HAVE you noticed that, as time goes by, you're more likely to trot out the sort of sayings that once seemed the sole preserve of your parents?

Writer Andrew O'Hagan has. Referring to his preference for the corner store over Tesco and the tea shop over Starbucks, he says: "The ageing process is basically a slow and cheerful bedding down into human cliche; therefore, I have no hesitation at all in stating that small is beautiful."

I often find myself coming out with the kind of advice that my mum, especially, would dispense (although, as yet, I haven't scolded my children by saying, "I'll put my foot down with a firm hand!" or pleaded, "Wait a minute, I'll be with you in a second"; but I have blurted out, in exasperation, "For the millionth time, don't exaggerate!").

One of my mum's favourite sayings was: "It's not what you know, it's who you know." So far, I've managed to resist adopting this adage mainly because it's bunkum. I used to know a famous goalkeeper, for example, but he couldn't get me a game for Arsenal.

And how about "Money makes the world go round"? That's patently not true. Even I could tell you it's something to do with the sun and moon, gravity and all that palaver.

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" sort of makes sense, I suppose: but only if you're fond of keeping birds, which not many people seem to be these days, and with all these flats going up everywhere, you're lucky to have a plant pot on a window ledge, much less a fully-fledged bush, with or without birds.

"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today." Why not, for goodness sake? "Charity begins at home." I don't think so, if you're unlucky enough to live in Darfur.

"Hard work never killed anyone." Wrong.

"If the wind changes, your face will stay like that." Well, I'm sure it must have at some stage during the past 30 years, so why am I not fresh-faced and full of vigour, like a latter-day Dorian Gray?

"Every cloud has a silver lining," say the optimists. But we pessimists know it's the other way round, don't we?

I suppose Jose Mourhinho was right when he said something along the lines of, "You can't make an omelette without cracking eggs."

But even O'Hagan's "small is beautiful" endorsement has something of a hollow ring about it, come to think of it.

Pint-sized popster Kylie Minogue would seem to provide firm proof - but then the mind turns to Paul Daniels.