WHY I FEEL LIKE AN ANTIQUE

WHAT with all your wonderful responses, I’ve been thinking a lot these past weeks about getting older. Here are three nasty little surprises that have occurred to me recently!

I’M spending a fortune insuring my glass and china. The cut glass belonged to my mother, the dinner service was a wedding present, so their only real value is sentimental. And it’s all too grand to use in case we break it.

And in these Ikea times nobody would want to buy it from us. So why do we insure the stuff? It makes no sense.

The furniture I thought was modern is now ‘retro collectable’, while the antiques I lovingly collected over decades have become unwanted ‘brown furniture’.

I own an Ercol rocking chair; when I bought it back in the Sixties I thought it was modern and practical, but dull. Now it’s seen as a fascinating piece of retro home decoration. While my poor old wooden furniture is consigned to the dump — unless I paint the lot pale grey, which is apparently acceptable.

I sit with my knees apart! As you get older you find you are sitting less discreetly — it’s much more comfortable.

I gave a lecture, at the end of which a member of the audience said to my daughter: ‘I’m sure your mother would wish to know that throughout her lecture her knickers were clearly visible.’

To which my daughter replied: ‘I think she might have preferred to know that a little earlier!’