Sophia Loren once explained that Carlo Ponti never acted old, never ached and pained, or “krepsed”, as one might say in Yiddish, and that’s why she remained in love with him. I’ve tried but it’s difficult not to moan when you want to rip your sciatic nerve out and shoot it. But one of the truly hurtful things abut one’s decline and fall is not what happens to your body, its what happens to other peoples. You don’t just lose friends and relatives and great dogs, old girlfriends and bete noirs, you lose witnesses. You lose those you can share memories with and those you rely on to set your memory straight. After a while you realize that when they die, bits of you die. Bits of your mother, bits of your first car, bits of that walk in the woods high above the Hudson when the thunder rolled in and the heaven opened. Remember Dr Clark? Now nobody does. He no longer exists in any sense and a piece of you died with him. In a film it would be like a big room or dance hall emptying out one person at a time until the place echoes with approaching emptiness. It’s almost time for carriages.