1. Getting your children's names muddled up, and possibly calling them by your dog's name, too, before you get it right on the third try.

2. A pathetic inability to operate the television's remote control (even though you have had the damn thing for eight years).

3. You offer to look after everyone's passport at the airport.

4. Yearning, perhaps a little too loudly, for 'proper' hymns when you attend a family wedding.

5. Knowing an oak from a walnut and a cedar from a pine, but still not recognising the aroma of marijuana and loudly asking your wife: 'What's that funny smell?'

6. Laughing as you recount the Ecky-Thump episode of The Goodies.

7. Tapping the petrol-pump nozzle against your car to make sure you get the last drips of fuel in your tank.

8. Whistling. Honestly, Dad, no one under 80 whistles.

There are only about three things I can see which apply to me. I think this thread is more suited to my parents' generation than people who have only just turned 50.

Same here. This article should be "fifty ways to know you are over seventy". Reminds me of the post war generation rather than generation X.

I might see if I can come up a thread for us "Under 60-somethings", Annie