Wearing a bodycon dress, Amanda Elias, 43, drinks a glass of champagne and chats with her friends.

It's not long before the conversation turns to body confidence — and breasts in particular.

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Many of the women in the group, all in their 40s and 50s, are desperate to get rid of their uncomfortable underwire bras, but feel their breasts need extra support now that they are breastfeeding children.

Not Amanda who – for her 40th birthday – treated herself to a £5,000 breast reduction and lift because she wanted to join the popular #nobra movement on social media but didn't feel confident enough to do so at her age without some additional surgical support.

“I wanted the breasts I had at 19 again,” she says.

“Before I had my breasts done, I didn't even dare to take the bins out without a bra. Now I've thrown away all my thirty bras and I don't wear any anymore.

“I hated my breasts. I spent years forcing them into underwire bras, spending hundreds of dollars on maternity bras and never finding a bra that fit and gave me confidence.

“My breasts were saggy and were going down rapidly. I was tired of pushing them into bras and embarrassed by ugly fat bulges on the back that were clearly visible through tight bra straps.

“I didn't want granny boobs in my 50s, so I decided to join the youth and fight back… just with a little surgical support.”

If the Wonderbra – with its infamous 'Hello Boys' slogan – was synonymous with the '90s, then the bralette and nipple release are now in style.

Figures back this up: the University of Michigan Business School revealed that a Wonderbra was purchased every 15 seconds in 1994, generating sales of more than £95.2 million.

Now the Instagram account has only 25,000 followers.

Meanwhile, Marks & Spencer's bralette section is bigger than ever.

Movement without a bra

Amanda, who supports older women who don't wear bras or undergo surgery, says she understands why.

“I love the #nobra movement,” says the self-employed businesswoman from Ammanford, South Wales. “I don't wear a bra anymore and haven't for two years.

“I paid £5,000 not to do that and it makes me feel so sexy.

“I used to be terrified of even taking out the bins without a bra; I just wouldn't do it.

“Now my bras are in the bins.”

Single Amanda, mother of three children aged 20, 15 and 10, says she was first inspired to go braless after seeing women on social media abandoning them.

But she felt self-conscious and worried she had 'granny boobs' and couldn't emulate the younger generations as they happily went braless.

Drastic action

So in December 2021, Amanda embarked on phase one of what she calls her 'mummy overhaul', spending £5,000 on breast reduction and enlargement.

She was saving for the operation. My friends supported me and now tried to talk me out of it.

“I didn't want bigger breasts,” she says.

“I wanted the extra back and to look like I did before I had children. I was tired of feeling trapped in my underwear. I breastfeed my children. After each child my breasts deflated and lost their shape.

“There was never a supportive and comfortable bra available that I could find.”

I used to be terrified of even putting the braless bins out – now all my bras are in the bin

Amanda Elias

She underwent breast reduction surgery at a London hospital in a two-hour operation, with recovery taking eight weeks.

“It was painful, but I didn't care,” she says.

“I was actually excited that I had given my life to the work and my children, and I saw it as a gift from me to me.

“I had the operation for myself. Not for anyone else. It was my decision and a treat for me.”

Going braless

Still, it took her some time before she felt brave enough to go braless. But when she did, she was so excited. “They were stimulated again and that immediately gave me confidence,” she says.

Over the next four months, Amanda stopped wearing bras and now only has two sexy bras that she saves for special occasions.

“I am currently single. I haven't delved into the world of dating apps, but I hope my new outlook on life will serve me well.

“It took a while because I was convinced that bras were essential,” she says. “I felt like I was breaking the law by going braless.

One day, while wearing a tank top and nothing underneath while doing housework, Amanda realized she looked better, was more relaxed and had more confidence.

“Then I went to my bedroom and took out all my old, ugly bras in so many different sizes and threw them away,” she says.

“I've thrown away more than thirty bras, and some were ten or fifteen years old. I put away my bras and haven't looked back.”

All new Amanda

Amanda also ditched her flowy mom dresses.

“I have been exercising and have also lost two stone: from a size 14 to a size 12. I have wider hips. I love the hourglass shape I get in a wiggle dress,” she says. “I got a new haircut and became more confident with my makeup.

“Going braless was my way of saying, 'Hello world, I'm back'”

“I feel empowered now. I'm single again and focusing on my business, a skin care company that ships specialized serums and chemical peels all over the world.

“It's called Bravura London and I feel like I've given myself a big compliment with my new look too,” says CEO Amanda.

She says there are added benefits to going braless.

“I no longer have to worry about tight bra straps showing unsightly fat bulges in the back,” she says.

But she has been criticized – largely by women.

“I am honestly amazed at how many women are shocked by my decision,” she says. “I never knew it would be so shocking for some people to come out as a woman without a bra. I thought I would get more grief if I had a boob job.

“I discovered that not wearing a bra every day is the last taboo. But for me it's the best decision I've ever made.

“But as women we have to make our decisions.

“I saved up and had surgery and got the breasts I wanted and deserved. I can now buy strapless dresses, strappy tops and open back dresses without worrying about strap marks, or spending a fortune finding a bra to use underneath.

“At Christmas I wore an off-the-shoulder dress and no one noticed I wasn't wearing a bra.

“The freedom you get when you don't have to worry about the straps being visible is worth its weight in gold.

“In my 40s, it's a chance to celebrate my 'true self.' I'd rather experience it, not just post about it. So I say bravo to not having a bra. It works for me.

“I'm sexier than ever – I can give those young TikTokers a run for their money.”

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By Ellen Coughlan for Mailonline

Published: 12:41 EST, February 1, 2024 | Updated: 12:50 EST, February 1, 2024

Cardigans have an image problem. Play word association and you get grandma, prim, two, school uniform. No one ever automatically thinks: Cool! Glamorous! Or even classic.

It comes down to this: people think cardigans aren't sexy. The young think (or they did) that they are as attractive as a jersey wrap dress; and women like us think they will make us look like our mothers in their twinset days, or just homely, cozy, scruffy. Anyway, fashion toast.

Well, that's all about to change. In fact, it has already changed. If you've been looking closely, you'll have noticed that Brad Pitt was recently spotted in Beverly Hills with his girlfriend Ines de Ramon – and what did she wear on their date night?

Yes, a cardigan! A khaki cardigan, mid-length, luxuriously soft (probably mohair and cashmere), bell sleeves, edge to edge, over a white fitted top, leather pants and boots. There is a lot of exposed collarbone visible.

We can look back on this as the moment when the long cardigan – worn open over something slimmer and revealing a bit of skin – became ideal for date-night wear. Sexy but soft and relaxed, and surprisingly elegant. Although De Ramon is thirty and doesn't need to cover her butt, that could be a bonus for the rest of us.

Mango does a longer cardigan in cream (£29.99, shop.mango.com) and Marks & Spencer's even longer, almost midaxi, cappuccino cardigan (£129, marksandspencer.com) could do a similar job – worn over a tonal turtleneck, with pants, it has casual dinner, if not date night, written all over it.

The point is that from now on cardigans are meant to be worn in an elegant and/or sexy way in the evening, or to add a touch of chic in the office.

So how do you ensure you stay on track and don't end up in schlump territory? Simple. Think of three types of vests and follow these rules:

Date night cardigan

Apart from the buttonless long cardigan (above), the perfect evening cardigan is prim and sexy. It is a round neck, falls on the hips, soft (not cotton, that looks too thin) and fitted but not skinny.

For a cashmere classic, try M&S (£89). For a plain, boxy, woolen style, there's & Other Stories (£65, stories.com) or Arket (£67, arket.com).

You wear your prim and sexy unbuttoned to almost cleavage, and with the sleeves turned up. (The big secret to making the cardigan look fresh and modern is to wear it on bare skin, and not over a thick shirt). This year the cut-off long one-shoulder sweater (remember the '80s?) is back and this is the grown-up, less flashy alternative. A cardigan with an off-shoulder look, that is what we strive for.

Do not: go for a V-neck. They are much harder to wear because you have to consider what goes underneath. Or a wide boyfriend style. Those oversized varsity style cardigans are very fashionable, but leave them to your daughters.

Alternative jacket

This one has pockets and gold-plated or jeweled buttons, like a Chanel knitted jacket. Or it's simple yet structured and boxy. Mango has a good style with black and white stripes with bling-like buttons (£49.99, shop.mango.com) or one in a black spotted tweedy knit (£35.99).

There are other structured cardigans that can replace blazers: Zara has a plain, light gray crew-neck knitted cardigan, fastened with a single silver button at the neck (was £35.99, now £12.99, zara.com) that a sleek matching sweater looks stylish.

At the other end of the scale is Zara's boxy faux fur cardigan with floral buttons (£45.99), worn with a black straight skirt, belt from office to evening.

Do not: go for too many decorations. The virtue of a cardigan jacket is its simplicity – and you can always spice it up with jewelry, a bag chain or a scarf.

The smart vest

You can get around the 'no V-neck' rule if it's an extra high V-neck and a smart shape, like Toast's wool 'neat cardigan' (£145, toa.st). If you're looking for something to wear with a skirt, this one hits just at the hip. Thanks to its neat shape and wide ribbed hem, it is perfect to wear over a slightly flared model. Add a knotted silk scarf and you have a whole new look.

Do not: Wear shirt collars underneath. A crew neck or hidden layer top is best.

Giving a pig’s head a clean shave with one of my husband’s disposable razors is not what I had expected as part of my cooking prep — and yet that is exactly what I find myself doing during the week I try cooking like my granny, a gentleman farmer’s wife.

It’s all thanks to a controversial remark by French trade minister Olivia Grégoire, who advised the French population suffering from the cost of living crisis to save money by ‘cooking like granny’.

But does it work as a strategy? And how on earth will my Deliveroo-loving 21st-century family find it?

There’s no question we could do with tightening our belts, though. With two hungry 22-year-olds (my daughter and her boyfriend) back living with us after university, our weekly grocery shop has doubled from an average £80 to about £160.

Yet on the face of it, there’s no guarantee ‘cooking like granny’ will be that much cheaper. I’ll have to forgo the economy ranges, the budget pasta, cheap chickpeas and tofu-for-meat swaps, for example, as my granny wouldn’t recognise any of that as food fit for the family table. She and Grandpa were old-school, meat-and-two-veg types.

We must transport ourselves back in time to the Warwickshire farm where my Granny cooked — but, unlike her, we don’t own chickens or milk our own cows, and we can’t shoot game or forage for mushrooms. So all of that will cost us.

Also out are expensive fruit juices, kefir yoghurts, chia seeds, Japanese rice crackers, smoked salmon and the sirloin steaks that we might have for treat night on Fridays. There will be no sourdough bread, Kettle Chips, pricey dips or snacking between meals. Already, I begin to see how drastic a change this week-long challenge is going to be.

Yet the prospect isn’t all horrifying: Ms Grégoire’s insistence on ‘grandmother education’ was as much about the principle of avoiding waste as it was about the preparation of meals from scratch and the use of traditional recipes.

As the daughter and grand-daughter of matriarchs, I am already a devotee of food-prepping, famous within my family for my creative approach to leftovers and my disdain for ultra-high-processed food and over-bossy sell-by dates.

But I have become a bit lazy, since working full-time, about traditional cooking, blurring the cook-from-scratch benchmark by opting for ready-chopped flash-fry Asian options or easily assembled mezze-style menus. I cut corners to cut costs, but if I put in the effort necessary for a nose-to-tail, back-to-basics, traditional meal plan, can I succeed granny’s way?

I pull on my pinny and plan a menu of three meals a day for a week, based on my memories of Granny’s cooking: the offcuts of raw pastry she would give me, having rolled out a tart; or the salty, fatty indulgence of her beef dripping sandwiches;

‘Gravy, gravy, gravy! Sauces with everything,’ Mum reminds me.

‘Usually gravy-based or white sauce. I remember her pride in using every bit of the pigs from the family farm. We’d keep the legs, ribs and head and send the rest to the butcher to be made into pork pies. Oh, the excitement when the pork pies came back to us!’

Being broke themselves, the kids embrace the cost-cutting agenda and promise to try everything once. The boyfriend’s excited about nightly puddings, but my daughter is concerned that the dominance of meat will wreck the gut health she has achieved with her kimchi and turmeric shakes.

It’s true my family matriarchs were thinking more about value and convenience than they were nutrition. Most lunches involved leftovers from previous dinners; most food was chosen with longevity in mind; sugar and salt were deployed generously.

Furthermore, fridges were small and freezer space had to be rented in town, hence the preponderance of jams and chutneys in the pantry.

I show my meal plans to nutritionist Janey Bullivant for her verdict. ‘It is certainly a carnivore’s delight,’ she says, ‘and to be applauded for its fresh, whole food ingredients, slow cooking and re-purposing. But it’s limited in fruit and vegetables, which should make up a third of what we eat.’

Cost-wise, it stands up. Stripped of our usual buys, our supermarket bill plunges by nearly £40 — and our takeout/eating-out costs of £130 disappear. If we stuck to this for a month, we would save a total of £680 on our food bills. What is, at first sight, an expensive butcher’s bill of £83 is worth it for the sheer delight of chatting flesh with our 72-year-old local butcher, Mr Stenton, who has carved it all.

Core to this ‘grandmother education’ is the art of conversation. Talk to your aged relative/butcher/fishmonger and ask them what they recommend. You’ll eat more for less and your meals will be tastier for it. But one cost my granny would never have calculated is my labour.

Normally, I spend 10-20 minutes preparing lunch, half an hour preparing dinner, with breakfast taken on the hoof. Sometimes we let Deliveroo take the strain.

Now, I hardly seem to be away from the kitchen, up to my elbows in flesh or flour for what I work out to be an average of three hours and 40 minutes a day. It’s satisfying wringing every ounce of protein from a pig’s head, making stock from bones and veg peelings, wasting nothing, not even the pig’s ears, which I slice and deep-fry for a sneaky snack.

I don’t recall Granny complaining about being tied to the stove, but nor do I recall her being visibly happy when cooking. But I do remember her satisfaction when we ate everything on our plates.

Memory is like opening a can of stout: at first, nothing really happens and then, suddenly, it all bubbles out.

All families have a domestic history and I realise I need to pass on ours to my own young adults.

My seven-day menu of game casserole and jam roly poly    

The total cost for one person to eat like granny for a week is £30.57, compared with the 2023 national average cost of £45 per person a week and to our own family’s average cost of nearly £75 per person. All costs are based on quantities for four people (or the total number of guests eating). Where leftovers are used, the cost of repeated ingredients is not included; if only part of a product is used, only the cost of that which is used has been included.

SUNDAY

Breakfast: Gentleman’s Relish on toast

Lunch: Leftover sausage croquettes and cucumber salad

Dinner: Roast chicken dinner

Pudding: Tinned sliced peaches and cream

A mix of leftovers from the previous day’s fry-up for lunch, a homemade staple of Granny’s (and my) cupboard for breakfast in the form of Gentleman’s Relish (spiced anchovy butter) is rounded off by a roast chicken dinner (roast potatoes, bread sauce from scratch, savoy cabbage and carrots, with a classic pudding and cream (Granny lived on a dairy farm.

MONDAY

Breakfast: Grilled brown- sugared grapefruit with a cherry

Lunch: Rough Chicken Soup

Dinner: Granny’s Game Casserole with green beans and mash

Pudding: Six-cup Steamed Pud

Picking the chicken from the bones and making stock from the carcass gives us the broth and meat for Granny’s unblended Rough Chicken Soup. Leftover veggies and herbs are stirred in at the last minute, plus a good squeeze of lemon. At dinner, guests enjoy Game Casserole: pheasant (bought online) is casseroled with mushrooms, silverskin onions, thyme and a dash of cream, finished off with toasted breadcrumbs.

TUESDAY

Breakfast: Porridge with cream

Lunch: Granny’s Eggaroni Cheese

Dinner: Granny’s Irish Stew

Pudding: Jam roly poly

Two of Granny’s cheats on the menu: first, eggaroni cheese (mac ’n’ cheese without the macaroni, using hard-boiled eggs, chopped into chunks, with creamy white sauce poured over, more cheese on top, and grilled). I loved this as a child.

Next up, the true country fare that is her Irish stew, the cheap cut of a small neck of lamb, cooked for four hours with pearl barley, potatoes and carrots. ‘It tastes almost medieval,’ says a guest. Never a fan of making pastry, granny makes her version of roly-poly using jam sandwiches, rolled and fried in butter.

WEDNESDAY

Breakfast: Grandpa’s Scary Mushrooms On Toast

Lunch: Cheese pudding

Dinner: Gammon knuckle & parsley sauce with bubble & squeak and frozen beans

Pudding: Jelly sundaes

Grandpa would roam for mushrooms on the farm and cook them for breakfast. We children feared we’d die a poisoned death, but the mushrooms, fried in cream with a pinch of mustard, were delicious. I have to use the bog-standard white version but they still taste pretty good. Cheese pudding used up any stale bread before market day’s fresh bread on Thursdays. In a casserole dish, you layer up stale bread slices with grated cheddar, pour milk over the lot and bake. The ham is brought to the boil in water, then cooked in Guinness for two hours, drained and roasted with brown sugar, cloves and mustard and finished off in the oven for 20 minutes. It’s followed by another cheat pudding: whipped cream with layers of red, amber and green jelly.

THURSDAY

Breakfast: Hot choc and dipping bread

Lunch: French onion soup

Dinner: Pigs’ tongue a la ravigote

Pudding: Iles flottante

The other granny, my Francophile mother, insists that we do a French day. My favourite breakfast on French holidays — stale patisserie from the day before, dipped into a bowl of milk with dark chocolate melted into it — is followed at lunchtime by a French onion soup, using the pheasant stock from Tuesday to deliciously rich effect. 

Star of the day is the pig’s tongue: it’s boiled for three hours then, with the top rough layer peeled off (faintly traumatic), sliced to serve hot a la ravigote — with an oily, herby, mustardy sharp vinaigrette that sets off the unctuous umami taste of the tongue. This was a Granny special and I soon remember why. Every scrap is fought over.

FRIDAY

Breakfast: Lamb’s kidneys on toast

Lunch: Kedgeree

Dinner: H-Bone of beef and trimmings

Pudding: Camp Coffee junket

Slicing the ureters out of the kidneys and peeling off the outer membrane, poaching them in milk and then chopping and frying them with butter and sage gets a big thumbs-down from this chef, even though it is actually delicious. It’s just too early in the morning for all that! Kedgeree for lunch is like a warm hug: a comfort food staple in our family that stretches a fillet of smoked haddock to feed four hungry mouths by mixing it with cooked rice, boiled eggs and curried onions.

The H-bone beef cut is taken from the rump but is no longer very fashionable because of its awkward wishbone-shaped bone. It’s not the prettiest and is a little chewy, but it’s tasty once it’s roasted for half an hour and left to stand for another 30 minutes. And just a spoonful of this junket (basically, coffee and chicory-flavoured syrup and milk boiled up with rennet and left to set) and I am whirled back to my granny’s dining room.

SATURDAY

Breakfast: Eggy bread in beef dripping

Lunch: Brawn, mini gherkins, parsley salad, sourdough toast

Dinner: Oxtail stew

Pudding: Blackberry & apple crumble

Leftover beef dripping for eggy bread (or a dab of Bovril and butter if there’s no beef dripping). Brawn (a kind of rough terrine, taking all the meat from a boiled pig’s head, pressing it into a jelly mould and letting it set in its own jelly-stock) for lunch is a tick in the ‘out there’ box. Oxtail stew is my daughter’s idea: she recalled my mum making it and made it at university.

A first for me — but utterly delicious.

Tiny granny condo hits the market for $350 a week – with frustrated tenants comparing it to a ‘barn’ and ‘hut house’

• Brisbane granny flat on the market for $350/week
• Many have criticized the small unit

By Sarah Liversidge for Daily Mail Australia

published: 07:57 EDT, Jul 1, 2023 | Updated: 07:59 EDT, Jul 1, 2023

It was probably our first summer as empty nesters: our younger child, Joe, was spending three months in the U.S. at Camp America, before heading to university, and our eldest, Lois, had graduated and quickly secured herself a job, a house share, and a new adult life that didn’t require any input from her parents.

My husband John and I had taken our bikes and tent to Southwold, Suffolk, for the weekend. It would be fun, we told ourselves, just us two. No, obviously it wouldn’t be the same, but we could enjoy it. We would enjoy it. Of course we would.

We were deep into the countryside when I saw a miniature railway through the trees and stopped for a closer look.

Suddenly, without warning, invitation or provocation, tears pricked my eyes, and my throat was squeezed into a choke. On the little train I saw a gaggle of children, of different ages, in sunhats and jelly shoes, their chubby, sun-creamed thighs straddling the carriages, as the brightly coloured engine chuffed around the field.

Watching them were a clutch of middle-aged people, like John and me. Laden down like mug trees, with backpacks, raincoats and dripping lollies, they were using whatever hand was free to take photos and wave manically. They looked very happy.

‘This is it, this is perfect,’ I suddenly announced. ‘We’ll do this. We’ll bring the grandchildren here. We can swim in the sea, cook on the barbecue and take them on the railway. They’ll love it.’

‘What grandchildren are you talking about, exactly?’ John asked, a bit bemused.

‘Our grandchildren,’ I said. ‘Lois and Joe’s children. They can come too, obviously, if they want to, but we could do this during the school summer holidays, so they can work.’ Even as the words were coming out my mouth, I was aware how ridiculous they sounded.

My husband didn’t need to point out that we didn’t have any grandchildren, and — with our son and daughter then just 18 and 21 — we probably wouldn’t have, for quite some time.

But that was it for me. The seed was planted. I wanted to be a grandmother and the sooner the better. It’s a hankering that has increased with every passing year. My daughter, Lois, is now 26, my son 23.

Although both are in relationships, children are most definitely not on the cards despite my (I like to think subtle) hinting, that I’m here, ready, and ‘good to go’ with an enticing package of free childcare and school pick-ups, should they be tempted.

This desire to be a grandmother is something I share with the actress Fay Ripley. I laughed knowingly when she joked recently she’d been hiding contraception from her 20-year-old daughter because she’s so desperate for her to have a baby.

The actress, 57, quipped she is ‘encouraging an early pregnancy’ for her 20-year-old daughter Parker and will start pestering her 16-year-old son Sonny to think about children in a year’s time.

Fay sounds like my kind of person. I think I’d like to meet her in the babywear section of Marks and Spencer some time so we can do some ‘cooing’ together (yes, I’ve actually started doing that).

I just can’t understand women who baulk at the word grandmother. Twiggy recently confessed she refuses to let her grandchildren call her ‘Gran’. They call her ‘Mimi’ or something, which doesn’t sound as old.

In her memoir, A Lotus Grows In The Mud, Goldie Hawn described her aversion to the word ‘grandma’, saying it ‘had so many connotations of old age and decrepitude’.

So, instead she let her grandson choose for her. ‘My son Oliver decided I should be called Glam-Ma, which I thought was quite brilliant and made us all laugh so hard,’ she said.

Grandma, Nana, Nanny, Granny, Gan-Gan — I’d take any of them, gladly. Rapturously. And I really don’t mind how loudly they are bellowed across a playground, even if I’m in my favourite True Religion jeans and Adidas Superstar trainers, I’d come running.

So why this desperation to be a grandmother?

I think there are multiple factors here. First, I loved being a mother and adore children (I also, rather smugly, think I’m rather good at it, children tend to warm to me a lot more readily than adults do).

There is definitely a compelling medical and social argument for starting a family younger, hence setting the ball rolling for earlier grandparenting.

I had Lois shortly after my 29th birthday, which doesn’t sound very young, but nowadays having your first child under 30 is becoming increasingly rare.

First-time mothers in the UK are older than ever: in 2021, the average age hit 31 for a first baby. More and more women are having babies over the age of 40 too — the highest number since records began in 1949, and now double that of teenagers.

A generation or two ago, in 1973, the average age of British mothers was just 26.4 years. The difference between birth experiences of young and old mothers was illustrated to me with startling clarity when I gave birth to Lois in 1996. 

I’d had a relatively straightforward birth — admittedly extremely long, nearly 40 hours from first twinge to babe in arms — but all perfectly manageable, with no complications.

In the next bed to me was an 18-year-old. She was up the next morning, slipping into her size 10 jeans with ease and doing her make-up, looking like she’d experienced nothing more taxing than a long shopping trip the previous day.

Across the aisle were a clutch of fortysomethings, with drips, vomit trays, agonising caesarean wounds and doped up on heavy-duty painkillers. The teen and I actually helped the orderlies, getting them tea and toast.

Of course, that is a huge generalisation: there are plenty of 40-year-old mothers who have easy births, and likewise teenagers who have a terrible time, but on the whole, it’s fair to say that Mother Nature would prefer women to have their babies young.

I’d argue, Mother Nature would like her grandmothers young, too. If Lois were to have a child now, I’d be 55. I’m still very fit; I run, swim and go to the gym regularly.

I’ve also got a lot more free time, as luckily I’m in a financial position where I’ve been able to put those years of 60-hour working weeks behind me. Lois would have a good 15 to 20 years of quality ‘grandparenting’ from me.

And if she started her family the same age I did, I’d still only be 58.

But how quickly things change if you or your offspring put off motherhood by a few years. Just think, if I’d delayed it by ten years, and Lois had her first at 36 then I’d be 75.

In that scenario, if she put it off until 40, I’d be over 80, an age when I don’t think I should be attaching a child seat to my mountain bike — even if I was still around to own one.

The social, financial and practical advantages to having all three generations fit, healthy and able to support each other are immeasurable.

It may even help you live longer: in 2016, a team of researchers studied survival rates of more than 500 German and Swiss people aged between 75 and 103. They found that those who made time for their grandchildren, and looked after them regularly, lived, on average, five years longer.

Grandmothers just aren’t what they were generations ago. I agree with Goldie Hawn when she says the word ‘grandmother’ had negative, ageing associations, but I’d say they belong to a different era.

My own grandmothers must have been about my age when I was born, but I remember them as grey, stout, old women, in housecoats and support stockings, certainly not like the breed of glamorous grandmas you get today.

Boyzone star Ronan Keating and his first wife, the Irish model Yvonne Connolly, became grandparents earlier this year, aged 46 and 49 respectively, when their then 23-year-old son Jack had a little girl.

You won’t be seeing the gorgeous, youthful Yvonne in a tabard and rollers, complaining about her varicose veins, let me tell you. But what do my children think of my desire for them to start reproducing? There has been quite a bit of eye-rolling on the subject, although I try to be subtle.

Embarrassingly, I must confess the veneer of subtlety came crashing down a couple of Christmases ago when, after a few Kir Royales and Snowballs, I told them it ‘wouldn’t be a disaster’ if there was an accidental pregnancy.

I was duly told to shut up and quite rightly so. It’s really not my business to dictate how they choose to live their lives — they might not even want children (although that is an unbearably painful thought).

Nowadays, I try to keep my feelings to myself and allow myself a few whimsical moments staring at Babygros and sunhats in department stores. One day my little prince, or princess, will come . . . 

FESTIVALS AND A HOUSE COME FIRST

Lois Lawrence is a 26-year-old project manager, and lives in London. She says:

In the past year or so Mum’s definitely made me much more ‘aware’ she wants to be a grandmother. I wouldn’t say she’s got to the nagging stage — yet — but she thinks she’s more subtle in her hinting than she actually is.

I’ve heard the story of how she and Dad were living in rented accommodation, with no money and insecure jobs, when they had me, but I was the best thing that ever happened to them, etc . . . oh, about 100 times now.

Likewise, that anecdote about the teenager in the next hospital bed.

Fortunately, as she only brings it up once in a while, it doesn’t make me feel awkward. But because I want to hit other milestones in my life, such as buying a house, before I consider starting a family, it does create a bit of pressure to rush into those other stages so I can get to the point of thinking about having children.

My boyfriend and I are enjoying our lives right now, with a big group of friends, going to festivals and weekends away. I’m in no rush to bring these carefree years to a halt. Plus, I don’t even know if I can have children. Who does, 100 per cent, so what’s the point in talking about it, if it might not even happen anyway?

I know I would like them one day, if I can. I just hope the hints don’t get pushier and pushier the older I get.

She’s a great mum, though, so I know she’d be a naturally amazing grandmother — and I promise I am not saying this so I can have unlimited free babysitting when/if the time comes!