Pie and a pint, please.

I`m off for lunch with Jo shortly.

And frankly...I`m a bit worried about it.

She`s suggested somewhere that,well,how can I put this..she`s suggested somewhere that I might have considered for lunch about two decades from now. So for that reason, to be honest, I`d rather not say any more.

OK. It`s in a garden centre.

And I know the food`s supposed to be lovely. But my dad goes for lunch in garden centres. Won`t we feel-you know-out of place? Or maybe that`s the point. She wants to take me somewhere that makes me feel positively juvenile.

Mind you-it was the same Jo who led me and a colleague astray a few months ago at a very fine cocktail bar in town. We dressed for the occasion. Knocked a few back. Spent a fortune. The place was heaving. And most of the clientele were a fair bit younger than me. And Jo, actually, though she`ll thump me for saying that. Did it matter? I dunno.

When our 21 year old daughter popped back from University for the weekend recently, she was aghast to hear that her dad would be in town on the same night as her. With `the lads`. `But he`s not going into any of...you know...MY bars, is he?` she whispered. He didn`t.

So are you defined by the places you visit? Once you`re over the age of 18, is there an unwritten, unspoken age limit on restaurants and bars?

And if you have to be the `right` age to frequent some places, do you have to be the right `kind` of person, to visit others? I went to the Lucian Freud exhibition in London recently. Don`t ask me for details; I know nothing about art (yeh, ok...`but I know what I like...`)So I went to learn. And although there were clearly scores of true art lovers there, standing back and admiring his amazing talent; there were quite a few who, I suspect, were there to be seen. The ones who spent more time looking at the crowd than the canvas.Quite a few had little Chanel handbags dangling over their shoulders. Get the picture?

But maybe I worry just as much about what people think. You know..where I am; who I`m with. For instance-if I fancied, say, a pie and a pint, and I knew that the best ones were served up in a very traditional `spit and sawdust` type pub in town....packed out, pretty much, by blokes...would I venture in...alone? Would it be the `right` place for me to be seen? Or would the other,regular boozers in there...snigger ? Maybe I should just tuck in and forget Fred and his ferret at the next table.

Love to know what you think ;0)