I am rapidly hurtling towards my fiftieth birthday. Getting older doesn’t bother me. It is, as someone wise once pointed out, far preferable to the alternative.

But as the years keep coming (and they don’t stop coming), I do have to make some allowances for my menopausal body in the bedroom. I’m talking about dry vaginas here. At some point in the relatively recent past, my vagina decided that self-lubricating is a thing that it simply can’t be bothered with anymore.

I can be as horny as hell but still dry as a bone down there. It’s like my body is just shrugging and saying, “Well, you’re past baby-making age now. Why bother?”

It’s not a problem. Lube exists. The only issue can be if one’s sexual partner interprets reaching for the lube as some kind of personal rebuke. I think the media has fostered this idea that if a woman’s into you, she should be gushing like a fountain.

My current partner happily doesn’t take it as proof that I’m not turned on. Mostly because I tell him explicitly how turned on I am. (And I don’t fake that sort of thing for his benefit. I have a higher sex drive than he does anyway.)

It’d be a rum do if he did have a problem with the pre-fingering lube-up. We’ve been dealing with his ageing sex bits longer than we have mine. He’s twelve years older than me. I’m sure lots of people will say that Erectile Dysfunction isn’t a mandatory part of getting older for men. However, I’ve done a fair bit of enthusiastically bouncing around the dating pool, and it does seem pretty prevalent in the over 50s.

Viagra is, of course, a godsend. But it’s not the one-minute miracle that people often assume it is. You don’t get to pop a blue bill and – Boom! – instant rock-hard cock. It certainly isn’t an immediate fix as slapping a bit of water-based lubricant on your fanny is, that’s for sure.

I know my boyfriend’s often limp penis isn’t an indication of how much he fancies me, any more than my unmoist ladybits are a reflection of how much I fancy him. But, you know, if there’s anything more dispiriting than having a semi-erect cock in your mouth that’s becoming more flaccid the longer you go on, I don’t know what it is.

We have a marvellous kinky sex life, don’t get me wrong. And we adapt to our situation. If the Viagra isn’t working and I’ve forgotten to pack the lube, well, hey, there’s still tongues and toys and all manner of pervy shenanigans to enjoy.

Being a kinkster helps a lot, obviously. There’s so much to choose from – a whole smorgasbord of kinky pervery. If we only did vanilla penis-in-vagina sex, the effects of ageing would be a bigger deal. But date night is far more likely to be focused on spanking than anything else.

Most importantly, I can talk to him honestly, openly and without embarrassment. It gives me confidence that if we are still together in our 70s and 80s, we’ll still find a way – despite false teeth, arthritis and dodgy knees – to have a joyful, exuberant and imaginative kinky shag life.