SO, researchers have announced the discovery of a drug which will supposedly revive short-term memory for those whose mental powers are fading.

Or in other words, the elderly.

Called HT-0712, it has also been dubbed "Viagra of the mind" and is just another thing in a long list of wonder treatments created to stave off the symptoms of ageing.

Here we go again.

I suspect the popping of these pills will be less to do with someone wanting to remember what they had for dinner the day before and more to do with clinging on to the last shards of youth with acrylic fingernails.

What is it about our culture that makes people want to consistently defy ageing and death?

Why are people so obsessed with staying young that they part with extortionate amounts of money for wrinkle defence creams and potions containing goodness-knows-what? Or go further still by indulging in a menu of nips, tucks, implants, *collagen/*botox injections, facial peels, and other miscellaneous *additions/ *deductions

(*delete as appropriate).

Yet you only have to look at before and after mugshots of celebs such as - ooh where do I start? - Michael Jackson and David Gest to see how cosmetic surgery can transform a perfectly reasonable looking human being into the stuff of nightmares.

I'm just wondering what's so blooming fantastic about youth, anyway?

The path that most youngsters tread is usually riddled with anxieties and insecurities, high hopes, low disappointments, frustrations and plenty of pimples.

It seems that age brings more free time, money, stability, independence, security, calm, and knowledge.

Perhaps I have a great role model in the form of my mother who officially becomes an old age pensioner at the end of this month (excuse me while I stifle a laugh).

The woman has more of a social life than I do, regularly plays high-energy sports, thinks nothing of going on a 20-mile walk, is totally au fait (and indeed embraces) new technology and has several holidays or short breaks a year. And she still finds time to do all those grandmotherly things like baking cakes and spoiling the younger members of the Davis family.

I think she once mentioned perhaps supplementing her diet with cod liver oil capsules, but HT-0712? I very much doubt it.

Besides, isn't it best to forget some things?

Such as suffering the embarrassment of your neighbour pipping you to that coveted rosette at the village fete with her light-as-air Victoria sponge, or that time you had a piece of toilet paper trailing from the bottom of your shoe for most of a day before somebody had the courtesy to point it out.

My advice if you really want to remember something is this: Write it down.

It works a treat.