Sometimes when I get on the Internet I feel like everyone is young and beautiful.

So a sensible, successful, beautiful friend said to me this morning and it got me thinking (kids back to school today so finally for the first time in two weeks I can think rather than just do). The world-wide web is like an insidious competition for who is doing it better than us. Often, rather than feel energised by dropping off the edge of reality and wandering for an hour or so in the world of the almost-real we can be left feeling a little….inferior.

I’d heard that being a middle-aged woman could leave one feeling a bit invisible, but never really believed it. I thought all those older women were being a tad whiney and precious.

They’re not.

I waited at a bar recently for ages while hordes of gorgeous young things got served either side of me. Then the next row of them got served, and the next. I was halfway sober by the time I finally got my vodka and soda.

And yet I look around at my sensible friends and their friends and I see a sea of truly beautiful women whose beauty is born of the experience that lies comfortably in their faces. I don’t love that my triceps rock to their own beat when I am waving at someone, but I do love that I really don’t care all that much.

My oldest daughter is seventeen, so the house is often filled with strapping young lasses with praying mantis figures wearing tops they call dresses: God they are gorgeous! But in their eyes is a wide-eyed innocence that lacks the beauty of a life lived, with all its joy and sorrow.

At my mother’s seventieth birthday party on the weekend all her friends lit up the house with their laughter and wonderful stories and anecdotes. They came bearing platters of food, genuine warmth and fun: now that is beauty.  What’s more they didn’t have to wait a second for the next drink.

I was the only one waving though, so still a few tricks to learn…

Age is something that doesn’t matter. Unless you are a cheese.

~ Luis Bunuel