IT was deep pink nail varnish that inspired this column.

I thought it looked so glamorous, peeking out from the silver sandals I’d chosen to dance in at my younger son’s wedding because the expensive new heels I’d be wearing to the church weren’t comfortable enough to last all evening.

Until I saw the official photographs of the reception three weeks later. And then the toenails didn’t even register. What I saw there was a red-faced (well, it was a heatwave!), white-haired woman who’d never come to terms with that horrible sticky feeling of wearing makeup and hence hadn’t bothered, reasoning in her somewhat Bohemian blonde youth that it wasn’t necessary – which it wasn’t, back then – and never having revisited the subject since.

A woman looking distinctly podgy round the middle in a dress that hadn’t made her look like that when bought for one of the rare posh events in her life a few years previously. With a bit of a double chin. And wrinkly neck. A woman, in short, who was now undergoing an epiphany, and realising that her self-image was no longer remotely in tune with what other people, or the camera, saw.

A woman of 65. What the hell did I expect?

I used to nod politely when my mother told me she didn’t feel any different, in her eighties, to how she did at 21. Only now I got what she meant. What’s on the inside no longer marries up with the outside.

There was no escaping it. There it was, pinned down for ever, on the photos alongside my handsome son and his beautiful wife, not to mention all the other lovely young people, including my older son who was one of the groomsmen, and his own wife who was just laughing in every picture, having a wonderful, carefree, youthful time.

And then came the guilt. Because I shouldn’t have been worrying about what I looked like. This was the young couple’s day, and having established that yes, they looked fabulous and just as they should, I’d then speedily homed in on what other people would think of me.

It’s not about you, I told myself. But it bloody well was.

Because I’d been made to face the fact that I was 65, and not eternally 25. And when I looked down from the images on my computer screen to my feet, even the nail varnish was chipped. Vanity, eh?

I suspect this column may provide fresh ammunition for the nutter element among the Journal’s online readership, i.e. sad men with nothing better to do than post comments criticising my appearance. That’s their problem, not mine.

I’m certain many women out there will know exactly what I mean.

So this is for them. We all get older, most of us get fatter, and few of us get much wiser. We’re the lucky ones. We’re still around.

Let’s just make the most of it. It’ll only get worse from here on in!

anneriddle36@gmail.com