The thing about being 48 is that you straddle the fence – you’re neither exactly old but equally neither young and certainly the moniker of middle-aged is friend to no one.

So what do you do?

Well, in a word, nothing I think.

After all, what’s the point? By the time you’ve attempted to come to terms with above-the-knee skirts perhaps looking a tad sad, you’re suddenly in the maelstrom of developing double chins, crows’ feet as wide and expansive as that of an American Bald Eagle and ankles that, unless bound and tied tightly, start to resemble the legs of pool tables.

Initially, like any other woman, I DID find this hard to deal with.

But thankfully my daughters were on hand to cheerfully (no, better make that gleefully) question my desperate stabs at attempting to stay gloriously immortalised between my late thrities and early forties.

And that I believe is why you have daughters.

Sons would be too polite.

They’d say, even under pain of death: “No mum, that bob looks great and really brings out the whitener on your teeth.”

And why wouldn’t they? Sons are there to continually reassure you that you look great and that all their friends think you’re hot.

Daughters on the other hand are, I believe, God’s way of keeping us grounded (and probably God’s way of keeping their brothers grounded too).

I love my daughters desperately and achingly (and occasionally get the sense they quite like me too – especially when I serve up tuna salads) and I now realise that were it not for their squeals of horror, their screams of glee and their laugh-out-loud reactions to my latest sartorial purchases, I probably would look like mutton dressed as lamb.

And the great thing with daughters is, they don’t spare the rod.

There’s no dilution of the fact that a short, figure hugging number that I think pushes the clock back a good ten years, leaves them crying with laughter on the floor shouting “Noooooo waaaaaay.”

Consequently, I am indebted to them because their velociraptor sharp appraisals of my make-up, clothes, and accessories are so brutal they’re cathartic.

Of course, I would like to add that they mean well in their criticism, but the truth I believe is that they find my ideas of what’s cool and ‘sick’ so totally and completely... now, what’s the word?... stooopid, that their reactions are more primal and survivalist than 21st century tough love.

Would it have been nice then to have had a son? Someone to turn to in my retro 1960s dress and have him say “You look great mum. Really, that’s you...”

Yes, but I’ll take truth over kindness any time.

But having said all of the above, my eldest is currently away in Spain and her sister’s with her dad, which means I CAN DRESS HOW I LIKE!

And trust me, the woman looking back out at me in the mirror feels truly liberated...