Writer Claudia Connell is 47 and lives in London. She says:

 

Standing bleary-eyed in my bathroom I stared at my face in the mirror and wondered how on earth I’d woken up with a line of black Biro running the length of my forehead.
I rubbed at it with a flannel, but it didn’t budge. It was only when I examined it up close that I realised that it wasn’t ink, but a wrinkle. And not any old wrinkle — a huge, deep Grand Canyon of one. I couldn’t believe that I’d never noticed it before.


I was 34 and it was shortly after that I began to notice other signs of ageing: the fine lines around my eyes, the vertical lines on my décolletage and how I could no longer 
 keep pace with the younger women at my aerobics classes.
Throughout my teens and 20s, I had always looked years younger than I was. But, as I hit my mid-30s, all that stopped. Mother Nature took the brakes off and, seemingly overnight, I turned from bright-eyed, dewy-skinned nymph into red-eyed, flaky-skinned hag.
For the first time in my life I had a fringe cut in my hair to cover my wrinkly forehead and started buying moisturisers for ‘mature’ skin. Aged 36, I succumbed to Botox. I didn’t care that it was expensive and that it was a poisonous toxin. It worked and wiped out my facial lines like a magic eraser. I still have it today.
It was also in my mid 30s that I realised I could no longer go braless. I used to like not wearing one under strapless tops, but things were starting to sag and my once-perky boobs looked like a couple of balloons — a week after the party.
Then, when I hit my 40s, the weight started to pile on, resulting in a battle I am still fighting today.
Now 47, I am reminded of my advancing years from the moment I wake up, when my knees creak as I get out of bed, when I squint to see the number on a bus and when I never leave home without a packet of Rennies, cardigan and hand cream. Some people may come to terms with ageing — I never will.