In an interview published yesterday, the 71-year-old novelist Joanna Trollope revealed she likes to plan ahead. She has made a living will so that, if she does go 'gaga', her daughters have power of attorney.

Her greatest fear, she said, 'is becoming helpless and a burden… I would hate to be a nuisance, so I'd take whatever steps I could to avoid that being the case. I have no intention of moving in with my daughters and ruining their lives, so I would do what needed to be done'.

Trollope means, of course, assisted suicide. She added: 'I don't think that it's kind to keep all these older people going when they're barely alive and would far rather not be.'

In an interview published yesterday, novelist Joanna Trollope (pictured) revealed her greatest fear 'is becoming helpless and a burden

The key phrases for me were 'ruining their lives' and 'barely alive'. She's right about the first.

A piece in The Times the other week made me see red; it stated that child-free women like me are a 'time bomb waiting to happen' because we have no one to look after us in our dotage.

Whereas we all know that having children is no defence to being left alone and infirm: most of today's old people would never dream of imposing themselves on their children, all members of the gilded Baby Boomer generation.

My experience, as the youngest of seven, is that my parents' generation spawned children who are endlessly selfish and are concerned only with their own offspring, who always, always come first.

The generation facing the problem of what to do with their old mum plead poverty, due to helping their own children on to the property ladder; plead lack of time, due to grandchildren; and plead lack of space, having downsized to avoid inheritance tax.

My dear old mum never ceased to worry about us all. To the end, she was still writing (via power of attorney, unable to hold an actual pen) cheques for car insurance, or plane fares so one of them could visit her.

I was the only one who shelled out cash, while a lone sister tackled the endless red tape that comes with having a carer, a social worker, and visits from the district nurse.

I face old age without children, and am sick and tired of people confronting me with the notion that I will be lonely, cold, impoverished and destined to be eaten by my own border collies.

The truth is I'm glad I haven't created adults who will swipe paintings off walls the very day I pass away. The child-free are not a time bomb: we are the ones who shoulder responsibilities. We are outward looking, not insular and selfish.

And even someone as intelligent and dynamic as Trollope still sees the only future as one where she will be 'barely alive'.

This defeatist attitude reminds me of when an older sister came to stay with me.

'How will you manage those stairs and being so far from the shops?' she asked.

Scare-mongering about how women are inevitably going to lose their marbles and their physical capability is as bad as all those sexist, ageist tweets post-Madonna's tumble.

Have I been planning ahead for my own demise, when I can no longer play Beethoven from memory on my piano? Will I stagger to the end of my lawn, having filled my pockets with stones, and throw myself, Virginia Woolf fashion, into the raging Swale?

Will I hell. I intend to take after my great aunt Nel, who lost her fiance in the First World War, and never married or had children.

I have the heirloom she left me: a hand-made lace bed spread, surely a better, more lasting legacy than an ungrateful child. She was a wiry, straight backed powerhouse who never lost her joie de vivre, even in her nineties. All this negative talk is terrifying us and, as we all know, stress is the biggest health hazard of all.

Lots of eulogies last week for the late Louise Wilson, professor of fashion design at Central Saint Martins, whose memorial service took place at St Paul's Cathedral.

She was responsible for the careers of John Galliano and Alexander McQueen among many others, but never lost sight of the fact that fashion can be silly and cruel – and thin-skinned.

Legendary: Professor Louise Wilson (pictured), who was the director of Central Saint Martins MA fashion degree, had been credited with training a string of British fashion designers

Paying respect: The likes of fashion designer Victoria Beckham (left) and US singer Kanye West attended a memorial service for Louise Wilson (right), the former director of the fashion course at London's Central Saint Martins (CSM) college at St Paul's Cathedral in London

At her students' MA show during London Fashion Week a few seasons ago, she came over to me.

I was terrified as, days earlier, I'd written that, despite Wilson herself being over a size 20, her MA course only devoted one afternoon to teaching pattern cutting for a woman who is over a size 10.