They have absolutely nothing in common except a passion about the outdoors, a love of walking and a curiosity about the world.Those are the characteristics which will define the next generation of the old – they are not can’t-do drips but will-do enthusiasts My parents’ generation was mired in the past. We are entering a golden age for people of my generation, the baby boomers born directly after the Second World War. Just as we were the first teenagers, the first generation that became a discrete group of consumers, the first generation to develop its own music, art, writing and fashion, so we will redefine old age. That is why even though I’ve become an invisible woman, I am optimistic about the next decade.I write this column on a boat sailing around the Western Isles of Scotland.

At work, there’s always a subtle dress code, just as there is wherever you go to play. And because we’ve been brainwashed for decades, we now just think that as you get older, you not only start to look a bit less interesting and attractive, but you also are less useful about the place.
Of course, no one wants to admit they ever treat older people differently – but the fact is, we do. In the first national survey of age-related prejudice, which was discussed at the British Association for the Advancement of Science this week, it is clear that perceptions of age are relative. Older women think youth lasts until you’re 57, whereas 24-year-old men think you’re elderly at 55.When you consider that within 35 years around 40 per cent of the population is going to be over 60, it’s obvious that current attitudes to ageing will change drastically.

But it’s not that simple – from the moment my generation could read a price tag, gaze in a shop window or flip through the pages of a magazine, we were bombarded with images of young, thin, glamorous women. It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing, you are literally a non-person. Of course, some people, like Germaine Greer, have said reaching old age is truly liberating, and having cast aside the toil and stress of trying to make yourself sexually attractive to anything with a pulse, you can now get on with really enjoying yourself. Women realise the minute they’ve got old – it’s the first time you enter a room full of men and absolutely no one looks at you It’s as if you’ve become invisible.