“WHEN I am an old woman, I shall wear purple...”

I am a mere 35 at present, but I have always loved Jenny Joseph’s brilliant poem Warning. It seems to reflect that peace which comes as you gain years, and can finally embrace your individuality.

A person, especially a woman, can spend years tortured trying to be something or someone that other people think they should be.

You feel that you don’t look right, that you don’t weigh the right amount, or that you don’t do or like the things that supposedly normal people do. Thus, when you’re growing up, you might starve yourself, or tell fibs about the music you really like, or get tattoos or piercings as a form of experimentation with your body.

I have recently been assaulted by the reality of the most awkward period of my life, the adolescent years from ten or so onwards, as my mother posted me all of my old school photographs. She then proceeded to ring me and read out loads of the letters I wrote her when I first went to university.

I wanted to dig a hole and bury myself right there and then.

The youth of today, their young utterances immortalised by social media, will have it worse.

I wasn’t blessed by the gene fairy. Dad gave me his short legs and wiry hair; Mum passed on her family’s huge tombstone protruding front teeth, florid skin with a tendency to crazy heat rashes, plus more wiry hair. From both, I inherited a stocky Celtic frame.

Looking back, I was undeniably chubby and wild-haired in many of the photographs. There was clearly a reason I was self-conscious lots of the time, particularly on sports day.

Everyone gets given some nickname, and I was called Bugs, Beamer (the blushing) or Mace Bar (after the local chain of shops, which stocked such a bar of chocolate).

It took discovering terrific, loyal friends, wearing a brace for six years, GHD hair straighteners (my desert island essential) and many, many years of experimentation (my hair has been every colour under the sun) before I would settle into something I felt vaguely approached a non-hideous state.

And it’s only very recently, now that I am a mother to a daughter and I have health problems which knock silly body issues out of the window, that I would say that I don’t hate myself, except my temper, so much any more.

Morphing from a child into an adult is a difficult process and it can take years to find your own strength and confidence on the other side.

I’d never want to go back to that version of me, not in a million years.