ALEXANDRA SHULMAN’S NOTEBOOK: Playing the menopause card won’t help women

Over dinner last week, a 49-year-old woman opened up about her fear of menopause. ‘Please, please,’ she wailed, ‘tell me it’s not true that I’ll never want sex again.’

Another woman and I reassure her that this bleak scenario was not the case, but her anxiety about this inevitable stage of life is not eased by the endless talk of how debilitating menopause can be.

The government is currently reluctant to add him to the Equality Act’s list of ‘protected characteristics’, for which he cannot be fired.

The argument that doing so could lead to inequalities for men is not first and foremost on my mind.

But the fact that we are in danger of making the time period in which women are desirable employees ever shorter certainly is.

Despite the long battle to improve maternity rights, women can lose maternity pay simply because they become pregnant again shortly after giving birth.

However, we’ve certainly come a long way since the days I started working, when women could be asked in interviews if they were thinking of having a child.

But even though the question isn’t being asked now, it’s a thought that crosses the minds of potential employers.

Are they going to lose you for possibly a year soon after they hire you?

Now I fear that with women making a fuss about menopause, we are creating a new doubt in the minds of employers about another period of time in a woman’s working life that cannot be trusted to appear present and correct. .

Menopause is a physical transition in the body. Yes, it can mean that we have disturbed sleep, overheated, experienced memory lapses, and felt irrationally irritable.

Some women suffer to a greater or lesser degree, but the last thing we need is a climate of uncertainty about whether older women are healthy enough to do their jobs.

Rare is the middle-aged man, depressed by his loss of manhood and inundated by hints of his own mortality, who does not experience some of these and other problems as his testosterone wanes.

But no one says they’re sick, and that doesn’t stop them from getting the desirable non-executive jobs in their 50s and 60s that are so rarely given to women.

Take, for example, the chairs at our art institutions, such as the National Gallery, V&A, the National Portrait Gallery, the Tate and the National Theatre.

No women among them, apart from the fragrant Dame Mary Archer in the Science Museum. Or chairs from retailers like Ocado, Next, Morrisons, Currys, and M&S.

Where are the women who oversee the boardroom agenda? We need to beat the drum for older women who have experience, contacts, and quite possibly time, now that their children are adults.

If people persist in pointing out the potential shortcomings of women of menopausal age, instead of helping women, we are kicking the ladder out from under our feet.

I still light up at the sight of matches

Visiting the newly renovated Groucho Club, I was thrilled to find matchboxes bearing the club’s duck logo placed generously around the rooms. So civilized.

I had a real match nostalgia moment, remembering how beautiful it was to collect attractive matches from different places.

Unfortunately, matches have gone the same way as postcards, now an endangered species. An email that enters the computer is not the same.

In fact, I took matters into my own hands and began asking friends and family to send me postcards of their travels. However, there is a risk of getting stuck in a Royal Mail depot.

A glamorous life is now gathering dust

Sorting through some files, I found a lovely letter from Princess Diana rejecting my request to become a guest editor for an issue of Vogue, a role Meghan would take on in 2019.

I’m not a big hoarder, but I have kept interesting memorabilia over the years: a large number of letters, photographs, invitations. What should I do with them? They are currently randomly stuffed into box files where no doubt they sit and wait for me to die, when my son will take a quick look and decide to throw them out.

I realize it makes sense to spare him the trouble and for me to take a deep breath and get rid of them now, but I highly doubt I’ll ever make that decision. Instead, with all the files, photo albums, and journals, my house will look more and more like one big, dusty archive.

Old school delight of a drip fed drama

Like the rest of the TV watching world, I am captivated by Happy Valley.

It is very difficult to pinpoint what makes this police series so extraordinary. Yes, Sarah Lancashire’s performance as the frazzled, retired cop is riveting, and James Norton remains the sexiest, creepiest serial killer in the box.

The script also balances emotional tensions with a fast-paced, multi-level narrative. But possibly there is another factor. We can watch it only the old fashioned way one episode at a time. Knowing that you can’t binge on all six episodes makes one appreciate every second, aware that it’s a full week until we can get our next fix.

In an age where you can easily gobble up an entire series in a day, the tantalizingly tense experience adds to the drama’s compelling brilliance.

After years of walking around in sneakers, I’m all for going back to heels. But do they have to be as hideous as the bulky, dowdy styles seen on the feet of celebrities like Amanda Holden, above, and Emily In Paris’ Lily Collins?

Are Amanda’s heels the height of fashion?

After years of walking around in sneakers, I’m all for going back to heels.

But do they have to be as hideous as the bulky, dowdy styles seen on the feet of celebrities like Amanda Holden, above, and Emily In Paris’ Lily Collins?

These ugly platforms, giving the wearer skinny legs, remind me of the 90s Spice Girls look.

And who ever thought that was a look that had a chance of coming back?