Want to really gross out your adult kids? Tell them how much fun you’re having

June 3, 2026 — 5:00am

Three post-menopausal women walk into a wine bar… Well, it’s not beyond the realm of imagination, is it? Women my age are having fun. But it sure is annoying our offspring.

So many of my girlfriends are leading secret lives so as not to upset their kids. Younger lovers, tattoos, overseas trips, late onset lesbianism, expensive hobbies… Even what they spend on clothes, facials, food shopping or home help are being kept under wraps so as not to displease a judgmental brood.

Sanctimonious progeny are behaving so much like killjoy social workers they should be listening exclusively to Enya and only eating lentils. “A new carpet? Surely this one will see you out,” a friend’s daughter told her recently. My friend is 77. “A memoir! How mortifying! Over my dead body!” another daughter shuddered when told of her mother’s literary ambitions. “Yes, your legs are still good, but a miniskirt just doesn’t go with your face,” a third friend’s daughter admonished. “A nose piercing? Pathetic!” a pal’s son declared.

When I showed my own son the dolphin tattoo I’ve been contemplating, he took on the facial expression of a headmaster – a headmaster trained by the SAS. “It’s a bit desperate, Mum.”

Highest on the progeny Ick List though, are new lovers. A wealthy divorced girlfriend of mine met a humble librarian on a dating app six months ago and they’re now busily ticking items off her bucket list. Her children are horrified. “You can’t go gallivanting around the globe with a man you’ve only just met!” her son scolded her. “I’ve got condiments in my pantry that have been around longer than he has.”

When my girlfriend announced at her 60th birthday party that she and her beau were off on a celebratory safari, her daughter adopted the demeanour of a North Korean checkpoint guard suspecting espionage and spent the whole night glowering at the poor fella as though he were packing a few hand grenades.

As soon as he’d sloped off, downhearted, the daughter erupted: “We’re extremely worried about our inheritance. You know, that big amount of money, destined as a legacy to your beloved children.” Even when my girlfriend reminded her kids that she’d downsized to buy their flats, the sulking continued. She is now pretending to be caravanning with me down the coast while secretly hot-air ballooning with him over the Serengeti.

I took up with an older man whose back went out more often than we did. Our foreplay consisted of, “Put your hearing aid in, then shout dirty to me.”

The children of a widowed girlfriend were equally horrified to discover that their mother’s lover is 20 years her junior. “Your hairstyle is older than he is,” tut-tutted her son. Her appalled daughter insisted she date a man more “age appropriate”.

I shuddered when she told me this, remembering my own period of “carbon dating”. After my divorce, I took up with an older man whose back went out more often than we did. He required advance warning about when to schedule an erection and practically needed a permit from the council – erect the scaffolding! Our foreplay consisted of, “Put your hearing aid in, then shout dirty to me.”

But just because women my age don’t want to be a nurse to an older man, that doesn’t mean we’re just a purse to a younger one. Critical offspring, though, think otherwise. “You don’t have sex appeal, Mother, you have tax appeal,” admonished a friend’s son upon discovering she was having a fling with her personal trainer. “Anyway, you should be over sex at your age. I doubt staff will allow a water bed in your residential care home.”

It’s tempting to shove such carping kids back into the condom vending machine for a refund. Surely the best way not to feel old is to feel a man 30 years your junior every night?

I think I speak for all female sexagenarians when I say that we want to behave, we really do, but there are just too many other options. The worst thing about middle-age is that you grow out of it. So don’t live your life as if you have a spare one in the vault, like those women who save outfits for “best”, then never wear them. This is best. Your life right now is that special occasion.

And no more subterfuge. How many years have you spent in the caring and career trenches? You’ve paid your dues. Now is the time to kick up your heels, preferably while tap dancing on a tabletop. So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m just off to the tattoo parlour…

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