PS

Is wanting to tell the 20something dreadlocked "radicals" who have moved in across the street to stop writing their cod philosophies about life, love and society on the pavement and that wearing no shoes doesn't make you closer to the earth yet another sign of old age?

I should point out that during the festival on street pitches are rented; the pseudo-hippies had a mate set up a coffee stand in their driveway (thus not paying a pitch fee) and made a quick buck flogging coffee to unsuspecting locals. Whoa. That's really showing it to The Man.

They actually make my jaw clench in irritation.

I am truly getting old.

It's Monday morning and the sun is shining, in fact the forecast is for sunshine for the next few days which is rather lovely as summer is officially over. The baby boy is spending a couple of hours at the local ultra groovy playgroup/creche flinging himself headfirst down a slide or going digging crazy in the sandpit.

And I am sitting on the sofa with a headache, eyes like pissholes in the snow and achy teeth.

Did I spend the whole weekend partying? Raving until the early hours of the morning with our new hippy neighbours? Quaffing huge quantities of alcohol whilst recklessly lazing in sunshine?

No.

The cause of my fragile state is simply a week of parenting followed by a weekend of Newtown Fair and the Phoenix semi-final.

Newtown Fair is an annual event - usually the first Sunday of March - where numerous craft/food/knick knack/clothing/music stalls set up in the main drag and side streets of Newtown. Our street is the venue of one of the main sound stages, which is not a problem, but I've come to realise that a hoofing great big truck setting up outside our house at 6am is tedious.

Here is the soundstage and the bloke from no.5 who sings Billy Bragg-esque social commentary songs about "The Man". He was then followed by a twentysomething band who did covers of various emo tunes, a Pixies-a-likee band and so on.

Small boy happily slept through his lunchtime nap though.

Then at 3pm we headed away away oh from the festival shenanighans to the other end of town to see if NZ's only A League football team could achieve the seemingly impossible, ie to qualify for the final of the league. Now, it should be borne in mind that the Wellington Phoenix have only been around for a couple of years and that one of their best players is a Crystal Palace cast off, and were almost universally shite prior to this year. It was almost heart-warming how crappy they were. They would get into the opposition goal area and then become confused, frantically passing the ball to one another in seeming attempts to avoid the pressure of having to actually take a shot. Often, they would actually turn around and head back towards their own goal.

And somehow this year they have suddenly had a collective moment of enlightenment. Last night was their last home match of the season, capping off a run of 19 unbeaten home matches. Astonishing.

Of course, football fans being the open-minded and cockle-warming souls that they are, the Phoenix supporters - of which there are usually 3000-5000 - celebrated the sell-out 35000 crowd with rousing choruses of "where were you when we were shit?".

Although we got home at 7.30pm and I was in bed by 10pm I am knackered.

And, thus, I am old. Truly.