It’s still early days in the second half of the first century of my life, but I think things are looking up for us nifty fifties.

Or, at least, I think that’s what I’m supposed to think.

Thanks to model Kristen McMenamy, who has posed with her hair au naturel this week, grey hair is the new black.

Or mousey, or whatever colour your locks used to be before they succumbed to advancing years.

As someone who’s being plastering various L’Oreal and Garnier shades over her head for decades, it’s come as a bit of a relief.

I’d have gone grey gracefully years ago, but I never had the bottle. Or perhaps that should be I always had the bottle, tucked on its shelf in the bathroom cabinet, ready to apply to the roots and half the bathroom tiles every six weeks in a bid to differentiate me once again from a badger.

Up until now, there have been three women in the entire western world who look fab with fading hair, but if you weren’t fortunate enough to be Helen Mirren, Sheila Hancock or Judi Dench you were beyond the pale.

Old was simply old hat.

Now, though, it looks as if we should be re-evaluating our ideas of Old Age.

A while back we understood we were all hurtling towards retirement, quietly looking forward to the day when we’d get a free bus pass and letters from the subscription departments of The Oldie and Saga magazine.

However, it now appears we hurtle not. Instead, retirement hurtles away from us, tantalisingly out of reach. And there, I predict, it will stay.

Why do you think the government spends money on artificial hips and knees? It’s obvious.

Because it knows we are going to live far, far longer than people have ever lived before, and that it will never be able to afford to allow us to retire.

So it needs to make us believe that our twilight years will be as attractive as possible. Because it’s going to be one heck of a long twilight zone.

The government – itself not too fussy about colours these days – needs to keep us baby boomers pacified.

We’re a potentially vocal lot, with high expectations, disappearing pension pots, a notorious tendency to grumpiness and with more than a passing interest in feeling and looking good.

So, some bright young thing in Whitehall has said, put a positive spin on pushing back pensions!

Make grey gorgeous! Delight in dentures, crow about crow’s feet, love your liver spots and bring on those bunions!

Let’s tell the ageing workforce they’re having the time of their life, slowly disintegrating – and the key word there is slowly – but still managing to clock on every morning and contribute a whack of income tax to the eternally grateful taxman at the end of every month. I’ve nothing against living longer.

In fact, as an atheist I’m a bit irritated that I’ve spent so much time learning things like how to walk upright and read and write and iron a shirt and cook Bolognese sauce (finely chopped livers and carrots are a must, by the way) that I’m a bit miffed that one day I’m going to suddenly go out like a light and all that effort will be for nothing.

But I don’t want the longest part of my life to be the old bit. I’d like the period of 16 to 19, when I behaved irresponsibly and uproariously, to last a couple of decades.

I’d like paid maternity leave to span about 40 years. I don’t really want to spend 30 years leaning on my Zimmer frame behind the check-out of B&Q, however nice it is working at B&Q.

Still, that’s my generation for you, I guess. Never happy. Let’s all hum together now. Hope I die before I get old …