Where we are now, that is my friends and I, is that fifth decade of life; the season of mists, of ruefulness; uneasy about the future, but treasuring past glories; flitting in and out of quiet self accusation - why did we do this, but not that, turn right, instead of left ?

It's a slow motion slap across the face being in your fifth decade: the gradual, ultimately worrying realisation that this really is the midpoint, and that the inevitable descent looks tough, uncertain, probably treacherous.

Everyone faces this, and it's nothing new either to wrap it in the handy image of a slow journey into Autumn. It's another stage in our personal evolution.

Embrace it, or be crushed by it. It has to be the former however strange this new land seems.