When your day is done and you wanna run.....

Despite pushing 30, I had never really felt like I was getting on in years until I began caring a little bit too much about the furniture that would adorn the sitting room the close personal friend and I re-decorated last year.

What I didn't realise until now was that the wheels of the ageing process were in motion long before that Saturday afternoon surrounded by La-Z-Boy recliners in Arnotts and long before we start watching Grand Designs and going for 'walks'. In fact, I can pin-point the exact moment I start getting old - it was the first time I walked through Temple Bar without being offered any drugs.

Cocaine has featured heavily in the news for the last few weeks. Most of the column inches and debate have centred around Justine Delaney-Wilson and the tape that she had, then didn't have then had but has since destroyed. Task forces and the gardaí have informed us that drug use is spiralling out of control, that lives are being destroyed and that something must be done.

In Waterford at the weekend 15 people fell ill and 2 are currently comatose after taking cocaine at a 21st birthday party. Initial speculation suggested that the drug was cut with ketamine, a horse tranquiliser, but gardaí have sinced quashed this rumour, stating that in this instance quantity as opposed to quality was the problem.

Surely they should be fuelling these rumours - don't deny them, exagerate them.

"Inspector can you confirm that the drug was mixed with horse tranquiliser?"

"Errr... yes. Yes we can Charlie.. but that's not all. It was also found to contain large quantities of oven cleaner, Domestos, anthrax, sherbert and ground up bits of Hitler and Barbara Cartland."

The gardaí have missed a perfect opportunity to frighten the bejaysus out of people. "Holy shit!" they'd think, "I could be snorting sherbert - it would all fizz out my nose, better take it handy".