Keeping the Princess in tune

The Bavarian Princess, bless her, is going through a rough patch. She is getting on a bit, the poor old mite. She's now at the ripe old age of 17, which is about a gazillion in human years.

She recently passed the 100,000 miles mark. I briefly considered lighting a corresponding number of candles on her bonnet and giving her a wee drink of premium grade anti-freeze as a celebration. Briefly. Sentimental I may be, but Red Adair I ain't.

Despite her age, she's still a princess, if only in the sense that the late Margaret Windsor was still a princess. There'll be no Prince Charming coming knocking for her. But the name stays. Bavarian Dowager just sounds all wrong.

She still scrubs up luvverrly.

Give her a pedicure, facial, full waxing and steam bath and she's divine. Many are the envious stares I've received from humans of both sexes as they passed with their younger, fitter models.

As I said, she is not at her best. For a start, she's got a racking, rasping cough. She sounds like an asthmatic bulldog gargling a rockery at the best of times. And these aren't the best of times.

Three new breathing tubes have been inserted down her throat in the past year, and every one spat back out, gnarled and chewed. She even left one lying in the middle of a mud-track in North Mayo, the ungrateful old harridan. It's exhausting, so it is.

She's also a tad doddery on her feet.

Nothing will do her but to veer off to the left at every opportunity. I have to keep a firm hand on her shoulders at all times to avoid the pair of us ending up in someone's front porch.

The nice man who looks after her says her left ball socket is about to snap off and she'll need a new pelvis. I could actually hear my bank account emptying as the words came out.

Sensing my reservations, he suggested giving her a wishbone and hoping for the best.

I was a tad miffed. I wasn't paying this guy to do something I'd been doing myself for months. I'd been wishing so hard it wouldn't come to major surgery that there wasn't a chicken in Dublin, alive or dead, with its collarbone intact.

Our friend also told me her bushes were at Death's door. I told him I was surprised, as I never knew she was into gardening. It would, I suppose, explain all the moss that's growing on her roof.

She had a terrible case of corns a while back, so I bought her new shoes. Even got her a spare, just in case. She keeps it in her suitcase, along with some chap by the name of Jack. I once overheard her telling her friends he's great for lifting her when she feels deflated because he's hydraulically enhanced. Fearful of my own sick imagination, I've decided not to think about it.

The thought had crossed my mind to put her out of my misery. I even went as far as to go scouting for a newer model with more upstairs, if you get my drift.

In fact - don't you dare tell her this, it'd break her heart - I went on a quick date with another Bavarian fraulein. She was younger, sexier and apparently much lower maintenance. There's many a man who would have fallen for her charms. I wasn't one.

For I've come to terms with the fact that the Princess and I are in it for the long haul. The last buttocks she'll caress before her lights flicker for the last time and she gets hauled off to the great breaker's yard in the sky will be mine.

Assuming she doesn't outlive me, that is. You never know with these old German dames.

They just go on forever.