right on the surface. I came home and bought a pair of glasses. Imagine! Being told you're getting old by a fish.

Ever since, I've tried to ignore the little clues. Suddenly, tying small hooks is a bit of a chore. My casts catch the trees more. I miss out the occasional ring when threading line through the rod. The fish bite faster. I'm driving slower. I could handle all these. The brain is pretty cute at finding excuses for its own shortcomings. But it couldn't handle last week's postal surprise - a free copy of Saga magazine, with an invitation to subscribe.

Since looking through it, I've been inconsolable. Lots of old people, telling how much fun they are having now they are retired and the grandchildren have grown up. One really old person even spoke of the time it gave him to go fishing. Now all I can see before me is the pensioners' national championships, bright orange bite detectors, free bus travel, bigger hooks, choosing a fishing spot for its proximity to the car park.

I realised, too late, that I wasn't the archetypal wrinkly reader after all. My wife, clever thing, pointed out that it's because we insure our home through Saga (special deal when you've turned 50, which as everyone knows, is just creeping into middle age). But the damage is done. I'm taking this music to die by seriously. Little Boy Fishin' just doesn't have the right air of gravitas. Readers' suggestions welcome.