I have, indeed, discovered Mandolin Café, courtesy of a guy at the office (another passionate plinker). There's also The Session (at www.thesession.org), an amazing resource of Irish traditional music where people post actual tunes in actual notation (dots, that is) and wrangle madly about sources, variations and playing etiquette. You think Mudcat has a few wild-eyed purists; compared to Sessionists, we're a bunch of heretical slackers.

My aching bones and tendency to hit the sack at 2100 hr indicate that, for me at least, 50 is actually the same old 50 (at 30 I was still up for howling the night away). Despite the undeniable desuetude that comes with age, I do not suffer the mid-life dullness a fair few of my contemporaries complain about, though; I am never bored or jaded, I don't wonder (like Janis Ian) "is that all there is?", and I have no trouble finding something fun to do that is neither illegal, immoral nor fattening.

And to think that all this comes free with a cute little fretted instrument that you can play Corelli and Vivaldi on if you want, or The Black Velvet Band if you don't want, and fits into the overhead bin on commercial aircraft ... !