Middle-aged, Free and Single

58 and Counting

‘Who am I?’ and ‘Where am I going with my life?’ and ‘What the hell happens next?’ – nothing forces you to answer those questions quite like a husband walking out on you when you’re 58. It’s 4 months ago today since he told me he was leaving, and it also happens to be our…

Space Plague and Chocolate Truffles

These last two days I’ve been working at the Bradford Science Festival. I was assigned to help http://smashfestuk.com/ in their Space Plague tent. An immersive experience, where families help to diagnose and treat an outbreak of Space Plague and in the process do a bit of differential diagnosis, epidemiology, and chemistry, have fun with lasers…

Job #25

I like being busy. And for far too long I’ve not been busy enough. That all changed on Wednesday. Since I woke up on Wednesday morning I’ve Hoovered, dusted and mopped the attic (in case a potential new lodger wanted to come and have a look), hoovered, dusted and mopped the first floor and the…

Gold status – tick

I go to the gym. I posted about it here a while ago. Yesterday I achieved GOLD status. GOLD!!!! It works like this – after a month you get Iron status (well, you don’t just get it, you have to work for it, obviously). After two months at Iron status you get Bronze. After 4…

We Should Get Out More – 8 tips for going solo

I don’t generally give advice on this blog – much more often it’s a case of me showing you where things have gone awry for me and letting you draw your own conclusions. Remember this? Getting There. And this? Technical Difficulties But something I know a lot about is going places on my own. I…

Walking back to happiness

I was going to write a post about happiness to follow on from ‘It’s OK to be Happy’ – but the words just won’t come out right. It’s late, and I don’t want to give in and not post something tomorrow morning. I’ve not missed a deadline yet! But I need to do a bit…

The New Girl

I started a new job on Tuesday. It’s my 25th job – always the new girl. I’ve moved around a lot, and sometimes I’ve held down more than one job at a time. But still – 25. Over the 44 years that I’ve been working for money, that averages out at 1 year 9 months…

Energy savings

This post started life as a bit of a rant. But, well, keep reading. I’m not blaming the people involved, they can only work within the system they’ve got, I’m just blaming the system. If there is a system… I had a smart meter fitted. But due to needing to save money , I also…

Time flies…

It will be six months tomorrow since he told me he was leaving. It feels like longer, and it feels like hardly any time at all. We’d been out, and I was driving us home. I said something, he said something, we got home, I put the kettle on, and we talked. No big argument,…

Do Panic!!!

Had a bit of a moment yesterday. I’d seen an advert for a job that I thought I would love, and that I thought I would be good at – but that I don’t have the actual qualifications for. Lots of experience, but… And it was down south, about three hours’ drive from where I…

Bloggering About

Write a blog, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. And they were right. I was casting around for things to do that would make some money – mostly because my husband walked away from our marriage – and amongst all the other stuff (get a job, sell on ebay, sell on Folksy, get a…

More on Plastic

Another post about plastic. You can read my first one (‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind’) here. Because it isn’t going to just sort itself out. As regular followers of this blog will know, grandchild #4 arrived the other day. And I worry about what our planet will be like for my grandchildren’s generation, 20…