It's sex and the senior moment for 84-year-old author Doreen Wendt-Weir

LET'S TALK ABOUT YOU-KNOW-WHAT: Doreen Wendt-Weir, 84, came up with the idea for her book Sex in Your Seventies while listening to uni students talk about sex. Picture: Luke Marsden Source: The Courier-Mail

DOREEN Wendt-Weir is just like any other sweet 84-year-old lady who enjoys sitting in her garden, assuming all those other sweet elderly ladies write and talk about sex for seniors.

Ms Wendt-Weir is the author of Sex in Your Seventies and is working on a sequel. She often gets invited to talk to community groups on the subject.

"Nothing changes in my opinion, it's just that you're older and your bodies are not as flexible," she said.

"You've just got to be content with nothing out of the ordinary just good old sex."

Interviewing Ms Wendt-Weir is like talking to your grandmother, assuming you're comfortable talking about sex with your granny.

"Don't give the impression I'm promiscuous or hot to trot, as they say, because I'm not," the 84-year-old from North Tamborine said politely but firmly.

"I've led a very respectable and conservative life, but I'm able to speak about sex. I'm not a bit embarrassed, because it's part of life."

She got the idea for the book when studying for her Bachelor of Arts with honours as a mature-age student.

Sex, she says, was frequently a topic of conversation with university students.

"It's all about the problems that confront one when one is getting on. It's about their life stories and what has made them into the person they are," Ms Wendt-Weir said.

"It's not smut. This book is not smut. That's enormously informative to some people."

Ms Wendt-Weir's own story is in the book although she's not willing to admit which chapter is about her. Her favourite story is that of "Celeste".

"She talked about the difficulty one has when one is an older person taking a new lover," Ms Wendt-Weir said.

"She talked about the terrible problem of what to do with your teeth."

Celeste wrestled with the dilemma of whether taking her plate out would ruin the romance but she found her solution when she walked into the bedroom and smiled at her younger man.

"He smiled back and there were all these gaps! She said 'where are your teeth?' and he said 'I never wear my teeth to bed, it's bad for you'."

Ms Wendt-Weir said the hardest subject to find for the book was a married couple happy to open up about their private lives.

Eventually, she found a couple on the Gold Coast who disagreed on everything the other said.

"Then the penny dropped for me. The wonderful, wonderful lesson in it was that each one acknowledged the other's right to disagree.

"She said 'we love each other' and I made those words the last in the book. I thought they were the most important words in the whole thing."