My birthday has just whizzed by again. I swear it comes around every few months, so I couldn't be fagged to celebrate. Why bother? In five minutes it will be Christmas, and minutes later another birthday will come winging by. But Daughter found this intolerable. She can't bear to ignore a birthday, so she took me and the dogs out for lunch. They had pigs' ears, I had fish and chips. Bliss. We were happy, briefly. And then autumn arrived.

This is the trouble with autumn birthdays. The summer's gone and then it's darkness, death and decay for months on end. "When you're on the blood pressure pills and it's autumn . . ." says Fielding, but then his voice tails off because he might cry. He tends to blub his way through October. Anything can set him off, particularly the soundtrack to Gladiator – the bit where He dies. Last week, Fielding went off with his daughter to look around her old university. Freshers crossed the still sunny, green lawns and poor Fielding choked up again. He felt it might be the last time he saw such a thing. Everything he sees has suddenly become a potential last sighting. And when he isn't blubbing, he's furious. He hates everyone: the young, the old, the far right, the far left. But he especially hates sensible moderates.

He isn't the only one feeling over-emotional. I am at it too. I cried in the synagogue at the heart-rending singing about souls, even though I know there's no such thing, then I thought about sins and death, and that rather a lot of my friends have been falling off their perches recently. Then, at a rather tense pub lunch, I wept bitterly when someone tried to help me to relax. Fatal. Any of that "close your eyes and breathe deeply" stuff, and I am done for. Same with kiddies singing carols, or solos, or any choir singing almost anything. Boo hoo. If only autumn and winter zipped by as quickly as summer. Then it would be spring, then another birthday . . . help. I've changed my mind. Slow down again, please.