Month: September 2023

Friday night…is beer night!

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Friday 29 September 2023

“Peroni in the hot tub?”

Well, that’s the best offer I’ve had in … about 30 days!

September 2023 has to go down as our ‘mensis horribilis’; a truly awful month. It saw family stresses piled upon family stresses and was topped off this week by an Ofsted inspection at work, an event universally known to inflict (unacceptable) strain on some school staff which is incredibly sad to witness.

All in all, I shall be very glad to bid farewell to the ninth month of this year and look forward to brighter times in the next. And sinking into the steamy depths of the hot tub with a couple of cool beers is the perfect place to start. Not only is it the only place where my achy arthritic limbs feel at ease at the moment. But also, in the coolness and calm of an autumnal evening, it is the perfect spot to relax, chat and unwind.

Did I say unwind? More accurately on this occasion, the hit of alcohol on my exhausted body quickly has me feeling quite tipsy and leads to much merriment. I guess it is all the same thing, as the wise old sages have often told us ‘laughter is the best medicine’ and countless studies back this up too.

“Laugh it off! Laughter reduces stress and improves well-being for all ages”

claims one report and I say “cheers to that!“

So adios September and onwards to October. It should see Small Boy’s personal statement sent off to UCAS, two new bathrooms for the house and my first orthopedic appointment (hopefully marking a return to better working joints.)

Who knows… United might even put a run of winning games together! We can only hope …

Feeling like an old banger…

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Saturday 23 September 2023

It has been a demanding month for my trusty Toyota and he is starting to show his age…he’s not the only one!

They say a picture tells a thousand words and this shot of the car boot, packed to the rafters with my daughters’ belongings as I drive into the night to deliver these first to Newcastle and then to Edinburgh, sums up how life feels at the moment….

It feels crowded; crowded with worries and dramas. Somewhere in the middle of that mountain of luggage is a small purple backpack of my overnight essentials. I cannot actually see it anymore and in parallel, I have frequently struggled, this September, to find ‘any of me’ in each demanding day.

I mean it is the 23rd day of the month and this is my first post!

Feeling lost in your own life; it is an inescapable parental condition, that we all go through at various stages; a posting on Mumsnet expresses it with great honesty,

“Every day I feel like I don’t have room for my own self and identity to exist, like I don’t even have space in my own head to even consider what I might like to do for myself for 10 minutes of the day”

To be fair, most of the stresses that have overshadowed my September have not originated from my kids. Rather, the majority have come from outside and are hence not my tale to tell, so I’ll simplify and summarise them into: hospitals, financial bombshells and guilty, sad times.

But it has all meant that the past two weeks have seen me and Windsor the trusty Toyota, doing a lots of catch-up driving. Hence the frantic 500 mile road-trip to bring, chests of drawers, clothes, plastic plants, pillows and clanking boxes of ‘kitchen stuff’ to my university girls. Then the (relatively) trifling 250 miles roundtrip for Small Boy’s final Open Day.

And Windsor is not as young as he once was. My old car is looking distinctly worn and weary. He does go into the garage for some emergency repairs this month and I also treat him to new tyres plus a wash and valet. And whilst, at 10 years old with over 130 000 miles on the clock, he’ll never be ‘as good as new’, the versatile Verso does look a lot smarter.

But what of me… well I’m also feeling like a bit of an old banger and I think it might take rather more than a wax and polish to spruce me up! After x-rays and analysis, I have recently been diagnosed with osteoarthritis so, although life presses on at its usual relentless pace, it does so with a lot of pain and a bundle of bandages. Both elbows and my right knee just do not want to work properly any more, even with significant strapping. This has taken running away, (replacing it with an uninspiring sheet of leg exercises) and with it, some valuable ‘head space’ time from my weekly routine?

Upon reflection, I resolve that this bit is fixable. My ‘trip to the garage’ turns out to be a download of a wall pilates course. And today has been calm and a glorious time to draw breath. Why; I have even found a few minutes to type again and who doesn’t feel better for a bit of blogging…