I recall waking to the realisation that I was the best table tennis player under 17 in north Manchester and parts of Bury. The satisfaction lasted for half an hour before I saw into the nothingness of things.

I once belonged to a health club, where it cost me £2,000 a year to amble on a treadmill for half an hour a week and sit and read Grazia in the cooling-off area.

You don't have to be in pursuit of a body beautiful to wish yourself to be the flexuously willowy creature you once were or, failing that, just to be able to pick up something you have dropped.

Howard Jacobson Quotes