Who'd have imagined I'd live to tell the tale, as it were? Fortune patted me on the head at an early age, but it wasn't all walks and treats. We had a complicated relationship. What else do you know? Well, you know I'm alive now, unless I'm telling this story from beyond the grave. I'm Old but I'm not that old and I am not going to die in my story (unless I do it with the last full stop -- that would be acceptable; after all, I haven't finished yet and I can't see the future any more clearly than you can). Rose Old, alive.