The two days in the year that I most dread are the ones on which I have to concede either that it is getting too warm to go on wearing winter clothes or too cold for summer clothes.  Each time I pile up the things to be put away and pull out the ones to take their place, all comfortably familiar, I am confronted by the uncomfortable truth that I have never really got the hang of how to dress.

I did realise a long time ago that for most people – most women, anyway, including my own mother – clothes aren’t just about keeping warm or staying cool: and interest in them doesn’t wane with age.

My mother

I heard only the other day that Jean Rhys, when well into her seventies, ruffled her frou-frou skirt at a male visitor, whilst my 100 year-old friend, Diana Athill, unable to afford the gorgeous clothes she secretly longed for during her working life, is now making up for lost time, and was a lot more thrilled to find herself among the Guardian’s Best Dressed Over 50s, than she was to get an OBE.

Diana Athill photographed by Patrick Demarchelier

For me, leaving school uniform behind – tunics so stiff with starch that they could stand up on their own and hats that looked like pudding basins – was not liberation, but a daily trial, only overcome by paying the matter as little attention as possible.

So little, indeed, that during the years that we spent in a rented cottage on the North Yorkshire moors, we didn’t have or need a cupboard.  Our clothes – for my husband, though he cares more about the quality of his clothes than I do, hates shopping – fitted comfortably on a couple of hooks.

Now, thanks to the charity shops where I can buy anything I need – except shoes which, like so many old ladies, I get from the kindly Mr Hotter, and pants which come from a market stall – those infernal changing rooms with their four-way mirrors and tangle of hangers are just a bad memory.

Except for the very odd occasion when I feel I must make an effort –  the last time was about four years ago – I am able to avoid new new clothes.  But I must have lost my nerve, for the pretty garment the helpful assistant showed me how to wear languishes unworn.   As for the little shop itself*, whose window displays I have enjoyed for more than forty years, it closed down a few months ago, killed by the rates.

Now, back to the ironing board to iron the summer clothes, about to be put away and moth-balled for the winter.   They may be mended and stained and, in a few cases, belonged to my once teenage son, but when I wear them – for better or worse – I feel like me.

*  MONICA   South End Green, Hampstead