I DIDN’T know where to put myself watching the new BBC drama series Apple Tree Yard.

I thought I had got over that feeling, which takes over when rampant sex is on TV, the embarrassment that has you squirming uncomfortably and wondering whether to get up and make a cup of tea.

Watching sex scenes on TV with my parents was, as any teenager will agree, just plain awful, and it’s no relaxed affair with my own children, in particular the younger one, who makes faces and utters words like “Yeukkkk!”

But surely I shouldn’t be cringing when watching with my husband. We sat through sex in a broom cupboard, sex in back alleys and, basically, sex here there and everywhere.

I resisted the urge to put the kettle on, but did at one point begin searching down the back of the sofa for a missing memory stick.

So why the embarrassment? It’s certainly not the sex, I’ve seen worse on TV, I think it’s more the fact that it might make my husband think he’s missing out.

This feeling is heightened by the fact that the female at the centre of the action is a 50-year-old woman.

I knew the programme would open the floodgates for debates about middle-aged sex, and, sure enough, it has. ‘Can sex in your 50s be the best you’ve ever had?’ asks one national newspaper.

‘At last, a TV show that says women over 50 are sexy’, says another. Well, yes, but then the women playing the lead, Emily Watson, IS sexy - she has a great figure, she wears stockings and three-inch heels and doesn’t have cellulite and bingo wings.

Not all women in their fifties are like that. If I was propositioned by a strange man in a broom cupboard he’d have to negotiate thick socks, even thicker woolly tights and knickers bigger than Bridget Jones’s. It would take him an hour to get it all off.

To me, a cheesewire thong is an instrument of torture. My daughters wear stuff like that, and as I pick these pathetic bits of thread from the washing machine I marvel as to how anyone could gain any support or comfort from it. And at my age, those are the buzzwords.

So back to the debates: I’ve had to hide all these newspaper articles from my husband. I don’t want him reading about how sex gets better and better with age, how women my age are letting their hair down and being more adventurous in the bedroom. And how once the children have left home there are no holds barred so far as sex is concerned. I haven’t got the energy for stuff like that. In the words of Boy George ‘I’d rather have a cup of tea.’ The cat wouldn’t be happy either, as he sleeps between us every night.

Maybe as I approach my bus pass years I will feel differently. Retirement, when it finally comes, may be my passport to wild, wanton sex in doorways and restaurant toilets, with men I barely know. Maybe I will lead a life of lust and debauchery rather than one of garden centres, doctors’ surgeries and daytime TV.

But I doubt it. To be honest I don’t think many women - of any age - would want to have sex in grubby back alleys or office broom cupboards. As my 86-year-old neighbour commented after watching the programme: “If I was to go off and do that I’d at least want a decent hotel.”

Having heard all about it beforehand, I should have known better than to watch Apple Tree Yard, and certainly should not have sat through it with my husband. There’s usually a boring history programme on BBC4 on a Sunday night, so this week I will tempt him with that and catch up with the sex romps later on iPlayer.

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