Julie Burchill

In my third husband I had discovered a blissfully laid-back type who thought it nothing less than hilarious when I misread the map on the way to Wales, so it took us an extra three hours, or when I was sick in a plastic carrier bag during much of the drive back from Devon - a bag that turned out to have a hole in it.

People often yearn back to more innocent times, but more and more, as I get older, I find myself hankering after more jaded days.

There's something brave and touching about game girls of all ages keeping themselves smart in hard times - one thinks of those wonderful women during World War II drawing stocking seams in eyebrow pencil up the back of legs stained with gravy browning because nylons were so hard to get hold of.

I'll declare my own interest right here at the start and admit that, like the vast majority of people, I find youthful looks appealing.

As a child, I wanted only two things - to be left alone to read my library books, and to get away from my provincial hometown and go to London to be a writer. And I always knew that when I got there, I wanted to make loads of money.

From paying off friends' tax bills to rescuing stray dogs and stuffing £20 notes into the hands of homeless people, I can't get rid of my money fast enough."

Sadly, a lot of what passes for feminism these days is just moaning about men, congratulating ourselves on nothing in particular, and mocking them for being big kids while doing everything we can to keep them that way.

Because I was an only, I had more things, and I remember early on the kick I got from giving stuff away. Despite all the myths about only children not being able to share, actually I've never knowingly met a stingy one.

As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well, as it turned out, I never wrote a great novel, sadly, and I never converted to Catholicism, happily, but I did do one thing he did. That is, in middle age I moved to a seaside town and got into a right barney with the local powers-that-be.

One of the few ways in which I feel I've actually matured is that as I've grown older I do find the concept of 'men' mystifying, whereas when I was a feisty young thing I was forever saying 'The most fun part of being a feminist is frightening men!'

It is also interesting to note that the original supermodels are now making a comeback after being dismissed in the Nineties as being 'greedy' by a gaggle of male designers who lived like Sun Kings.

Being a monarchist - saying that one small group is born more worthy of respect than another - is just as warped and strange as being a racist.