"'Did you find her in a home for the elderly?' 'Poor thing, you'll have to be careful!' 'At your age, you make mountains out of molehills. ' 'She's gone downhill a lot, that little lady.

' 'Follow the treatment and be punctual. '"From the age of 70 onwards, women are no longer considered as singular individuals, but as "old ladies," all alike or more or less.

They're fragile, easy to con or threaten. They are forgetful, bitter or cantankerous.

At rare moments, if you pay them a compliment, it's always in reference to youth. At that age, we enter a wilderness, full of traps and surrounded by scornful whispers.

Madeleine Melquiond, in this exceptionally clear-sighted account, challenges clichés about older people and paints a portrait of herself, and of women her age, that is as funny as it is moving. She would like other generations to understand that, for the lucky ones, we'll all be traveling into being "septuagenia" (for want of a better word for this decade), and that it's absurd to ignore our elders and talk to them as if they were children.

. .