Losing 4st, no wine o’clock and a face cream from Aldi! AGE 53

PeerIng back through the mists of time to my younger physical self, I wonder what george Bernard Shaw was on about when he declared: ‘Youth is wasted on the young.’

A quick mental trawl through my own earlier decades yields a showreel of assorted ghastliness, which began to improve only in my mid-40s.

At 53, I’ve never been more content with how I look.

I was battling the odds in the appearance department until I was 20.

Soon after birth I developed a facial haemangioma — a collection of blood vessels which form a lump under the skin. think of a large purplish cauliflower floret attached to my upper lip and you get the idea.

nowadays treatments are available, but back then the advice was merely to wait for it to fade, which took many years. Until I had a corrective procedure at age 20, I looked like I’d been punched in the face.

Combine this throughout my teens with frizzy hair, bicyclechain braces on my teeth and thick nHS glasses and you’ll understand it was not a time of peak confidence.

I was not one of life’s cute kids. funnily enough, I haven’t kept any photographs from those years.

emerging from that formative phase with straight teeth and contact lenses, I thought it a marvellous idea to dye my hair straw-blonde. for most of my 20s, I carefully stripped away, with every application of bleach, what little natural con-

dition my hair possessed. Once I'd got over that habit, I spent my entire 30s so overwhelmed by a long standing eating dis-order that I ballooned to almost 14st. It was only in my early 40s that I found a way of managing the eating disorder, and was able to lose 4st in two years. I'm often asked how I did it, but it was simply the age-old formula of eat less, move more. BECAUSE it took two stars to shed that weight, some good habits were ingrained. So ten years on, my weight rarely fluctuates by more than a Christmas or holi-day half-stone. It involved no more fearfully punishingexercise regime than walking several miles a day with my dog. I still do that, as I'm strong believer that simply being outside is great for you. At 50 I went through an 18-month phase of attempting to become a regular runner. But the bovine sweatiness induced by my efforts wrought havoc in the the fuzzy hair department , nullifying all the good work achieved by John Frieda’s Frizz ease range and GHD straighteners.

I once heard some ‘expert’ declare that women who exercise have such naturally glowing complexions that they don’t need make-up.

Obviously that person needed locking up. I never looked grimmer than when I was running, and I wouldn’t be seen dead without slap.

But I can’t say I invest much time or money in skincare — my moisturiser is Aldi’s Lacura Caviar, which costs only £6.99 — and I’ve never had so much as a facial, never mind Botox. I’m just not interested.

It helps that my mother had great skin, and in summer I much prefer hugging the shade to baking under the sun. Mind you, I was horrified the first time I used a magnifying mirror to put on my make-up, and registered all the fine (and notso-fine) lines on my face.

But a fringe conceals the forehead furrows, and these days a lot of those wrinkles are smoothed away in the mirror by my increasingly blurry nearsight. God bless silver linings.

Most importantly, it seems so much easier these days to understand what constitutes happiness. The key is looking outwards, engaging with others and the world around us, and noticing the ordinary joys of life as often as possible: good health, warm sunshine, changing seasons, the kindness of friends . . . to name but four.

I know it sounds like a syrupy life-lesson, but this kind of happiness shows in your face.

And nothing looks better than that.