‘You don’t look your age’- well, what does 75 look like? Who knows? I try to make it look the way I want to. I feel more myself - especially in lockdown - wearing beautiful lingerie, stylish clothes, makeup, preferably together with a good haircut. Superficial, you may say, but these things enable me to walk tall, feeling something good could happen today.

Growing up as I did, being extremely shy, neurotic and, in some ways, very sheltered, this compounded by the social norms of never seeing another woman’s body unclothed or hearing sexual matters talked about by my parents or contemporaries, it was easy to assume that every woman’s body was ‘better’, more in proportion, ‘sexier ‘ or ‘performed better’.

With age comes acceptance and what others may think - apart from family and close friends - becomes unimportant. Retirement has given me a renewed chance to decide who I am, rather than to function in the roles in which I find myself. I can choose and, in being autonomous, take responsibility for my life.