Used to be we could dance all night, and we did. There was always music and a wee drop to drink, and the girls would spin and show their slips, and we thought it would always be like that.

Used to be we could eat and drink anything and as much of it as we wanted, and we did. Sausages by the yard, as many eggs as the chickens could lay, hams the size of wheelbarrows, ale and lager by the barrel with no ill effects at all at all, and we thought it would always be like that.

Used to be we could work all week and play all weekend, and we did. We moved steel and juggled hot rivets and swung a sixteen pound hammer for eight hours a day, and never got so tired that a beer and a half hour nap wouldn’t refresh us. On Saturdays we played football; we ran for hours and hurled our bruised bodies into the air and gouged and punched our opponents then bought them a pint after, and we thought it would always be like that.

It’s stil in us, the dancing. And the appetite and strength as well, all still in us. Everything we used to be, we still are. It’s just that now we’re only what we were in memory, and memory has retired to the Costa del Sol. We think it will always be like that.

And it will.