EastEnders has been going through a rough patch lately. But a couple of weeks ago one of their classic scenes surfaced out of the dross.

As usual it was June Brown as Dot Cotton who stole the scene. The topic of her conversation with the ever-whingeing Pauline was the cloak of invisibility that falls over women as they get older.

Incidentally this is something that has happened to June Brown as an actress as she was, until recently, consistently overlooked in the TV awards ceremonies in favour of the more scantily-clad, younger and far less talented fellow soap stars.

Anyway, it happens. And you don't even notice it happening. One minute you're walking along with a spring in your step feeling part of what we once innocently called the swinging scene. Next thing, you're out of it. Your are that older woman who nobody notices.

The trouble is we all fail to recognise ourselves as others see us. Many's the time I've caught sight of myself in an unexpected mirror and wondered whose is that old face looking back at me.

At a school reunion we girls congratulated ourselves on not having changed a bit in 30 years. Only a group photograph that did the rounds afterwards told the sad truth.

Of course, we'd changed. No longer fresh-faced 18-year-olds, we were all 50-plus for God's sake and looked it!

My heart was lifted, though, a week or so ago, reading about how the 70-year-old actress Eileen Atkins had been propositioned recently by that Hollywood stud and reprobate Colin Farrell. Flattered, she politely rebuffed him but it made her feel a girl again.

But the good news is that we're now officially an army. A grey one, but an army none the less. An army has some clout.

So in my later years I hope to be treated as part of the human race again, with a role to play and listened to when I say something and the world won't belong only to the young.