I SUPPOSE it was someone, somewhere, who coined that hardy perennial about life being short.

Perhaps it was the caveman about to be speared by the tusks of a woolly mammoth, who, on account of not being driven over the cliff, had decided to wreak his revenge.

Or maybe the Greek spearman at Thermopolae. Outnumbered by 20 to one by Xerxes' Persians, he probably thought "oh what the hell, it was good while it lasted. You know, life is very short, after all."

In Greek, of course.

Well, caveman or spearman, they were both absolutely right. Life does seems to be of a limited duration, especially after the age of 30, when the years fly by in the manner that the days did when you were a child... and you actually had all your life in front of you, spreading out like some glorious banqueting table, crammed with as-yet-untasted delights.

For me - and I would guess the same applies to many of you, too - it all seems like yesterday.

Anyway, as none of is getting any younger - another fine old British clich that states the blooming obvious, yet is made to sound profound - I decided the time had come. Because I could walk out of the front door tomorrow and be run over by a bus.

Yes, this is a clich fest. Suffice to say that there was no time to waste. I would make a will.

My wife and I had toyed with the idea for some time, but had not yet got round to doing it. I suppose it was the prospect of an imminent holiday and the recollections of what had happened the year before.

While the train crash near Evesham in July, 2003, had placed us in no immediate danger, the accident had nevertheless sharpened our focus on matters of the mortal kind. The fact is that the crash could have been far more serious.

One, two or all three of us had been wiped out, matters would - to put it mildly - have been complicated in a most unpleasant way for the fourth family member, who was not with us on that fateful day.

What happens when someone dies intestate? The very word itself has an unpleasant ring. Best play safe. The time had definitely come. The writing was on the wall. Or rather the will.

We resolved to see a solicitor and ensure that all our worldly goods and chattels would end up in the right place after we had slipped the mortal coil.

There was also another, extremely important reason why a will had to be made. For I had the misfortune to be disinherited. My parents divorced when I was 21 and Dad remarried a few years later.

As we found out at the subsequent visit to the family solicitors, that meant he had a new next-of-kin who would be the principal beneficiary on his death. And that's exactly what happened.

A few years after the marriage, he died - and the family house passed to someone who, only a few years before, was completely unknown to us all.

Legally, everything was above board. But morally? Well, the home represented half a century of my grandfather's hard graft in a Leicester shoe factory. And at the stroke of a pen, it was lost to a relative stranger.

Very Thomas Hardy. Or, taking into account geographical considerations, perhaps we should say George Eliot.

Sometimes, when I return to the old home village in north Warwickshire, the graveyard is visited with all the solemnity and sentimentality that my imagination can muster. The result is an intriguing blend of Silas Marner, Mill On The Floss with a garnishing of Tess Of The D'Urbervilles.

Little wonder, then, that the themes of loss and redemption were central to those writers' themes.

However, in order to break the cycle and to prevent the sins of the fathers being visited on the sons - or rather daughters, in this case - we keep our appointment with the legal eagles on this gloriously sunny afternoon.

I explain that a watertight will is required, ensuring that everything passes to the children. That's no problem, says the man, but of course, if either of us remarried for any reason, then circumstances would quite obviously change with the introduction of other persons into the frame.

Well, we trust each other to do right by the kids, we say. If a Sabrina or Luigi suddenly appears on the scene, such an occurrence would not materially change anything, particularly a legacy of any kind.

We would be true to our respective word.

So, the whole thing is soon done and dusted. When it comes to wills, this one's very straightforward, indeed.

There are no special bequests, no antique jewellery boxes, no trust funds to be set up for The Distressed Gentle Rabbits' Association. Oh no. Lock, stock and barrel, the kids will end up with the lot...

When I was younger, older people would often point out how quickly the years can fly by. Of course, when you are 18, there is no point of reference. The world, to a great extent, is as old as you are.

It revolves round the planet Ego that is your being... it is almost impossible to imagine a universe in which all the matter does not spin around you. Parents, uncles and aunts, grandparents, even, they all seem to belong to some kind of pre-history that existed before time - your time - began.

And as for your own mortality, well, death is inconceivable, only to be entertained if it is a form of extinction surrounded by valour, tragedy and romantic heroism in equal amounts.

But time changes everything. Now I have become one of those far-off people that I remember at family events and reunions. I am now the character in the corner, spouting all the certainties of middle-aged, just a balding hair's breadth away from Old Gitdom.

Anyway, we have to agree that life is indeed short. Determined that history will not repeat itself, I'm making sure that my successors will benefit from whatever I leave behind. For - as we have been reaching for clusters of clichs today, and here's another - you can't take it with you.

And I'm dead certain about that. What is certain, though, is that where there's a will, there's a way....