I’M 52, so by my calculations, 36 years ago I’d never have believed I might ever consider a Sunday stroll round a National Trust property as the recipe for a perfect afternoon out.

But time marches on and takes it toll, and now wiser and more water retentive, I find orangeries and working water wheels utterly captivating. And no, I don’t believe it has anything to do with the fact my hair has disappeared and control of my bladder can’t be far behind it.

Yet when I was sweet 16, the thought of having to visit anything that required hushed tones for speech and home-made scones would automatically have elicited the same response a cattle prod on my nipple might produce.

“Come on Jer,” mum and dad would say wearily every Sunday, “let’s go for a drive out to Dullsville Abbey. They’ve got some lovely tea towels there.”

Maybe it was because I was always sat in the back of my parent’s car, and maybe it was because I dreaded the thought school pals might see me, but I died on every one of these outings.

Of course, it wasn’t so easy on my parents either. To say I was irritable and uncommunicative is putting it mildly – I was rude, obnoxious and a total @*£%!

Typically, I moped about like a bucket of squid, answered everything snappishly “s’pose so” and refused to look anyone in the eye.

But force nearly 40 years on to any pretentious jerk and like the Big Bang and other wonders of nature, you all of a sudden emerge triumphant from your chrysalis of ignorance, spread your wings and enquire of the nearest blue-rinse sales assistant if organic Manuka honey really is on the menu.

Yet it’s not like I’m unusual or anything. A lot of my younger friends, especially those that are settled in the their early thirties, cheerfully admit to having started visiting stately homes a year or two after their weddings (but by then of course that whole post-coital afterglow will have worn a little thin).

Hell – and God knows I’m not advocating this – but some of these individuals have even begun sporting National Trust life membership stickers on their car windscreens as well as boasting cat and donkey teatowels on their Agas.

And although I can’t tell them this, I’ve also noticed they’ve begun, en masse, to pile on the pounds.

After all, who can resist a jam and cream scone and a nice pot of Earl Grey after a good hike around some Neanderthal barrow?

So I guess it’s happened.

Years of maintaining a coiled and sprung-like torso (with a little lift-and-tuck around the cheeks) may have fooled some of the people some of the time, but a jar of preservatives and a picnic rug in my cloakroom have now all but destroyed my credibility...