Worried about getting old? I’ve been embracing middle-age for decades

had a birthday last week. It wasn’t a notable one; not a milestone to be cheered or feared, although the next one of those – still a few years off – feels faintly impossible.

Some people like to go all out for a birthday. One friend used to be deeply offended if we didn’t turn up to each of the three or four events she’d planned as part of her annual festivities. I generally prefer to let birthdays steal up on me, then pass swiftly. On my twentieth, I forgot what day it was until nearly noon.

This ambivalence about the anniversary of my own birth is not some sort of Peter Pan complex. True, I’d rather my hair wasn’t getting a bit thinner, and that my knee didn’t ache, but broadly speaking the ageing process holds no terrors.