ONE of the benefits of reaching the autumn of your life, I always believed , is that nothing seems to shock you any more.
After almost 60 years on Planet Earth, there are no surprises left.
I've been kidding myself. Because I've been shocked beyond belief ever since hearing yesterday that Lancashire are seriously considering leaving their Old Trafford headquarters to move to a new home alongside Manchester City, at a location in the east of Manchester which we are now all encouraged to refer to as "Sportcity".
Did I just say my initial reaction to that news was one of deep shock? No. More than just shock.
Horror
Add horror, and a deep, deep sense of sadness, that another huge part of my life now looks likely to be bulldozed into oblivion...just as my beloved Maine Road stadium has.
You see, Lancashire Cricket Club and Manchester City are what shaped me as a lad.
Old Trafford and Maine Road were where I dreamed my dreams in the 1950s. Lancashire in the summer and the Blues in the winter.
Could any sports-mad kid have had a better education?
Love
How I loved going to Old Trafford as a boy to watch Lancashire play in those long summer holidays.
It must have rained sometimes - hey, this is Manchester remember - but all I've retained in my memory is baking-hot days and crowds so vast that kids like myself had to sit on the grass behind the boundary ropes.
Heroes? Where do you want me to start?
Brian Statham, in my childish eyes, the greatest fast bowler of them all. `You miss and I hit' was his motto.
Poetry
They missed and Brian hit, sure enough - with the accuracy of a sniper. Sheer poetry in motion.
Geoff `Noddy' Pullar, the ageing but still brilliant Cyril Washbrook, Jack Ikin, the best `slipper' in the business.
And then there was my ultimate hero, Jackie Dyson. A Lancashire player during the summer and a Manchester City player in the winter.
What wouldn't I have given to have a life like that.
Memories
Memories? Again where do you want me to start?
Jim Laker taking 19 wickets in a Test match at Old Trafford on a dust-bowl of a wicket.
Do you know, I cursed Tony Lock for taking the other wicket. I was willing Jim to take the lot.
How will I ever forget that Gillette Cup tie against Gloucestershire at Old Trafford in the early 1970s? Skipper Jackie Bond - what an inspiration he was - was at one end, with young David Hughes at the other.
It was so dark the street lights were on outside the ground. You could hardly see your hand in front of your face, but nobody had gone home. The old stadium was packed to the rafters.
Folklore
It's part of cricket's folklore that Hughes implored his skipper not to accept the umpires' invitation to go off for bad light.
"Don't worry, skip. If I can see 'em I'll hit 'em," said Hughes.
David certainly saw 'em all right. Twenty-four runs off one over from John Mortimer, and Lancashire were through to the Gillette Cup final with five minutes to nine showing on the pavilion clock at Old Trafford.
This is what Old Trafford has meant to me for half a century.
Sunny days sprawled out on the grass as a 10-year-old tucking into strawberry jam butties during the lunch interval.
Dream
Wonderful players who lived out my dreams on that magic square where I watched, with eyes like saucers. Cricketing miracles that I will take to my grave.
Am I shocked that Lancashire are contemplating throwing away 146 years of tradition by abandoning Old Trafford for a shiny new stadium in Sport City? Shaken to the very core is nearer the mark.
But then, when you've digested the news, reality sinks in.
You realise that you've been living and wallowing in the past, just as I did when I first heard that Maine Road was going to be flattened.
You see, the Old Trafford where Freddie Flintoff today performs his wonders with both bat and ball is not the Old Trafford I remember as a kid. Just like Maine Road, the old girl has grown old and tired.
Who wouldn't look a little worn after taking a battering for 146 years? And there comes a time when you can no longer paper over the cracks.
Test
Old Trafford is no longer an automatic Test match venue.
New grounds with better facilities for both spectators and players have sprung up, which are now at times the preferred venues for the Test and County Cricket Board. And that has taken vital revenue out of Lancashire's coffers.
The county championship which Flintoff and his team-mates play in today is not the county championship I remember as a 10-year-old with stars in his eyes.
Now kids don't have to sit on the grass behind the boundary ropes. Each one these days could have half-a-block of seats to himself.
Death bed
As a spectator sport, the county championship is on its death bed.
Cricket, at county level, has become the only sport where the crowd changes are announced to the team. And I hate myself for re-telling that gag, because I love cricket with all my heart.
But there is more than an element of truth in that bad joke.
Did you know that Lancashire rake in as much money from staging one pop concert as they do from an entire season's county matches?
Isn't that a shocking statistic?
We all know the opposition from local residents which Lancashire have to continually overcome whenever they stage a major pop concert at Old Trafford.
Move
That would be one problem they wouldn't encounter if they move to a new stadium. They could stage a pop concert every night of the week over in Eastlands.
Many members of the Lancashire committee have supported their club even longer than I have, and I can guess exactly what they are thinking right now.
But sometimes people of my generation have to stop living in the past and need to be dragged screaming into the 21st century.
So my message to the officials of Lancashire County Cricket Club is this: Don't forget the past but don't get trapped in it.
Grasp the nettle. If you get the chance to move to a new stadium in Sport City grab it with both hands.
It won't be the end of a great old club - it will be a new beginning.
WHAT do you think and what are your memories? have your say here