The face of old age, your own old age, takes a bit of getting used to. When I was only 74 and I still had a bad case of ageism, I didn’t like the look of old people. Now I look in the mirror and I see an old woman’s face — and strange to say, I don’t particularly care.

Dr Susanna Kent and I recorded this episode on my 85th birthday and we had a lot of fun, which I’m keen to share with you.

I demanded that Susanna explain why I’ve got dead-gorse-bush hair, non-existent eyebrows, and so many scars and wrinkles. I questioned random pedestrians: as you’ll hear, most said they don’t look at the face of a new acquaintance but into their eyes — or in one case, at their clothes! They look to see whether a person is approachable. They look for the essence, the spirit of a person. Which has nothing to do with wrinkles.

Turns out I have written at least three poems about faces and makeup. You could almost call it an obsession:

We barely touched on the topic. But a quick glance at the NIH National Library of Medicine gives the facts about facial ageing, sometimes in excruciating detail.