When this is posted, I'll be in France masquerading as a travel writer!

This feels a bit unlikely - given that I'm writing this in my kitchen, with the radio on and traffic trundling by and children running fingers along my railings.

But I was approached by Ceri Wheeldon, who runs the great site for older women - Fab After 50. What -  you don't know it? She's committed to raising the profile of older women, to challenging beliefs of invisibility, question the conviction that the ups and downs of the menopause make us into wild things and the myth that our brains and usefulness disappears with our fertility. There's money stuff there, and relationship stuff there, and general looking-after-yourself stuff there, and if you haven't seen it before go and have a look now (but please come back!!).

Anyway, Ceri sent me an email - she's offered trips from time to time, from companies wanting her to comment on this place or that place from the point of view of an older woman. She's a busy woman, and can rarely do them. Was I interested ............

I was astonished! Me - being asked to do proper travel writerly things! Packing the passport because someone has asked me to write something specifically for her! So I danced round the kitchen, and then replied to Ceri without too many whoops betraying just how amazing it all is.

So here I am, in Lille (well, I will be when you read this), being a travel writer, with a coach trip to write up for the Fab After 50 site when I get home.

I'm not one for labels. They rarely fit comfortably - generally I try to shrug them off. I'm a woman, with children and grandchildren; I travel and I write, and I sit in my garden and read.

But, today - and who knows, this might happen again one day - I am a travel writer. And it feels wonderful!!