These days, when men wolf-whistle at me, I thank them

Incredible as it seems to me now, there was a time when a wolf whistle was annoying. A man would shout something approving from a scaffold and I would harrumph about my privacy being invaded, my gender not being respected, my dignity as an intelligent woman being violated. Then I got old and a wolf whistle made my day.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that I knew I had turned a corner, gone over a hill and started to slip down the other side, so far as age was concerned, when I first heard a wolf whistle from a scaffold and, instead of feeling outraged, felt the sweet surge of hope. I remember standing there looking pathetically up at the builder in question, like a forlorn budgie, beseeching him to whistle at me again. Or, even better, shout something offensive about my rear end. He didn’t. It doesn’t work that way. They only shout something about your rear end if you harrumph.

But you know you are getting really middle-aged when you explicitly thank the wolf whistler. I was walking down the road with the spaniel only this week, for example, when a gorgeous guy who looked every inch a personal trainer jogged past and shouted at me. I had sunk so far into a state of mid-life mortification that for a second I really did imagine he had yelled, ‘What a minger!’ But a split second later, when I saw he was leering, I realised he had shouted, ‘What a figure!’