What is the literal cut-off point for women having very long hair (and by ‘long’ I mean where it almost goes into the lavatory bowl)? Is it the age of 30? Forty? Fifty? Try 65 – the age I am now. If this strikes you as grossly inappropriate, in theory I’m with you. The unspoken rule is that the older you get the shorter your hair should be. Nobody I know within ten or even 20 years of me has hair as long as mine. What can I say? As with wearing inappropriately coloured nail varnish, it is just another small act of defiance women d’un certain âge can employ to remind this cruel world that we do actually still exist.

My hair has been this length for so long it has become part of my identity: how I see myself in the universe. I am my hair and thus find it hard to imagine life without it. Martin Amis used to have recurrent nightmares about his teeth falling out. Well, I have recurrent nightmares about this happening to my hair. I’m lucky, though: I have the good thick Indian kind. The kind that, because it is dyed blonde, strangers sometimes mistake for extensions.

Besides which, isn’t long hair having a bit of a ‘moment’ right now? There was a piece in the New York Times about how 63-year-old Demi Moore has radically moved the goalposts by wearing hers down to her hips. Historically, short sensible hair for women has been a symbol of political might. Just look at Hillary Clinton, Liz Truss and ‘Mutti’ Merkel. Perhaps Margaret Thatcher is to blame. Would she have been taken so seriously without that signature schoolmistress bob? I think not.

If long hair was once a no-no for women in positions of political power, it certainly isn’t now. Not in the White House, anyway. Consider Republican Exocet missiles Kristi Noem, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Lara Trump, Erika Kirk et al and note how the unifying factor, along with the false eyelashes and Botox, is the ludicrously long Barbie-style hair.

But ‘Republican hair’ (yes, it’s an actual thing – you can ask for it in salons in D.C.) is not the look I’m aiming for as I head towards my seventies. Not at all. In fact, I recently found myself wondering if it might, finally, be time for the chop. Maybe I’ve been kidding myself all these years; maybe my hair is dragging me down and maybe a chic, blunt-edged bob could be just the thing to, as it were, ‘hoik’ everything up. Meanwhile was it my imagination or was my hair falling out more than usual? Why did it suddenly feel like candy floss when I got out of the sea? And what of all the sponsored posts from hair regrowth brands such as Minoxidil and Propecia which had started popping up on my social media feeds?

I decided I would take the plunge. Inevitably, the day arrived. I got to the salon, put on the gown and sat in the chair. I looked at my hairdresser and he looked at me. At the exact same moment, we both shook our heads. It was like a stay of execution. Neither of us could go through with it. And so it is: I’ve still got hair, possibly thinner than it used to be, virtually down to my lumbar dimples.

As the Jenny Joseph poem from the 1960s might have said: ‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple / And my hair too long…’