‘Mum you aren’t going to go out in that!’ says Chloe as I sweep glamorously down the stairs ready for an evening out with Gary. The babysitter feigns deafness.

“What’s wrong with it?” I ask, reasonably enough.

“Everything!” Chloe says, storming off, trampling my confidence underfoot, without bothering to help scrape it up again.

In the bathroom mirror the figure hugging red top and French skirt made me look young and sexy. The downstairs mirror is making me look like one of those toilet roll cover dolls.

Gary arrives. “You look nice,” he says.

Nice! Not sexy, attractive, amazing or gorgeous, just nice. “No I don’t., ‘ I mumble. ‘ I’m going to change,”

“We’ll be late, tables booked for eight. Anyway you look fine.”

Fine, like nice, means nothing. He looks gorgeous but I’m now too miffed to tell him.

Fashion after thirty is one big headache. How will I know when I am mutton dressed as lamb unless someone tells me, but how can I believe a child who wants to look like Amy Winehouse?

I just want to be reasonably fashionable for my age. I wouldn’t wear a smock top made of cobwebs or hipsters half-way down my bottom with a thong hoiked up my back because (a) I would look ridiculous and (b) even IF I didn’t, I know exactly what would happen. Ben would swear he doesn’t know me, especially if he was with his mates. Then he would wear his most threadbare ripped jeans with the huge hole in the bottom, and his scruffiest, scariest Goth hoodie, every time I wanted the family to look reasonably respectable. Chloe would shriek loudly, preferably in public; ‘I am NOT having a mother dressed like that,’ and storm off either in a major sulk or floods of tears depending on the audience. Timmy would roar with laughter, draw a picture of me which exaggerated every flaw and secretly give the outfit to Fubby to chew.

I would hate to become one of those grannies looking like decorated Christmas trees when the needles have dropped; belt sized skirts atop vein knobbled legs, sparkly tops showing creased leather cleavage; but I don’t plan to enter beige-cardi territory either.

At dinner Gary stokes my leg under the table. “You look gorgeous tonight, “he says. “Really fantastic.”