‘WE STILL HAVE BOUNDLESS ENERGY FOR FUN, SEX AND ADVENTURE’
Jane Gordon, 67, is a journalist and author. She lives in Oxfordshire and is mother to Bryony, 42, Naomi, 40, and Rufus, 30 – and grandmother to Edie, nine.
When my elder daughter announced her pregnancy 10 years ago, I was shocked by the reaction of some of my friends. Then in my late 50s, I received messages and a handful of greeting cards that seemed to regard my becoming a grandparent as confirmation that I had reached ‘old age’. ‘Not long now!’ one friend wrote inside a card that pictured a wizened old woman doubled up over a Zimmer frame.
I knew this was a joke – and of course on the happy day of my granddaughter’s birth, I didn’t suddenly and dramatically change into an old fossil. Neither have I done so almost 10 years later, at the age of 67. Yet ever since, I have had to fight this strange societal directive
