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…

Scones and Celebrities

It’s late, I’m knackered, I doubt if I’ll ever dry out, my feet ache, and I will never be a camper. BUT – I’ve had a hell of a good time at CountryFile Live at Castle Howard yesterday and today. This post is shorter than normal, and later than normal – I’ve been a bit…

Post Fifty

50 posts!! I started this blog four months after my husband left me. I post pretty much every other day – and this is my 50th post. There have been high points (the birth of grandbaby #4, hitting Gold at the gym, having fun in my new job) and low points (the disastrous DLG interview,…

Lego parents

Working as a Summer Explainer has been an eye-opening experience. I used to be a teacher – and as a teacher you actually very rarely see a child interacting with their parents, apart from at the beginning and the end of the day. We’ve been making spacecraft out of Lego. The routine goes like this…

Slugs and bugs

After trying to tempt birds into the garden for six years, I gave up. They simply wouldn’t come in – no idea why. I noticed a willow warbler on a bush in next door’s garden – but did it pop over the fence and visit mine? No it bloody didn’t. And before you ask, they…

The Edinburgh Festival. Or not.

Have you ever been? Not to the Festival itself so much, but to the Fringe. It’s great fun. You don’t even have to go to any shows, just walk the streets and soak up the atmosphere. I love it. One year, we took a selection of kids up there and camped on the outskirts of…

The End of the Seventeenth Century

In February 2016 I was earning next to nothing in a job that was causing me a great deal of stress. So we discussed it, my husband and I: a proper grown-up discussion. He got me to put into words what it was that I enjoyed about the job, and in fact why I felt…

Facing the Sunset

I’ll not be having a holiday this year. That’s absolutely fine, I’m not feeling hard-done-by. I’m going to be away for a couple of days later in the month, volunteering for the National Trust at CountryFile Live, Castle Howard. I’ll be camping there overnight – so almost a holiday!! We get our mileage paid, and…

Cars – the Absolute Basics

If you’re a newly single middle-aged woman like me, who used to have a man who did all the car-related jobs, this is for you. This is not for you if you’re perfectly happy to ‘get out and get under’, know which end of a dip-stick is which, and can tune an engine using just…

A Supernumerary at Sea

A couple of posts ago (My Forever Home) I mentioned that I’d spent a bit of time living on a ship (four ships over a three year period, to be precise) – and I promised a post about it. Back in 1980 in Sheffield, I married my first husband. Sheffield is an unlikely place to…

Water Waste – what a waste

I’m on a water meter. I had it put in when I first moved into the house, because economically it made sense – as a rough rule of thumb, if there are fewer people in the house than there are bedrooms, they’re worth it. Well, this is a 4-bedroom house, and at the time there…

My Forever Home

It’s 6 years and 2 months exactly since I moved in to this house. It’s my 18th house (not counting ships – I really will have to do a post about the ships!). It’s my third forever home. It’s a big house, I suppose – a basement, ground floor, first floor and attic, with 4…