THE brain is a pain. Author of our progress and problems alike, this grey alien blob spends much of its time asleep, only to jolt awake occasionally amid a furore of smoke and sparks to fire some daft idea into our ethereal minds, to trouble us, sometimes to inspire us, but always to unsettle us and keep us from the calm state we knew before we were born and will know again on that happy day when we die.

Thus, I’ve had the daft idea to write about claims by scientists that the brain is nowhere near fully functioning in our twenties and only gets its act together in our thirties.

You say: “Aye, thay boffins are right, ken? Look at today’s young persons.” Well, my friend, as the hole-filled Bible says, look to the beam in your own moat, and consider your twenties, when I’m willing to bet you were a balloon.

I know I was just that, a great, inflatable bag of gas with my bottom tied in a knot as I floated hither and occasionally yon in the wind until, aged 34, I became flat and lifeless, and have remained that way since.

Speaking ahead of a Conference of Right Brainy Folk in yonder Oxford, one top professor said, “development takes place over decades”, and another chimed in: “There isn’t a childhood and then an adulthood. People are on a pathway, they’re on a trajectory.” That’s right: a trajectory to hell.

The first step to this diabolical destination is taken on the last day of childhood, which should be a protected, exalted state, the best part of life, which gets increasingly worse thereafter.

You’ll be aware, I’m sure, that all depression comes from growing up and finding that the adults, whom you’d revered as gods when young, haven’t a clue what they’re doing, that they are (and always were) bluffing and just bumbling through.

Hence the disconcerting nature of adolescence, leading into the deranged twenties when, subconscious railing against the authority of the father leads the gullible to libertarian politics. This changes as folk become fathers themselves, whereupon their politics become more authoritarian, until they are grandfathers and goosestepping across the living-room floor.

Recently, I waddled through the portals of one of our newer universities and liked the atmosphere of hope, possibility and learning that my antennae sensed among the young persons there. The world was their salt-water mollusc, just it once was mine until I choked on it.

This seat of learning felt lively and exciting. The only downside was seeing young persons waiting to go into lectures. In our day, lacking technology about our persons, we’d strike up a conversation with our neighbour, perhaps saying, “You’ve got a right big nose”, or “I have forgotten to wear pants today”.

Instead, these young people were looking down at their portable telephones and not speaking at all. I will be quite candid with you and confess that, undoubtedly, as a deeply introverted young (and older) man, I’d have been looking down at my phone the whole time too. However, in those days, I had to make do with my feet, which I examined constantly.

The problem today is that young persons are allowed to do their own thing by their late teens, when they still need chaperoning and scolding.

The answer is clearly a compulsory period of civic (rather than military) national service from age 22 to 34. Overseen by benevolent state guardians, young persons will be kept safe from dangers such as drugs, the internet and sex.

I’m sure this will be a vote-winner among young persons, should any political party be interested. Certainly, national service never did me any harm. But that was because it had long been abolished by the time I was growing up.

THE democratic deficit at Westminster has long been a source of contention among upright ratepayers and, like most of these, I believe the House of Commons should be abolished and the House of Lords retained.

There’s far more sense spoken in the latter, and it’s not encumbered by the hoo-ha and air of near-riot that habitually engulfs the former.

Thus, this week, that fine, gilded institution of wisdom heard calls for cyclists to require licences and insurance, just as decent road users do. Labour’s Lord Winston highlighted the “extremely aggressive” behaviour of these highway bullies and called for urgent public safety measures to be implemented.

He was backed by Lord Wills (Lab), who asked what the Government was going to do to protect “disabled people, vulnerable pensioners, mothers with buggies and many others from these hoodlums in Lycra”.

Up till now the Tory Government has failed to take any measures against the overwhelmingly male, middle-class delinquents, but hopes are growing for a Lycra tax as well as a levy on ugly, insect-head helmets, with additional on-the-spot fines for narcissistic wearers of such garb who strut through supermarkets causing alarm to innocent shoppers.

I’LL be candid with you and confess that I have gone to sleep to the sound of a Swedish woman whispering in my ear.

This is quite legal and is called ASMR which, as you’ll have guessed, stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. It’s presented on YouTube videos and, as well as soothing whispers, includes sounds such as tapping, paper-crinkling and page-turning.

They’re supposed to stimulate relaxing brain tingles, or “shiveries” as Scottish exponent Lauren (no surname given), from Glasgow, describes them. Her YouTube channel, Scottish Murmurs, has 125,000 international subscribers, who love her “soft Scottish accent”.

I don’t know why I find Swedish so attractive. Something to do with its warm air of melancholy, I guess. ASMR proponents deny any sexual component to the practice, saying it’s just aural yoga, but I must confess it did feel a bit weird and, not wanting to attract the attention of our local Neighbourhood Watch, I gave it up after a couple of tries.

Once more, like most people, I’m listening to Dad’s Army to keep the night terrors at bay.