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HAPPY BIRTHDAY March 2003 It's my birthday today. I'm sixty five. It may come as a surprise to some but I would assure them that it came as an even bigger surprise to me as I thought I was twenty seven. Well I am twenty seven in my head. In fact I've been twenty seven in my head ever since I was twenty seven everywhere else, some thirty eight years ago.     Probably in an effort to compensate for this my body is way over sixty five, about a hundred and seventy three I would estimate, judging from all the aches and pains and things wrong with it.     More often than not I see myself in my mind's eye looking exactly as I did when I was twenty seven; no oil painting but at least not the washed-out water colour that looks back at me from the bathroom window every morning nowadays. This catches me out sometimes, especially if I happen to have caught the eye of an attractive young woman, because I can never understand why she isn't looking back at me in the way I am looking at her, with an expression, if not of downright lust, then certainly with a look of interest. Not that many young women ever looked at me with lust when I was twenty seven. In fact I can only remember it ever happening once and even then it turned out that the girl in question was lusting after my mate who was standing next to me, and only appeared to be looking at me because she had a wall eye.(He was welcome to her, when I make love to a woman I like her to be looking at me not the bedroom window)     However in those days they often returned my look with a look of interest, or at least with a certain curiosity. Now they look clean through me. It's as if I'm not there. The Invisible Old Man. They must know that I'm looking at them but somehow it doesn't register with them, it's as if it is beyond their comprehension that a man in his sixties should look at them. Well the day I stop looking at attractive-looking young women will be the day they put me in that little wooden bungalow with no windows.     Up to now it's not so bad being sixty five, not a lot different than being sixty four as far as I can tell. I certainly don't feel any different. But maybe it kicks in later, when you first draw your old age pension and get your free bus pass. Maybe along with your pension you get your first instalment of senile dementia. And you find that your bus pass not only gives you concessionary bus fares but also a couple of concessionary arthritic hips, so that you'll need concessionary bus fares because you can't walk anywhere. But up to now things are no different.