Too old to be midlife and too young to be old, SO WHAT AM I?

At 61, Louise Court refuses to be defined by her age and certainly doesn’t feel ‘past it’ – so why is society so obsessed with suggesting otherwise?

- LOUISE COURT

Question: what do you call a woman who has been through midlife and menopause but would rather pull her grey roots out one by one than be called old?

Welcome to the brave new world – and rather confusing territory – of the New Inbetweeners. Forget the coming-of-age TV comedy about teenage adolescence, this is at the other end of the life scale. A coming-of-old-age, in fact, when you feel neither one thing nor the other.

Surely an old person is someone who is really old. I’m talking Zimmer frames, Velcro slippers, stairlifts and those chairs that elevate and tip you out, as advertised during Midsomer Murders.

According to my thesaurus, ‘old’ is another word for ancient, decrepit, aged, tired, enfeebled, impaired, geriatric, broken down, grizzled and debilitated. Great! So much to look forward to. By common consensus, old is the catch-all word used to describe anybody who has seen 60 or more wonderful orbits around the sun. And that would be me.

The past few years have seen a vibrant, energised and, at times, angry revision of how 40-plus women are seen by the rest of the world. Thanks to Davina McCall, Mariella Frostrup and a host of former glossy magazine editors fed up with the embarrassed silence around menopause, it is now cool to be middle-aged. Hot flushes have become hot.

But there is a silent void about what happens next. I have contemporaries who still optimistically describe themselves as midlife – although I think I need to break the news that we are unlikely to be blowing out candles on our 122nd birthday cakes.