Thirty at Thirty: The List

I accidentally became veggie recently. Well for a week, actually. Almost. I was queuing in Mcdonald's (since they seem to be making an effort on the straw and recycling-front I don't feel too guilty about eating there occasionally) and when the guy asked me what I wanted, 'A veggie burger meal, please' just literally jumped out of my mouth! I didn't even plan it. I always go for a BigMac. Why on earth did my body order me a veggie burger!? I went with it and quite enjoyed the much-smaller-than-I'd-imagined, dry burger which eventually arrived. (Apparently most people don't order veggie burgers at Maccies and I had to wait. At least it'd be hot, I thought) As I sat there, wondering why Borehamwood Mcdonald's required security guards at 5 O'clock in the afternoon, I had a revelation. I'd been veggie ALL that day. Breakfast and lunch was a homemade fruit and veggie smoothie (most teachers do this so they can eat and run around all the...

Being a Northerner in the South, I have to travel back and forth lots, visiting family and friends regularly to places like Leeds, Rochdale, Manchester and Liverpool. Being obsessed with recycling (and likely to judge you if you're not equally obsessed) means if I'm coming to stay, I'm gonna need to check out your recycling facilities. The thing is, in the UK there are literally hundreds of different 'ways' of recycling. My sister in Leeds needs to check the numbers on the bottom of plastic containers to see if she can recycle them in her kerbside bin. While my friends in Essex chuck any-old- plastic in their recycling- even crisp packets which in North London, we're penalised for. In Leeds, the council don't collect glass from your home, you'll have to do that yourself, whereas in Rochdale and North London (if I lived in a house or flat with recycling facilities, that is) one can put glass alongside cardboard and most plastics in the same 'mix...

I never wanted to move to London. The ex-hubby had to for work and I screamed desperately, ‘I’m not living in a flat!’ for about the first two months of the house hunting; we’d come from a beautiful detached house in the Lancashire countryside and never heard a peep from our neighbours. From my bedroom window, I watched horses and sheep roam and listened to cockerels, hens and birdsong.  The days of communal bins, were a distant (bad!) memory. I thought I’d left student living behind me. Had I worked this hard for this long to move backwards and do ‘London Living’?  NOT. A. CHANCE. This northerner was not amused. Thankfully, somehow, and perhaps through divine intervention, we managed to buy a beautiful end- terrace, 2-up, 2-down, Victorian dream in leafy North London. PHEW! As long as we remained a team, we would be OK. Back in the safety of our own little castle, albeit with neighbours on one side this time. But no flat for me- hurrah! (cue witch's cackle) ...

My friends and I have spent twenty years talking about our periods: when we're 'on'; what our flow is like; how often we change our protection; which protection is best- there is no topic blood- related we don't discuss. Until one day, I uttered the word, 'Mooncup'. I may as well have punched one of their children in the face. They looked at me like I'd just come and 'periodated' (a common verb used in our friendship group) on their favourite bedding. No, no, no, was the universal response I got. One of my friend's husbands, an unwilling participant in most of our period- related conflabs, actually told me, no, warned me NOT to discuss 'Mooncup' or its equally 'disgusting' sister 'Shethinx' on my blog or Insta for fear of freaking out all the 'normal' people who may read it. Unfortuantely for Mooncup, (and other similar products, which are internally inserted to collect menstrual blood and then emptied int...

A letter hit the mat. Car Tax was due. Bank balance: zero. I looked around my flat. What could I sell that was worth something to someone? Bingo. My wedding rings. Well, I didn't need them anymore, did I? Gathering dust on my dressing table, burning a hole in my heart every time I caught a glimpse of them. They had to go. That got me thinking: what else did I own of value that I could make money from? My ex was generous: Mulberrys, Louies, Furlas filled my wardrobe in various forms but, as I desperately downloaded the Ebay App to flog them all, I stopped. Sell them? And then what? Divorced, skint, living in a two-bed flat I could hardly afford WITHOUT anything decent to my name? No. I'd only have to go out and buy a new handbag, probably a supermarket cheapie whose handles would inevitably fall off within a few weeks of over stuffing it with the usual amount of crap every average teacher, mother, woman carries around with her. Off to the landfill it would go...along with...