Why the secret to feeling young is ditching killjoy friends who make you seem older

Bumping into a friend this week, I suggested how nice it might be to go out and have a good catch-up, since we hadn't seen each other in a while. Finding a mutually agreeable date was surprisingly easy.

The challenge lay in agreeing a suitable time. Since it turns out my friend won't touch a morsel after 8pm.

Not because she's been bitten by the intermittent fasting bug. Rather, as she explained, eating 'late' no longer agreed with her 'ageing digestive system'. (FYI, her gut only recently had its 52nd birthday.)

'I`m sorry, Ange,' she began. 'But I just can't have a meal at that time of night. You know how it is when we get older…'

Er no, actually, I don't. The irony is that my friend is in robust health. Her skin is unlined, her hair shiny. And she's very slim – though that could be because her final meal of the day is taken no later than a kids' tea time. She could easily pass for someone in their early 40s.

Yet, like an increasing number of women I know, she is ageing herself because of a self-determined ­willingness to behave – to put it crudely – like an old woman.

Why does it bother me? After all, Mother Nature, that most duplicitous of females, repeatedly reminds us of the ageing process: from the expanding menopausal midriff to the aching joints.

But I'd wager that grey hair and wrinkles are far less ageing than being around women who hurry the process along with this self-sacrificial approach.

Take another friend, who is coming up to her 50th birthday. She refuses to go out at all – never mind for dinner – if it involves getting home any later than around 9pm. 'I just like to curl up in bed. Don't you just feel so much more tired these days? We're getting to that snuggly, hibernating age.'

It's a ridiculous sentiment. I felt far more exhausted in my 30s when I was trying to balance a job as a journalist and broadcaster with bringing up four children. Now, at 57 and with our brood having left home, I feel like I'm only just getting started.

I love the fact that I'm free to jump on trains from my home town in Manchester to take on broadcasting jobs in London, or commissions to write features that take me even further.

This is my time. Why on earth would I want to be in bed earlier than kids who are still out at Brownies or football practice?

One of my workmates is hurrying along the ageing process in a different, though in my view equally depressing, way.

Aged 52, she's funny, sharp and fabulous company. But she has decided that 'at her age' there's no need to bother too much with her appearance any more.

She used to be one of those ­people who was enviably – effortlessly – stylish. Her fashion choices resulted in fabulous combos, pulling together, say, just the right shade of burnt orange shirt to wear with wide-legged denim pants and stilettos.

However, she has now decided that comfort trumps chic, ­insisting on wearing terrible shoes that look like boxes of tissues. ('Who cares if cushioning for your corns isn't sexy,' she chirrups in a maddening way.)

She also now insists on pairing dresses and skirts with support tights, which make her legs look like sausages.

And then there's the hair, which she rarely has done any more. Recently I saw her at a wedding and she'd scraped it into a ponytail. Admiring my freshly coiffed locks she remarked: 'Oh I just couldn't be bothered sitting for ages under the hairdryer,' before adding that at her age (that phrase again!) 'no one would be looking at her anyway'.

Tell that to the likes of Dame Joan Collins, aged 91 and head-turning glamorous.

Or indeed, tell me. On that night I was dolled up in a teal-coloured sequin dress from the River Island sale and danced until the band thrashed out their last chords.

The irony of those who adopt a self-ageist approach is that it's already well recognised that women of a certain vintage start to feel invisible.

We all know society can be brutal when it comes to compartmentalising the female sex.

For instance, research in 2019 by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found that actresses over 50 are often ­relegated to supporting roles – or are consistently portrayed as grumpy, frumpy or senile.

So, why encourage such a view?

I should point out that it can also be the actions of younger women – mid-30s to mid-40s – who can make us 'older women' feel our age too. Not least when in proximity to those who operate in a tight clique.

One 57-year-old friend often complains of such a dynamic among her wider circle. 'I always feel these women speak to me as an act of charity. They're younger, slimmer and they are just all so sure of themselves. It makes me feel old.'

For the record, this ­entitled group are no more than five to ten years years younger than her. What's more, my friend is successful, smart, has so much life experience and could outshine any of them in terms of humour, intellect or good conversation. It's her defeatism which is depressing – and ageing.

This isn't about ignoring getting older. But rather, rebadging it with a sense of excitement and rediscovery.

Look no further than Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate in the US who, at 59, is the youngster competing against 78-year-old Donald Trump.

Or TV presenter Davina McCall, pictured recently in a jaw-­dropping teeny-tiny ruby-red bikini and matching ankle boots, confirming she refuses to dress or act her age.

Now aged 56, she declared: 'It's like having a second chance at life, and we're making the kids watch that second chance.'

That's why I've decided to give a wide berth to all the women I know who play the likes of 'not at my age', 'I'm too old for this' or 'I'd rather stay at home and have a cup of tea' on a loop.

They make me want to run, or at least briskly power walk, a mile.

Time waits for no menopausal woman. So why give it a flying start? If you want to eat at 5pm, be tucked up in bed a few hours later and donate your heels to a museum, that's your choice.

But while there's breath in my body and late bookings at restaurants, it will never be mine.