Follow this simple three-word French dictum to avoid my agonising fate

"NE TOMBE pas." Don't fall. That was the simple three-word reply to my question of a French friend, now well into his 80s but with the appearance of a fit, lithe, 60-year-old. When I'd asked him his secret, he shrugged (yes, the French DO shrug in that unique way of theirs), stabbed at the ground with a forefinger and delivered his pithy epigram.

"Ne tombe pas. Don't fall." He is SO right. The older we get, the more impact (in every sense) a fall can have. I recently turned 69 and I've been learning this the hard way. As I mentioned here a couple of weeks ago, I fell (in France, as it happens) and broke my arm in two places, just above my right wrist. My fault.

I was walking too quickly in sloppy sandals on a poorly-laid surface. A loose paving stone flipped up and down I went, hard and fast. Snap-snap went my ulna; even Donald Trump may have blushed at the torrent of curses that instantly arose from the gutter.

I've since undergone an operation to repair the double-fracture - a metal plate on one side, a long screw on the other - and all's going well with the bone-healing. But here's the thing - the entire experience has had a much bigger impact on me than a similar accident did 15 years ago. Back then, still in my mid-50s, I bounced back within days. Other than the post-operative dressings, you wouldn't have known anything had happened to me.

This time, the whole trauma -initial fall, subsequent emergency first-aid and eventual operation (under a general anaesthetic) has really slowed me down, even if only temporarily. It's hard to define quite how or why, but I've been winded by the experience, both physically and psychologically, in ways I simply wouldn't have been a couple of decades ago.

I've also learned that a fall in one's later years leaves you more vulnerable for a while. Example: I've had to sleep with my arm fully extended and elevated on a little cushion, so my back is close to the edge of the mattress.

Result? The other night I rolled out of bed in my sleep and walloped my face on the base of bedside table. Talk about adding insult to injury.

A fall once you've arrived at pensionable age definitely leaves you feeling more fragile than it would have done even a few years earlier. I'll get over this one - I'll see you back on Good Morning Britain on Monday week - but it's been a sharp learning curve for me and I've taken the lesson to heart.

If you want a healthy, confident flourish to your final decades, watch your step. Check those ladders. Use that handrail. Follow my French friend's simple dictum. Ne tombe pas. Don't fall.

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Brize Norton's new nickname? "Prize F***-up", after the RAF base's "security" fence was breached with almost pathetic ease by paint-spraying nutjobs. (Rumours that Donald Trump had a role in the re-naming of one of the UK's most important military HQs are as yet unsubstantiated).

Yes, there are thousands of yards of fearsome-looking razor wire running around much of the airfield's perimeter. But it suddenly comes to an unexplained, arbitrary halt and is succeeded by hundreds of yards of plain, unadorned wooden fencing, the kind of thing you can buy at any garden centre such as B&Q.

It wouldn't keep a child determined to retrieve a lost ball out, let alone a bunch of dedicated fanatics like the members of Palestine Action who swanned over the fence last week and doused parked aircraft engines in spray paint, before swanning off again, entirely untroubled by airfield security.

Hmm. Not exactly the RAF's finest hour, eh?

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Not one but two random moans from me this week.

1) People who insist on using their phones to pay at the checkout, but who DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW HOW TO. They wave the blasted things around in the general vicinity of the cardreader, then peer vaguely at their screens before doing some more ineffectual waving around, and after holding everyone else up for ages finally and reluctantly produce a credit/debit card. Someone make it stop.

2) Sticking plasters. THEY DON'T STICK! Not any more. I can't remember the last time a Band-Aid didn't start peeling off after about five minutes. They simply won't stay on. (And they're an absolute nightmare to get out of the wrapper too). Produce a plaster that actually sticks and I guarantee that the world will beat a path to your door.

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