I used to work at GCHQ — now I'm a model at 84

Telegraph

19-03-2025

I started 2025 quite deliberately leaving my diary blank. I'd already made a series of changes to my life – aged 84 – after selling the house following the sudden loss of my husband Colin in December 2020 and finding somewhere new to live in Stow-on-the-Wold in Gloucestershire. I'm still running my business consultancy, which I originally set-up in 1990 when I was 50.
But I thought there are other things I haven't done yet.
So, as an adventurer, I thought, well, let the universe provide, stop trying to think what you could do and just let it happen.
Whilst browsing social media, I kept seeing advertisements suggesting a career in modelling. It seemed perfect – and potentially an opportunity to inspire other older women to embrace life and try new experiences too, if it worked for me.
I responded to one of the advertisements, by a firm that finds people for modelling agencies, and only days later, on January 14, I went to my first photoshoot. I was then signed up by the end of the month.
I'd never modelled before. I was born in India, educated in an Army school in Singapore and then moved to the UK and got married at 21.
I had worked for GCHQ in Cheltenham as a clerical officer from 1958 to 1966 as my late father Major Reginald Farlow (who was awarded an MBE) was in the Royal Signals. I was 18 when I became part of the intelligence gathering operation there and I turned down a promotion to be an executive officer because I wanted a family instead.
It's just so out of the blue, completely unexpected, unplanned. But I'm a believer in seizing on life's flashpoints and being ready to jump rather than waiting to be pushed. I'm jumping.
The photo studio has been very supportive and the mature model market of 85 to 90 is the lifespan they've given me – in other words, I've potentially got a six-year career ahead of me. So, that should be quite exciting. You just don't know what doors are going to open.
My two daughters, Alison and Rachel, didn't feel the same way when they originally found out – they worried I was being scammed.
Not surprisingly, I had never done a professional photoshoot before this all began. I spent four hours in a professional studio in Soho with a team of people – a shoot manager, hair stylist, make-up artist and photographer.
I was asked to arrive with a personal wardrobe with anything from six to eight outfits with different themes – and then they selected the best ones to 'sell' me.
I enjoyed the freedom to be captured in many moods and the chance to pose inside the studio and out on location in the streets of Soho.
You go in raw and then they do a build-up of shoots showing you as natural, then the final one is for glamour. You know, my eyes look about three times bigger than they actually are.
I loved the attitude of Iris Apfel, the American fashion designer who became a model at the age of 97, and I just said 'good on you'. She just didn't care about her age and showed you can just go out, just carry on and do whatever.
I had a near-death experience 40 years ago in a dreadful car crash. When you come that close to not being here, you really think why do we fret about this and worry about that?
I had been heading home to take over the childcare from my husband when I overtook a lorry en route from Northleach to Cheltenham.
What I didn't know was that the lorry, which was now behind me, had 20 tonnes of peat in its trailer. Then the trailer brakes popped – the hydraulic system just fractured. I heard this noise, the horn was blaring and the headlights were on. I looked in the mirror and coming down the hill behind me was my nightmare.
The driver's side of my car was gone. The lorry also devoured the boot, and the back seat.
The police told me I had 16 to 18 seconds to decide whether I lived or died. Thankfully, I'd had the foresight to try and get my body over onto the passenger side. Anyway, I'm here and it makes you grateful for life.
Since then, I've flown over volcanoes, helped a company grow from £24 million to £45 million in turnover and travelled across Russia through Siberia to the Altai Mountains and to the Mongolian border in 2002 with just three words of Russian.
Next year, I head to the Galápagos Islands for my 86th birthday. It's something that would test me to the limits. It's an extreme experience. I wanted to really push myself. My motto in life is that uncertainty is uncomfortable.
Besides, I was told by a clairvoyant in Arizona that I wouldn't reach my full potential until I was in my eighties. The rest was experience gathering.
I think this zest for life is something that I shall take to the last moment. I'm not going to forfeit anything.