The young family next door. That’s what she called us. I laughed, embarrassed, and corrected her: we’re a couple, we have young children, but we’re not exactly young.

This year, we both hit our half-century and maybe it’s the four-year-old trailing behind me, a hesitant manner or a lack of gravitas but people often assume I’m younger than I am, at least by a few years and sometimes — on a good day — by as much as a decade. Just weeks from a big birthday, I wondered if instead of putting my neighbour — a 54-year-old with two adult children — straight, I should stay silent. Actors hide their age because they don’t want to be typecast. Maybe I don’t want to be typecast either. Who needs to know your real age anyway?

Not recruiters, a friend tells me, though she is aware they can join up the dots on your LinkedIn profile to hazard a decent guess. Or even managers, who assume that once you pass 40 you’ll be stuck in your ways, lack energy and be too distracted by childcare to focus.