Well, at least that’s what I’m telling my sister

My big sis turns 60 today. And how the hell did that happen, she wonders?

Like all of us, she still feels 20 inside. She still likes clothes, makeup, going out to functions, and she’s a tad reluctant to go and pick up her bus pass just yet. Instead she’ll be seeing her youngest son back down to his job in Essex and then going out for a Chinese with the girls.

The dichotomy between how old you are and how old you feel set us talking the other day about our mother, who died a year ago aged 83, and about our gran, our father’s mother, who died at a similar age back in the 1980s. To both of us, both of them always seemed irredeemably ancient - and they dressed accordingly.

Mum was about 40 by the time I remember her and already she wouldn’t go in the sea because ‘it was bad for her insides’. She dressed in elastic-waist trousers and comfy shoes. Add a hairdo just like the Queen, and she didn’t change very much in the next 20 years. I never once saw her in heels or a dress. She gained weight and lost weight and was always on a diet (if she had a pound for every slimming magazine she’d read, she’d be rich, said our father), but her fashion sense never changed. She never learned to drive or had a full-time job, and when my father died she was terrified to live alone and moved in with my sister. She was only 61 but seemed like a tiny little old lady.

Gran, called Nana by us, I only ever remember looking like Ena Sharples from Coronation Street - all curlers and hairnet, in shapeless dun-coloured clothes. She would have been about 62 then, or maybe even younger. The mother of five children, she had no figure to speak of, and above one breast her tops were often see-through - a legacy of her Irish habit of sawing bread across her chest rather than putting it on a table. She never wore a bra and most of the time she didn’t wear her teeth either.

But today is a different world. My sister would cut her own head off with a chainsaw rather than look like this, so much has life changed for women in the past 40 years. This is her with her new car, of which she is very proud, and in which she does many hundreds of miles a year. She owns her own home. Her daily uniform is jeans, loafers and a t-shirt. For walking the dog she puts on one of the big wrap cardigan coats that are so of the moment. She gets her (own) teeth whitened and knows what a mascara tube looks like. Going grey, for the time being, is just not an option.

There’s no question but that for previous generations, 60 was sartorially the end, but now my sis has a statistically excellent chance of living another 25 years or so, so no way is she giving up the fight to look good just yet. More power to her.

So I agree - 60 is the new 40 and that’s good news for me too. You see, I’m 45 but I spent eight years with a crappy bloke, so that makes me 37, and 37’s obviously - what? - the new 25.

It’s great to be back in my twenties.

The weather finally improved over the weekend, so I decided it was time for the big spring changeover

I normally do this on the first of April, or the weekend closest to it, but this year’s been so cold and dark, and spring so late, that I left it for the first proper spring day instead. For some reason this year (global warming?), we seemed to switch directly from winter to summer without really going through spring at all, and at the weekend, temperatures rose dramatically.

Changing over your house between winter and summer is a very wabi-sabi thing to do because it acknowledges the turn of the season and reflects the fact that you use your home in different ways in winter than in summer. Making dual use of your space in this way also makes it feel twice the size - like you have your very own holiday home.

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If you want a cleaner, less cluttered, more relaxed environment, wabi-sabi is the way to go

Wabi-sabi arose from Zen Buddhism but it enables you to live a simpler and less-cluttered life whatever your situation or beliefs. Earlier I wrote about the tokonoma, a special alcove or area that you can have in a room as a focal point, but here I’ll deal with surfaces.

In wabi-sabi, it’s very basic: you keep your surfaces clear, and if you can’t, you limit the number of things on them to three. Just follow this ‘rule’ and you’ll find it all comes together easily.

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Women over 40 are increasingly marrying again, but getting married in mid-life throws up different issues from marrying when you’re younger. Not to mention the difficulty of finding that perfect dress…

Brigit Sapstead is having her wedding at Easter and it will be a time of great joy and celebration, but she’s found that things are more complicated the second time around.

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There are millions of atheists, but when we come under attack, we often can’t justify our viewpoint - what we need is ammunition

I was raised in a very religious household, with many hours of Sunday dedicated to praising Him in whichever denomination my mother favoured at the moment, but there was something about it that my intelligence couldn’t quite accept.

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A few days ago I wrote about wabi-sabi in your home, and since there was such a strong response, I thought I’d elaborate on it a little.

Wabi-sabi, of course, arose in Japan, so to apply it in your home, it helps to know a little about what a traditional Japanese house looks like, though very few Japanese still live in them.

A traditional Japanese house is modular and most of the wall space is taken up either by floor-to-ceiling built-in furniture that stores the family’s clothes, bedding, etc, or by sliding doors. The doors, called fusuma, can be opened up to create one big space, or closed to create smaller spaces.

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I ordered my roses the other day, and it suddenly feels like spring is on its way

They won’t actually arrive for ages, of course. They’re bare-root jobs from David Austin in the UK, and they won’t come until March or April. But in a bitter February, with frost on the ground every morning, a girl can still dream.

When we moved to France, I had no idea what an obsession the garden would become. I would never have thought I’d become a bulb catalogue sort of person, the kind of woman who ordered gardening books on Amazon. I associated that with old ladies in straw hats, but one of the enjoyable things about being in my 40s is that I no longer feel the need to apologise for loving my garden.

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A very great deal of my clothing has belonged to someone else first.

Some people - those with a big enough wallet or too thin a skin - never see the point in buying stuff second-hand, but I love it.

I developed the Oxfam knack while I was at college, about the same time as learning to sew, and for the same reason - champagne tastes and a beer income.

I was, and remain, a clothing snob, and it didn’t take a degree in mathematics to work out that although I could afford to shop at What She Wants and the street markets in London, they were full of crap that I wouldn’t dress my cat in. My money was going to go a lot further and I’d get much better things in charity shops.

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Gay couple take the state of Colorado to court for their right to marry

A lesbian couple from Englewood, near Denver are seeking to overturn the state of Colorado’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

The couple, Kate Burns (44) and Sheila Schroeder (43), have filed a motion claiming that Amendment 43, which was passed in 2006 and sought to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, violated their constitutional right to equal protection.

“Marriage is a fundamental right, which should be for all Coloradans, not just some Coloradans,” said their lawyer Mari Newman.

Sadly, the amendment was passed by a 55 per cent majority, so perhaps their chances of overturning it are not high, but hats off to them for trying - what could be more romantic for Valentine’s Day?

For more on this story, visit the New York Times website.

Cosmetic surgery gives me the creeps, and here’s why

Let me say straight away that I am not against plastic surgery per se. Surgery that restores a face or body to normalcy after a tumour, or a car crash, or severe burns. Surgery for people who are sick of heads turning as they walk down the street because their appearance is so abnormal. Though I wish we were more accepting of deformity and disfigurement in our culture, we are what we are, and I am not against the kind of surgery that enables a sufferer to live a reasonably normal life.

But I really do believe that vanity cosmetic surgery is wrong. Just look at the breast implants on this woman - who on earth does she think she’s kidding? And this Brazilian bikini revealing a body that is - shall we say? - well past its prime. It is so terribly undignified.

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