… and I have chosen.
To lie.
About my weight, height and age.
Let me explain. I weighed the right amount at birth but since then it has been a sharp upward trajectory. I always want and need to lose a stone. So whenever I am asked my weight that stone is always deducted. I reckon it doesn’t do any harm. (Although on a flight to Nantucket Island from Cape Cod on a small plane I had to reveal my weight and worried we would crash because of course my fib (sounds better than lie). Then I realised every passenger had probably done the same and the pilot would have added a ton to the cargo weight. So I relaxed.)
My height: I always sit up very straight in a chair to give an impression of height except when I stand up and my short legs let me down. But then I married a 6 ft 3ins husband and told him I was two inches taller than I am. But he rumbled it when I interviewed Dustin Hoffman for a magazine article and he and I were eye-to-eye and I was wearing high heels.
Ah but my age is relevant to any professional woman. When I first arrived in London (from Cape Town) and got a job on a newspaper I went to a press function and sat next to a very prominent newspaper columnist. We were chatting and I happened to mention that at my age I was thrilled to be at the famous Savoy. She then proceeded to give me a life lesson. Here it is.
Never reveal how old you are, she told me, because women get pigeon-holed quickly.
“She’s only 22 so knows nothing … Oh, 40 year olds think they know it all …. 50 and past it … And so on.”
And once people know your age – they NEVER forget it and add the years you will try to subtract.