A Disorderly Retirement
I do occasionally wonder why someone who leads such a safe and risk-free life feels the need to go overboard on holiday. I am not a daring person. I always take a cardigan with me in case it turns chilly and look three times before I cross the road. I don’t lead protest marches or…
I have been thinking about uniforms lately. Mainly because I’ve been looking for a winter coat that isn’t a quilted puffer jacket and they are surprisingly hard to find. Everyone appears to be wearing one of those jackets, usually in a discreet shade of dark blue or black. It would seem that although adults are…
I didn’t give Shakespeare’s famous Seven Ages of Man much thought until I turned 60 and then I started to wonder where I belonged. It’s tricky for a woman anyway because it really is all about men, which shows that when people insist that the term “man” refers to people in general they aren’t telling…
I have come to the conclusion that you can find a new home for absolutely anything that you no longer need or love. Someone, somewhere will gladly take it off your hands. Maybe there is enough stuff in the world already and all we need to do is keep handing it on to each other…
When the Oxford Word of the Year is announced and I have never even heard of it, I know that I’ve been left behind. The word for 2023 was ‘rizz’. Rizz? If you know what it means and use it often, then I congratulate you for having your ear to the ground, your finger on…
A few years ago I decided I needed a change. I am no great adventurer and wasn’t planning to tour the world on a motorbike, join an Indian ashram or go to live off-grid on a remote Scottish island. I just wanted to live in a different place and do different things. Sir Ranulph Fiennes…
Someone once said that Christmas is a joke played on middle-aged women. I should probably follow my mother’s lead and claim to be middle-aged right into my 70s, but, although somewhat deluded, I tend to think of myself more realistically as being in the foothills of old age. I’ll let you know when I get…
I have to come clean right from the start: I love a silly hat. In fact, I’m a big fan of dressing up in general. I know that many people who open an invitation to a costume party suddenly find that their diary is very full, but I’m not one of them. Some of my…
I do love a survey, even though I think most of them are highly suspect. I find myself reading the results of the latest survey with great interest only to realise that, rather than a scientific inquiry involving a large, varied sample of people, it was just a journalist canvassing a few of their friends…
I am doing yet another of my 30-day French challenges in my vain attempt to understand spoken French. This one’s great, though – it’s all about Christmas. Many of our traditions overlap, but it surprised me to learn that they don’t really have much in the way of Christmas films or music. Although the English-speaking…