I was fooled into thinking I wasn't completely past it yet by actually gaining admittance to a hip young funky gig last Friday night. I was slightly anxious that I'd be turned away by the security men as being too old and mumsy to be allowed to see Faithless but as it was, that probably worked in my favour. They must have thought I was there as Pixie Peter's responsible adult.

I'd kept it quiet from Jack until the night before suspecting he might be a tad jealous. He didn't disappoint me, shrilly exclaiming at the cruelty of having expected him to go see REM ( classification: fuddie-duddies until I pointed out that the Shiny Happy song that he kept playing whenever he clicks on my Media Player was the very same band), on his 15th birthday, with his square mother, and then failing to invite him along to see the Great Maxi Jazz incarnate, one of his first and foremost idols( after Martian of course).

I toyed with the idea of buying him a T-shirt as a memento, just to really rub salt into the wound and as a pay-back for turning the heating up whilst simultaneously stripping to his boxers every night, but decided that it would only add to the perpetual pile of ironing and my domestic drudgery. He had to content himself to listening to me and Peter evangelising on the awe-inspiring performance and treating him to the occasional lyrical outburst of Mass Destruction accompanied by the rather poor video recordings on my mobile phone.

Any delusions of still being on my way up the hill, instead of well and truly on the leaward side were soon dispelled by Debbie's arrival last night. The compassion of that woman knows no bounds. She'd brought me the master tape of the video that we'd filmed the other week for the proposed Housing Stock Transfer so I could enjoy the first viewing away from the public arena of the Board Room. It was my first ever sight of myself on film and it was truly horrifying.

They'd used my voice alright, very cleverly dubbed it was too, but instead of showing me sitting there with my caramel highlights cheekily glinting off the lights, cheekbones slicing my profile, eyes flashing with knowledge and promise of keen intelligence, they'd spliced in footage of a hideously deformed troll who looked a bit like my Grandma, after her 92nd birthday but before she'd put her teeth in, and some model from a Morgan Spurlock anti-hamburger documentary. I could have been deflated, preferably by a large syringe attached to a liposuction gadget . I'm resigned to being the Vanessa Feltz, in her fat and happily married days, of the Shadow Board.

I shall forget all foolish notions of an alternative career in the media ( although the old cliche, she's got a face for radio does spring to mind) and content myself with watching reruns of Northern Exposure whilst discovering 101 ways with maple syrup. Never let it be said I don't do my research thoroughly.