For almost all my working life, I have relied on the advice of older women. But nothing they told me – about what other people were actually getting paid, or how to handle the creepier moments, or all the unwritten Westminster rules that nobody explains – was preparation for the shock of being asked recently at a party for career advice myself. It’s the professional equivalent of glimpsing some haggard-looking woman in a passing mirror and wondering briefly who that is before realising that it is, in fact, you. You were the future once. Now you are the future’s mum.
On reflection, there’s much to be said for embracing crone status, and with it the great unsung pleasure of stopping seeing everyone else, rather exhaustingly, as competition and starting to get vicarious kicks out of younger women’s triumphs instead.
