With longer life spans and better health and education, many feel that giving birth to a baby a mere couple of decades after they themselves were in the cradle is a little premature.

Sustaining true friendship is a lot more challenging than we give it credit for.

From Mozambique to Chad, South Africa and Liberia, Sierra Leone to Burkina Faso, feminism is the buzzword for a generation of women determined to change the course of the future for themselves and their families.

Life is rife with frustrations, jealousies and, on occasion, an overwhelming sense of its injustices, but it's a big mistake to let such negative sentiments rule our lives and dictate choices.

For most of us, when our 'dreams' - I use the word with reservations - came true, and marriage and motherhood became a reality, the romcoms, like horoscopes, swiftly lost their allure.

I wasn't allowed to be clever when I was young and blonde, but now I am 50 and an old blonde, I am allowed to have gravitas. With wrinkles comes wisdom.

In the city, I wake bolt upright in the small hours, convinced that intruders are marauding through our apartment despite Swiss bank-style security arrangements.