Take that problem. Imagine it's a mirror. Smash it with something large and heavy -I know the folk taboo about broken mirrors, but stay with me here, it's a metaphor after all. Pick up the pieces, reassemble, then see how that problem looks.

Getting old is knowing...what exactly? That you're greyer ? That your hearing is shot? That Policemen and even Prime Ministers are looking so young these days ?

Or is it the sickly shock of seeing a record you remember coming out for the first time now appearing as a featured exhibit in the newly reopened Twentieth Century section of the Museum of London.

"Pretty Vacant", who'd thought in the pressing factory in 1977 that this would be eventually nestling in a display cabinet radiating uncomfortable electricity without even being played.

Hard to decide which hurts most: the dark clouds appearing on the horizon, or the toothache I've had all day. Results of instant one man poll: toothache.

From morn till noon, then from noon till dusk, I've done just one thing: sat outside in this mesmerising spell of hot weather.

Already restored, refreshed, and relaxed from five stupendous days of wandering Scottish sea cliffs, wallowing in balmy, salty, tangy sea air, stunned by ice-blue (but not cold), cloudless skies, and now two days of this lush, semi-tropical marinade we're having in London.

It's difficult to find something as elementally restorative as a fine day, and I've been blessed with seven.

Five revelatory, warm weather days in Scotland. Why revelatory ? Simple. The Far North is dauntingly beautiful, hard to reach, but worth every step, pulsing with great bird-life. You could turn off my hearing, blindfold me, but I'd still be able to sense where the guillemots and fulmars roost: the stink.

Now for the dentist to sort out this throbbing tooth.

"I live like a plant, filling myself with the sun and light, with colours, and fresh air" said Flaubert in one of his letters from Egypt. Good enough rubric for a lot of people to follow.

As much as I'd like a Labour Government, I'd rather they were in opposition, watching the Tories run themselves aground.

The notion of a Lib / Lab pact buoyed up by a variety of smaller parties is too shaky for me, and it's open to the most egregious whinging from the Right wing media. Nor does it taste...well... particularly democratic either; the party that gets 2 million votes fewer than the party who won, remain in power with an as yet to be decided new leader, who in turn is elected by party members, rather than the general populace. Too strange, too dangerous. Very Stalinist in that respect with a twist of the Florida 2000 debacle. This could create an unbridgeable social \ regional schism. Don't like it at all

Two things are on my mind this evening. Who will be the first senior Tory to resign - once they've eventually they've ground out how they'll run the country, either in a coalition, or as a go it alone minority that is - will it be Hague, Osborne, Boris, or someone completely unknown to us? Because as eggs are surely eggs, scandal follows the Tories like a bad smell.

That's the first thing. Next up is this: what will be the first conspiracy theory the Daily Mail will batten on to to excuse the Tories less than stellar electoral performance?

Think I've already spotted a possible candidate; the Sunday Times quoted a piece of instant research stating that a mere 16,000 votes in those hotly contested marginal seats stood between Davy boy's hoped for sweeping ascendancy into No 10 and the muddle he's actually in.

Now, remembering that hundreds of people could n't get in to some polling stations because the lines were so long, and knowing that the Daily Mail never lets reality step between them and breast beating scandal, and they certainly never let that inconvenience them when it comes to cooking up a conspiracy, then I see this happening: the Mail's frothing columnists will start insinuating that it was actually local government blundering that robbed Davy.

The fact that many of those rightly aggrieved blocked voters may well have been there to mark a big X for another party, or in constituencies that were n't wafer thin battlegrounds will matter not one whit to the Mailsters.

Fascinating to think what might come out of the talks "Rupert" Cameron is having with Nick Clegg. It could augur very badly for the Tories in the long term.

It's the collision of two opposing forces: Tories loath the very idea of Europe, similarly the notion of PR sticks in their mouth with the same fear as someone about to be water-boarded. These two being the very bedrock of Liberalism.

But Cameron is as desperate as his coven of supporters are to feel the keys to No 10 jangling in his trouser pocket.

If I were Nick Clegg, then with the cards I've got in my hand, and don't forget, he's probably being quietly courted by Labour, then I'd play like this: Cameron can be PM, but Vince Cable gets the Chancellor's job and give me (Nick) the role of Foreign Secretary. A two man dream team.

Just the thought of someone who can actually speak a language other than English as Foreign Secretary, in place of the hideous character from Yorkshire who's in it and delights in ridiculous alliances with shadowy Eastern European crypto-fascists. Imagine.

I can also see a Cons / Lib Dem coalition being the first toll of the tocsin for the Tory party as it exists now; the Thatcherite hard-right will depart in a huff for the weirder right-wing fringes - UKIP basically, leaving a (I'm hoping I know, but sometimes you have to float the optimist ship in the shallowest water) a softer, gentler Tory residual who may just start to see the sense of liberal democratic ideals and principles.

Civic duty completed. I've voted. A mixed choice: for my Parliamentary Vote, I went for the Liberal Democrat candidate, as an optimist and as a confessed idealist; I welcome with open arms, a party armed with the ideas of fairness, and who are progressive and innovative.

This was an against the grain selection; historically, I've nearly always been a Labour supporter, although I did side step that in 1992, bizarrely voting for John Major (maybe it was the Brit fascination for the under-dog that lulled me in to doing that.

However, I remained true (ish) to form and went for the Labour local council candidates.

I would n't say it was a festival atmosphere at the polling booth, but it was markedly busier than I've seen at previous election times. Again, the idealist in me was delighted to see that the turnout reflected the mixed race, cosmopolitan Mosaic of my part of Notting Hill; I saw a family of four virtually in their Sunday Best animatedly chatting in Spanish, the man in front of me in the queue to be given ballot papers had a soft Irish accent; I heard French elsewhere, and there were headscarfs and veils everywhere. Perfect.