Over the years the odd friend and I have mused about the perfect ending of our days. No, not the last 'exit drug cocktail' swallowed with a fine champagne or gallon of vin ordinaire…more the slumbering, fading years.

The ideas always centre on a large country house with individual mini-apartments serviced by a stalwart couple aided by sweet, cheap maids. e would do odd jobs and she would cook, tsk tsking at our refusal to eat our vegetables and quietly slipping us homemade chocolate truffles for night starvation.

A gardener or four would maintain the grounds and carry in baskets of flowers to adorn our rooms and the rather grand public ones we’d gather in when not bickering or feuding.

Meanwhile,we’d meander around in still perfect, if faltering, health in a glorious haze of alcohol and cigarette smoke.

We’d hold discos with strobe lighting and Saturday Night Fever specials or Abba spectaculars where we’d snake and shimmy without curled lips of disgust at our antics.

Families would be tolerated on special occasions only, and if boring, would have to be kept in one’s own rooms. All photographs of grandchildren would be banned from public display as would talk of such unless misbehaving gloriously.

Of course, the house was always in France or perhaps Italy, never in a dreary suburb with dismal rain day after day.

I know, movies have been made of such but we’ve been talking of it for years.

Well, it was either that or the journalists’ old folks home in Dorking and somehow, simply by its harsh name, Dorking has never appealed.

But then most of my friends have husbands or wives, children and grandchildren, so such thoughts have been left simply to me.

I have the house in France, the sunshine, and, God help me, an iPod filled with the flick-hipped moves of another era when I don’t accidentally eradicate them in a failed download.

And friends are elsewhere, trapped in their houses, tied inescapably, although mainly happily, to the demands of their offsprings’ offsprings.

Strangely a couple of younger friends have been the latest to suggest we pool resources for a country house near Bordeaux and find a few others similarly inclined.

They seek weekend escapes from London and, perhaps, a walk-away from pressure entirely before their time.

They can afford the permanent housekeeper and handyman and I could just, well, float around in between.

The summers would be long and filled with amusing guests; the winters all pine smelling and log fires burning.

Now sharing a house with my two under 30 year old minders, I have to say it seems a great idea.

Much better to have fit and willing companions than like-minded angry old women tripping over the gin bottles and reminding one of past indiscretions.

Far better to avoid the daily room check to make sure they hadn’t departed in the night.

Obviously recent and ongoing events - my fall and rehabilitation - have caused me to review the forthcoming years and think of a vague outline plan of coping with them. Money, of course, is the crux if one wants to be in total charge and not reliant on the friendship, kindness and goodwill of others.

Money buys minders, carers and care when all have fled, unable or unwilling to help. Or when there is simply no one else there.

And as one old friend of mine once said: ‘Sure you’ll die. But money brings you better surroundings in which to do so.’

I admire enormously women like Diana Athill, writer and editor, who, after a lifetime of work, lovers and ultimately no kith or kin, took herself off to a retirement home while still capable.

She was then 91, still writing producing exquisite cold-eyed reflections on life and loss. She had to reduce all her beloved possessions from her beautiful flat into a solitary room off a communal corridor and steeled herself to do so.

In fact she has found it a liberating experience and no longer needs to worry about the what and the where, merely to continue her work.

Fortunately her co-residents are equally interesting and intelligent as she chose well and was not decanted by others in circumstances dictated by both speed and finance.

As we know that is not true for the majority and old age and illness bring with them only fear and trepidation.

Having had a lengthy taste of dependency, fear and trepidation, forgive me if my thoughts are still of a morbid disposition.

As I grow stronger hopefully they will return to lurk in the back rooms of my brain and I’ll revert to a que sera attitude. Somehow though, this time, I think not.

I need to make my long, hopefully very long, term plans now that I’ve had that frightening premature glimpse into the future.

In the meantime, though, perhaps I should sound out just how serious those younger friends are. Give me a house filled with music and laughter over a French retirement home any day.

Sadly, unlike Ms Athill, but like most of us, I don’t have the cash to choose my final years’ companions.

And at last, to my great dismay, I’ve stopped believing in miracles.