ALEXANDRA SCHULMAN’S NOTEBOOK: Why mums are running away with… other mums! 

I know a man who jumped in his car and drove 200 miles to talk his parents out of the divorce they were threatening. They were in their 90s.

He managed it, but an increasing number of couples are deciding after 20, 30, 40 years to call it time. Silver splitters, if you must.

Having survived bringing up children, balancing family and work, and building a home together, this should be the stage when couples can enjoy each other again. 

Time for that long-promised safari, visits to art galleries, movies, lie-ins.

But the reality is that many couples, once free of the children and the need to put on a show of domestic unity, realise they have nothing to say to each other, dreading even a long car journey together, let alone the prospect of a holiday.

Breaking up with your spouse in later life is a different proposition to when you are younger. You have to confront the fact that it is statistically less likely you will marry again.

Your children may be more independent but an empty nest deprives you of the comfort and absorption of caring for them. You are, of course, likely to be poorer, and shared long-time friends often end as shrapnel in the battleground of divorce.

Even so, there is nothing as lonely as being stuck in a moribund marriage. Why stay in a union that provides nothing but a carapace of security?

By your 50s, intimations of mortality is not just a phrase but a reality, and nothing is a greater spur to action than the knowledge that time is not on your side. 

Breaking up with your spouse in later life is a different proposition to when you are younger. You have to confront the fact that it is statistically less likely you will marry again [File photo]

In the words of a friend describing a mutual acquaintance’s somewhat heartless decision to ditch her husband: ‘She’s like that. She just decided to move on.’

Most often it is the wives who initiate these splits, less worried about the financial consequences and more prepared to weather the social and emotional turmoil than men.

And it seems they are also more sexually adventurous. While men tend to quickly replace one woman with another, a growing number of women are finding new love with members of their own sex. 

Having had their children, dealt with the menopause and discovered the limitations of their heterosexual marriage, what better time to try something different? 

Late-onset lesbianism may sound like an illness but silver sapphism is really the trend of the moment.

A Brunei backlash – but will it last?

I remember the previous call for a boycott of the Sultan of Brunei’s hotels, which include The Beverly Hills, Paris’s Le Meurice, Principe di Savoia in Milan, and The Dorchester in London – all very popular among the film and fashion community.

For about six months of fashion weeks and awards season, we all examined our consciences and scurried around finding different places to take our business. It didn’t take much time, though, for the old favourites to be back in the fold.

George Clooney’s well justified callout over Brunei’s new laws dictating death by stoning for homosexuality and adultery, has kick-started a huge backlash against the hotels. 

Will the rich and famous be prepared to forsake their cocktails at the Polo Lounge and China Tang for a more meaningful period this time around? I’ll be fascinated to see…

Celebrities including George Clooney, Elton John and Ellen DeGeneres have called for a boycott of the hotels owned by the tiny country in protest over the new laws

Cashmere calamity

How is it that moths have such expensive tastes? This year the pests have munched their way through my priciest pieces of cashmere but turned their noses up at woollies from M&S.

I want a cheap flight, not a diversity lesson

Since Virgin Atlantic shows no sign of being in trouble, I have no idea why it has decided on one of the silliest logo changes I have seen in a long time. 

The airline has swapped its Varga Girl with a cast of characters including a gay white man in rainbow colours, an Asian woman and a black man.

Changing logos is almost always a pointless and hugely expensive exercise. I’m sure customers would much prefer Virgin to lower its baggage fees than fly on an Airbus A350 with a racially diverse nose.

Since Virgin Atlantic shows no sign of being in trouble, I have no idea why it has decided on one of the silliest logo changes I have seen in a long time [File photo]

A library without books… that’s novel

Our local library is a splendid Victorian building. 

Inside it serves several functions: a creche, a free wi-fi spot, a computer bank, a refuge from the rain, a desk space – but stocks hardly any books. 

We have far too many books at home and many are recently published. Kilburn Library is pictured above [File photo]

OK, there are several shelves of crime, a mass of James Patterson and Danielle Steele, one shelf of local author Zadie Smith and a few of children’s stories. 

But anyone hoping to find contemporary fiction by Zadie’s peers, or biography or poetry, would be disappointed.

We have far too many books at home and many are recently published, such as last year’s Man Booker Prize winner The Milkman and Michelle Obama’s bestseller. Surely they are worthy of a slot in Kilburn Library?

I asked if they would accept these and other mint condition donations? No – because they hadn’t been published this year. 

So would they accept Shakespeare, I asked? 

Well, they might make an exception for Shakespeare, was the answer. Council policy. 

No wonder cash-strapped libraries are being closed all over the country.

26 years later and Kate’s still in Vogue

Kate Moss is on the cover of May’s British Vogue. Her first was in early 1993 when she was photographed with barely there make-up

Twenty-six years after Kate Moss’s first Vogue cover, below, she’s back again, with appearance number 40. 

Her first was in early 1993 when she was photographed with barely there make-up and hair pulled back from her face.

I chose her because she was the polar opposite of the glamazon supermodels like Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell who had dominated the catwalks. 

Kate was relatable but compelling, the schoolgirl smoking a fag at the bus shelter who you can’t quite stop looking at. 

Fashion had just fallen for the anti-glitz of the grunge movement and Kate was pitch-perfect, new and exciting. 

I had no idea that she would still be at the top of her game nearly three decades later, now the epitome of the sophisticated glamour that all that time ago she was hired to detonate.

The best present I never gave my son

It was my son’s birthday yesterday. I remember how, when he was born, he was somebody I immediately recognised. 

Thank heavens it was so long ago that I didn’t feel pressured to have somebody post a picture of that moment on social media. 

It might have been love at first sight, but sweaty-haired and bloody (both of us), it was a sight best kept for the eyes of the brilliant NHS team and Sam’s dad.