Middle-aged, Free and Single

Hell on Earth

I really wanted to write something about the fires in Australia. But there are no words. There is extreme frustration – now can we accept that climate change is a thing and we really really need to do something about it? There is extreme sadness, for the loss of life, and homes, and livelihoods, and…

Shopping for One – 7 thoughts

Back to normal after the jollifications. It’s quite nice to get back to some ordinary food!! Today I’ll be doing my first weekly shop of 2020. I’ve been ‘husbanding my resources’ since my husband left – but shopping and cooking for one isn’t always easy. I’ve been doing it for nearly a year now, and…

New Year Newbies

It’s New Year!! Happy 2020 to you all. Starting around about now the gym will be packed out with New Year Newbies, January Gym-ers – the people whose New Year’s resolutions included, ‘I must get fitter and lose some weight’. Those of us who already go to the gym might complain a bit about the…

4 Resolutions for 2020

New Year’s resolutions – do you make them? Do you keep them? Here are mine – not terribly deep and meaningful, just a middle-aged woman who happens to be free and single, making a few promises to herself. I have no idea if I’ll keep them – but I know I’d like to, and that’s…

So That was Christmas

The first Christmas since my husband left. I wondered how I’d feel about it all, and it turns out it was OK. But still, I’m pleased it’s over with. I really didn’t know how I’d feel about Christmas without him. He’d never particularly enjoyed Christmas himself. I spent it with my parents. They’d booked us…

So This is Christmas

I have mixed feelings. I don’t believe in God, so why do I even do it? I don’t like the commercialisation, the pressure it puts on people to spend more than they really want to. I don’t like the other pressures – the ones it puts on relationships. More people break up over Christmas than…

Supernumerary at Sea – Heading Home 2

We’d started in Hull, headed across the Atlantic to the Panama Canal, through the Pacific to Tahiti, Fiji, New Caledonia, New Britain, the Solomon Islands and finally Papua New Guinea. Leaving PNG we continued west – across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, and finally back to the European Coast. All…

What are you doing for Christmas?

This year I’ll be spending the day with my parents, which will be quiet but pleasant. But is being on your own for Christmas as bad as the media would have us believe? I really don’t know – but until I got the invite, I thought I probably would be on my own, and I…

A Skeleton in the Cupboard

I’ve got 11,249 relatives. I’ve been researching my family history for quite a while now. One of the reasons we do it is to find the skeletons – we all like a bit of gossip, even if it’s 200 year old gossip!! So – this is the story of one of my skeletons. My Great,…

The B Word

Well, I’ve been putting it off. But it’s time – we have to talk about the B word. I never wanted it. I voted to Remain, or for the party that I felt was most likely to deliver Remain, whenever I had the opportunity to vote. I even wrote to my MP (but as my…

Strictly – not long now!

It’s nearly time for the Strictly final!! How time flies!! Back in September I wrote down my thoughts about each of the dancers, based on nothing but total ignorance of any aspect of dance. This is what I wrote – interesting to see how right I was about some people and how wrong I was…