By the time you read this I’ll be 60, having passed that milestone on Tuesday. My older friends tell me that turning 60 is like having to give a speech in public – the anticipation is worse than the reality. Once it’s in your rear-view mirror, you quickly forget about it and instead start looking ahead and thinking about the national speed limit. But as I write it’s looming like the horror of the shade, to quote William Ernest Henley.

I’m loath to bellyache about this because I can imagine being incredibly irritated when, in 20 years’ time, I read a column by some young whippersnapper complaining about turning 60. ‘Call that old?’ I’ll think to myself. ‘Try dealing with rheumatism and gout and cardiovascular disease, you ungrateful little sod.’ That’s one of the things I’ve noticed about getting on in years – you develop more empathy for the elderly because you know you’ll be among their ranks in the bat of an eye.

So I’ll focus on reasons to be cheerful instead. For instance, I’m now the proud owner of a senior railcard. A return ticket to Huddersfield to see QPR away this Saturday would normally cost £106.80, but with my new discount it’s a mere £70.40. Still wildly overpriced, obviously, and it means I won’t be eligible for my Friends and Family discount when I buy tickets for my three sons – you can only use one railcard per journey, apparently. The solution is to get my eldest son, who’s 18, to apply for a Friends and Family card (which in reality means I’ll have to stand over him and take him through the steps), get him to buy the tickets (ditto), then reimburse him every time we go to a game. Turns out there’s a lot of admin involved in wrangling your OAP benefits.

I also have my health and my marbles, although I’m reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I’ll have to give up booze if I plan to keep them. My alcohol management plan for this year has been to abstain for three days a week and I have a handy finger–wagging NHS app to help me achieve that. But the downside is that in the four days when I do drink I can’t help but try to make up for those when I don’t, and I suspect ‘intermittent bingeing’ isn’t as good for you as intermittent fasting (which I also do). Being half on the wagon and half off, it seems, isn’t possible. But if I don’t climb on board and strap myself in, I will probably be a gibbering, drooling wreck by the time I hit the next milestone – sans teeth etc. How’s that for a birthday present to myself? Forswear the one thing in the world that momentarily silences the stern taskmaster in my head telling me to get back to work.

I also have a wife and four children who can keep me company as I totter ever closer to the abyss. At the moment this involves savage jokes about being an old fart – ‘Did you know your penis shrinks by 25 per cent in your seventh decade, Dad?’ – and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve clubbed together to get me a Zimmer frame for my birthday. Better than a hearing aid, I suppose, although it won’t be long. I know that once I’ve got one, my sons will take a leaf out of Basil Fawlty’s book and start mouthing words silently so I frantically adjust it, only to then shout at me so I think I’ve turned it up too high. What larks! But I dread the day when they start tiptoeing around the subject of my advanced age. That’s when I’ll know I’m old.

Another plus is that I don’t have to worry about losing my hair or becoming invisible to the opposite sex. Both of those things happened in my early twenties. If Caroline leaves me and I have to go back on the dating market the only upside is that I’ll get lots of self-deprecating material to fill this column with. Sorry, Cosmo Landesman, but I’ll corner the market in documenting the pride-swallowing siege of being a single man over 60. Next to me, Cosmo is Rudolf Nureyev.

In truth, I’m not that depressed – at least not more than usual in the run-up to a birthday. If I were a long–serving employee of a large company and facing the prospect of being handed a carriage clock in seven years’ time, I would be more unhappy about being 60. What would I fill the time with? My only hobby is following QPR, and a one-way ticket to a Swiss clinic would be preferable to going to even more away games.

My father worked ten hours a day, seven days a week, apart from on the last day of his life, when he managed only eight. He was 86 and assailed by three types of cancer. He’s the voice in my head telling me to work harder, and without the blessed relief of alcohol I’ll have no choice but to obey.