You used to think you were getting older when policemen looked younger.

Now I’m beginning to feel my age simply by browsing the Oxford English Dictionary.

Well, actually, looking at the new words they have embraced.

Top of the lot is selfie, which means a self-taken photograph. These are to be found on social networking sites on the internet, such as Facebook, and have been made popular because everyone now carries a mobile phone as if it was an umbilical chord that must never be broken.

They store instant memories, many best forgotten in the cold light of the morning after, others capturing moments that would be lost but for the fact that cellphones are so ubiquitous.

But selfies are closer to being an instant ego trip. You extend your arm and take your own picture, capturing yourself in a bar or on holiday or meeting someone vaguely famous.

“This is me with Vince. He was almost an extra in Coronation Street.”

And then posting them online for the world to wonder at the vibrant variety of your life.

I tried taking a selfie once. It captures my wife Maria and I on a cold March day on Blackpool promenade. The resultant snap does nothing for either the resort or me and my wife. We look as if we are about to blown out to sea like kites.

Other new words announced include bedroom tax (which everyone knows), schmeat (synthetic meat) and bitcoin, described as a virtual currency, much like many people’s wages: they’re virtual rather than real. As my mate said during the last recession: “My money’s got its hat and coat on before its paid into the bank.”

Showrooming makes the list: this is the practice of checking out items in showrooms before buying it cheaper online. Twerking is also there and I confess I hadn’t a clue: it means to dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner. Not Bruce Forsyth, then. Miley Cyrus is apparently an exponent.

And then I found a new word that struck a warning chord: bingewatch.

This is excessive watching of television and is due in part to the popularity of such companies as Netflix, a streaming film and TV network service that has 40 million subscribers world wide. Including me.

I’ve just signed up and find it fascinating that so many films and whole boxed sets of TV dramas and programmes are available. If the winter gets really bad, I could snuggle up in my thermals and spend weeks bingewatching.

So far I’ve got 10 hours of The Bridge, two series of Rome and three series of Bottom to watch. And I’ve not even started on the films.Caption: Miley Cyrus … an exponent of twerking.