The Babylon Lane Tales - Filed under 'women of the year'

sliding doors.

I often spend Mondays feeling over-awed. Usually because I've spent the morning shouting at a 7 year old as I frantically febreze her uniform and kick her out of the door with a slice of burnt toast clutched in her clammy hand. The rest of Monday is normally spent sitting slack jawed and hunched over my laptop, as I desperately try to remember my name, what I do for a living and why I always leave the most mathematically complicated of tasks until last minute.

Today's awe was completely different. I spent the afternoon being celebrated as one of 400 Women of the Year at a hotel on Park Lane. In my real life apparently I am amazing - or so Sandy Toksvig kept telling me - and worthy of champagne and five star luncheons. And as lovely as this was, I still can't shake the feeling that someone, somewhere has made a mistake.

Perhaps somewhere out there is another, more altruistic, Elsie who got up and saved the world seven times before breakfast. This Sliding Doors Elsie probably found a cure for cancer, whilst I greedily ate her four course lunch. Tonight, as I make my way north after spending an evening buying unnecessaries in the V&A, the other Elsie is sheltering the homeless and singlehandedly fighting global warming. Poor other Elsie will remain an unsung hero (until next year at least), because Sheila in admin put the wrong address on the envelope.

This is not false modesty. It is very easy to believe that there has been some awful error, as I spent most of the day gazing open mouthed at my known heroines (Maureen Lipman, Shirley Williams, Shami Chakrabarti, Nawar El Saadawi, Camila Batmanghelidjh) and being humbled by the achievements and self-sacrifice of many of the other women I had never heard of before.

It's difficult not to be overcome with admiration when you talk to 106 year old Hetty Bower, a veteran anti-war campaigner, originally horrified into pacifism by the state of soldiers returning from the Somme and who can still be found protesting in Trafalgar Square. Or Naveeda Ikram, the first female British Muslim Lord Mayor (at 37 she presides over the council in Bradford). Or Karen Sorab who fought to set up the Rainbow special needs school in Wandsworth and the BeyondAutism charity to fill much needed gaps in community education. Or the seven serving military medics (known as the Sister Act) who fight, on a daily basis, to save and rebuild the lives of wounded soldiers returning from Afghanistan.

These women are truly amazing and I am utterly humbled and very, very proud to be included. Wow.

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