Open letter to the USA

by

Ms Anne Pank
some dark, gothic street
Barcelona

Dear United States of America,

I hope you don’t mind me getting in touch with you like this, but the desire was too strong to ignore.

Tomorrow is D-Day.  Don’t f*ck it up.

I do apologise, let me rephrase that.  Failing President Obama – knowledgeable, elegant, diplomatic, respectful, honest, caring, a true gentleman – staying in charge forever

eagle-trump

The eagle is dangerous. Very, very dangerous. It’s the most dangerous eagle. (Can we have the eagle killed?)

(perhaps even of ALL of the world); what’s the next best option actually available to you with less than twenty-four hours to go?  Certainly not to vote for a weird, orange wanna be thug – let’s face it, all that tough talk is in stark contrast to his reaction to real threats, (God bless that American Bald Eagle).

Look, we’re kind of banking on you to do the right thing tomorrow, because let’s face it, we’ve f*cked up pretty badly over this side of the pond……  We need to see some hope that not absolutely everyone inhabiting the planet is a stark-raving, hate-filled ball of pus/hate/bile.  OK, rewind:  We just need the hope bit.  We need hope.  I’ve got it etched into my skin, hope is so important to me.  But that last bit is by the by.

Here’s the thing.  I’m a big fan of evidence, who’d have known, look at me being all sciency and stuff.  Professor Brian Cox would be proud.  The orange one is a fraud, he’s a bully – he’s mocked the afflicted, the fallen, POWs, minority groups, the States’ own armed forces, women, and even his own wife.  He’s been bankrupt numerous times, he openly admits he doesn’t pay tax, there are seventy-four open legal cases against him at the moment, he’s a sex pest and a cheat and a liar.  Most recent case in point the video of Obama’s reaction to a Trump supporter’s protest, and Trump’s version of the events.  There have been numerous personal accounts of people’s experience with this oaf.  It’s fair to say, the majority of them have not been favourable.

Do you really want someone like that to act as a representative of the American people, globally?  Really?

Then you’ve got Hillary,who sent some emails from a personal server.  When Trump says, “SHE’S GUILTY” (serious lack of a shouty font), what’s she guilty of, dude?  Sending emails?  We’re all guilty of that.  That’s the best you’ve got.  “THAT WOMAN IS GUILTY OF SENDING EMAILS!!!!!”

Now is not the time for a protest vote.  Look where it got good ol’ Blighty, back in June.  The promises were reneged immediately, the motley crew who spewed the same vitriol as Trump abandoned the sinking ship within mere days of the result (some might say they were actual rats), we’ve become an international laughing stock and the country is already poorer.  It’s only four months in and it’s set to continue in that vein for some time to come.

So, love her or hate her, Clinton has decades of political experience and a lifetime of working for a better life, for children, families, women and the left behind.  No-one is perfect, granted, but come on…… to undo the good work that has been achieved under the Obama administration would be what you get for your vote for the ogre.

white_house_dc

And quite honestly, on a personal level I’m scared of what the world could become with him at the helm of the most powerful country in the world.

But more than that, I’ll also be really sad – as I was after Brexit – to discover that yes, the world is full of irrational raging people, striking out in the wrong direction – at the poor, people of colour, refugees, migrants, anyone who doesn’t look like them or agree with their point of view.  I don’t like the sound of that world much.

So, no pressure States.

I wish you all the best tomorrow,
and I have my fingers tightly crossed

Best regards

Annie P

p.s. I thought this post might be funnier, so here’s a joke,

“Did you hear the one about the dyslexic devil worshipper?  He sold his soul to Santa”

 

 

 

Reasons why I don’t have kids #57

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Halloween pressure!  

The most fun I ever had at Halloween, was the year I decided to fully embrace it when I was living in my house in Liverpool.  I decorated my window at the front  with fairy-lit twigs that I already had in my lounge, dressed from head to toe in suitably gothy, black witch clothes I already had in my wardrobe, made my face up to exaggerate my usual Saturday night face – in the style of Maleficent, and opened the door to welcome the neighbourhood kids, speaking in a suitable spooky voice and clasping a traditional besom which I have in every place I live…… 

There was a big pot of sweets for them to dig into, after I had insisted they sing or dance, or both.  After all, nothing in life is free – and also; there’s nothing remotely Halloweeny about turning up in your trackie, ringing the doorbell and saying, “eeehhh Mrs, trick or treat. Can we have some sweets now?”

After the first group left, not sure if I was a real witch or not, word spread quickly and the entire block arrived, in groups of four or five, more to stand (at a safe distance) and stare, and only then to grab a handful of treats and run.  Enormous fun!

What I’m saying is, that night wasn’t a gigantic stretch for me….. 

Now when I scroll through Facebook, I see these incredibly elaborate costumes, which are terrifyingly demanding, enormously time consuming and require a modicum of creativity (and motivation).   It must strike fear into the hearts of every parent.  How do you possibly top the last year, and the year before that?

“What have you come as?” “A bin bag” *sadface


Now, I’m very proud of the fact I’m pretty good at utilising what I have to hand.  Like say…… bin bags.  What’s not to love about putting a hole in a bin sack and shoving it over the head of your little treasures?  A bit of mummy’s contouring makeup and you could be anything!  A witch, the count from Sesame Street, Edward Cullen (although I don’t strictly remember him wearing polyurethane), a zombie – channel mama on a Sunday morning, a skeleton – channel mama after a stomach bug/flu combo….. the possibilities are endless.  It’s really about encouraging old school imagination, I feel. 

My. Kids. Would. Hate. Me. 

And that is my ‘reasons why I don’t have kids’ #57

Men without children, same as women without children shocker

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Incapable of feeling or rational thought?

What a furore!  Things have been so very dull of late in politics (what with no fascist rhetoric whatsoever coming from Blighty, or chat of jam and air and child-labour saving the Brit economy), a drama was long overdue. Well, it had been a whole week since the Labour Party Conference didn’t mention Brexit even once. So without fail, The Donald came up with the goods.  And boy did he ever.  The shit well and truly hit the proverbial on Friday 7th October….. The epic storm that followed the repulsive comments of Donald Trump, revealed in a live mic recording from 2005, proved once and for all; that the man is not capable of holding office. For his legions of supporters, the endless torrent of bile that he’d spewed before including: 

racism

xenophobia 

Mocking the disabled, prisoners of war, the dying and the infirm 

Inciting violence 

Slyly suggesting assassinations 

And proudly admitting cheating all American citizens out of tax payments for the best part of twenty years

…..apparently wasn’t enough.

The straw that finally broke the camel’s back (we hope) was his admittance of sexual assault on women, using his celebrity to intimidate……

this meme of an anus photoshopped onto Trump is my fave. Oh! wait…..

“I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Women. As. Piece. Of. Meat. 

What followed was a distancing from his own party and an outpouring universal global disgust, at his blatant disregard for women.  Men took to social media in droves to denounce his comments, and offer assurances they were not all like that. Which was hugely heartening.  What was interesting was, that there seemed to be a common factor uniting most of these commentators.  In the style of Andrea ‘as a mother’ Leadsom – Jeb Bush tweeted this,

“As the grandfather of two precious girls, I find that no apology can excuse away Donald Trump’s reprehensible comments degrading women.”

Without your granddaughters Mr Bush, how would you feel about the situation?  What about your wife, your mother?

And maybe not so surprisingly many, many others reiterated the same sentiment.  Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong at all.  Caring for your kids and grandkids and nieces and nephews is a wonderful thing.  But what does that say about the chaps without nippers?  Are we to assume all those guys are cheering on Trump?  Are they making notes to use furniture shopping as a sweetener for sexual assault in the future?  Are they slapping each other on the back as they regale stories of the same ilk, over a game of pool darn tha pahb?

What is it exactly, with this qualification? According to the folks who toss it around at every nasty situation that only having children can help you comprehend, are we – the ones who do not bear fruit –  all just heartless, soulless vessels of vice, incapable of empathy or sympathy or basic human decency? 

I’m not a mother, but I sure as hell know it’s not ok to try and schmooze a chap with a trip down the IKEA, before grabbing him by his hog (I had to look that up in the Urban Dictionary).  It doesn’t take offspring for you to know that this language and behaviour is reprehensible. It only takes a tiny modicum of decency and education. Doesn’t it?  And if it that isn’t the case, then Houston, we have a problem. 

Returning to the Shires

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I’m almost tempted to get knocked up and go home!  No, really!  (rusty tubes permitting, obviously), such is the idyllic view of future Blighty currently being painted by the government during their party conference in Birmingham.  What a beautiful place it’s going to be and a cracking future for kids.  No?

At the weekend, The Telegraph published one hundred great things in a hundred minutes, to celebrate one hundred days since the referendum (or something like that).   And THANK GOD THEY DID, otherwise how would we have known, amongst other things, that Brexit Britain means cheap tennis balls, less EU X-Factor, proper weedkiller and old-fashioned light bulbs.  All the yays!  In fact, it was my light bulb moment – pun intended.  Who cares that the newly reinstated anti-EU, old-fashioned light bulb of my mind was burning into the environment and costing a fortune.  Whatevs.  The important issue was, could I beat the clock, speed home and knock a couple out – so that the nippers could grow up in this Utopian dream, could I?  I was on the brink of regretting not having them, and then the Conservative Party Conference started.  BOOM!  That was it.

turner

Roadside jam selling circa 2046

The cogs of plan making started whirring into action.  With the various speeches from various cabinet ministers, layering image upon image of blissful Britain, with the deft skill of Turner, I was seeing my newly liberated country in a completely different light.  There was talk of a jam shortage in France and a desperate need for the UK to step up to the plate, and deliver our Gallic cousins from their sticky situation, or lack thereof.  And well, we all know that jam has sustained economies for like gazillions of centuries.  But of course, brilliant!  I can make jam.  It couldn’t be such a massive step from destroying my kitchen and using every utensil and pan in the place to produce two jars, to say, exporting five hundred thousand jars annually to a land of croissant eaters unfulfilled by their own Bonne Maman, right?  And according to the Telegraph piece, another great thing will be non-regulated ports, so like it will totally allow our pirates to maraud all the jam to France and sink all the ships coming our way with continental crap equivalents, with cannon balls and stuff.

Then there was something truly inspirational from Andrea ‘I’m a mother’ Leadsom.  Get our kids to pick the fruit!  Yes!  *fist pump.  As a mother, she knows best and I trust her advice, and I am absolutely sure that she’ll be sending hers out to the orchards and strawberry fields some time soon.  If it’s good enough for hers, it’ll be good enough for my future brood too.   It’s all starting to slot in to place.  It’s all so post-war WI, isn’t it?  But I suppose that that Great Blitz spirit is going to come in super handy in the next few years.  So, tally ho!  Who needs school or university anyway?  And they might not even make it into the grammar schools to get a leg up, so sending our kids out to do manual labour is logical.  Duh.  We are also sending beautiful British air to foreign lands, because their air is shit.  They need our air.  We have loads of pig semen, so that’s pretty aces; and it’s good to know that I and my children, won’t be forced into retirement in our twilight years that we don’t even want.  So, the plan is this:

I go home
get myself a small holding
plant fruit, have pigs, make sure there’s a good supply of air
pop a couple out
work ’em out in the fields as soon as they can say ‘apple’
we all die doing back-breaking work in our sixties and seventies -But you know what, we’re all going to die happy, and proud, and BRITISH
et voila!  (Oh wait, is that expression banned?)

I can almost hear the swish of my hessian petticoats on the straw covered floor in my modest hut in the midst of this nineteenth century landscape painting.  It’s only a matter of time before Brexiteers tell Brits not to worry about the possible impending travel visas, and cite stay-at-home peasant fun – say like wrestling, shin-kicking and cock-fighting – as a viable alternative to travelling to broaden your horizons. Extreme staycationing.

And what I’m ultimately hoping for in the remaining days of the conference, is that the Tories will announce their plans to invest in the humanities to reinvigorate the lost art of the travelling musician and new apprenticeship schemes for trainee bear-baiters.  Primarily, to give my offspring at least a little choice; maybe they’ll be predisposed luvvies and really not into getting their hands dirty.  But also when, if we’re really lucky and get to keep some of the jam to put on our bread and in our gruel during a break from tending the land for sixteen hours, and we’re nursing our bruised and bloodied lower legs – we can at least say we saw a bloody good show…….

 

The Great British Bunyol Fight 

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icced-buns

Saucy!

We’ve finally lost our collective minds it would appear. Well, we kind of knew this already to be fair, 2016 has seen some sort of epic global meltdown.  Look long and hard at Brexit (believing words that came out of the bumbling, ridiculous mouths of Farage and Johnson, and changing the state of a nation based on them), the people of North Korea cheering their leader’s recent nuclear testing, and the impending selection of Trump as the next POTUS – (God save us all), looking to Kim Kardashian and Kanye West for advice.

But more than all of that put together, the greatest evidence of our collective mindset is our outpouring of rage and grief upon hearing that the The Great British Bake Off was moving to Channel 4.  Booo, hiiissss………  And then our pure, unadulterated joy that Mel and Sue announced they wouldn’t be ‘going with the dough’ (nice bit of punnery there).  The pièce de résistance though, was news today that tent Queen Berry – announced she’s staying at the Beeb.  News programmes have been interrupted and online media was awash with ‘BREAKING NEWS’ stories within seconds.  Accompanied by a unanimous whooping and cheering by the masses not heard for, well….. since we whooped and cheered for something else.

But have we actually gone mad?  I don’t think so.  It isn’t as trivial as some might say.  We’re desperate.  These are desperate times.  Our seemingly ridiculous level of over-interest in this story is perfectly understandable.  To my mind, the GBBO debacle has become a microcosm of our wider concerns……  To us mere mortals currently up to our eyeballs in shit, with little hope for the future of the human race – we’ve been hoping that amongst the drama, something would come right in the end.  Dramatic, moi??  We’ve clung to the hope that eventually, somewhere among those involved in the Bake Off story, someone would do the right thing…. Surely, La Berry couldn’t be corrupted by the dollar.  Could she?  I’m not sure we could have coped with that bombshell.  She’s just so, well nice and BBC, she belongs there – it’s her TV home.  We’ve clung to that ideal, like a piece of moral driftwood in a sea of lies and populism and corruption and avarice.  We were initially distraught that big money had snatched our soggy bottoms from the heaving bosom of Aunty.  ‘Love’ Productions – my arse.  How could they?  Then, like latter day knights in shining tinfoil, Mel and Sue restored our faith, at least just a little bit – that there were right and just people in the world and that not everyone can be swayed by humongous mountains of cash.  Mary’s rejection today, with a statement stating she will remain ‘loyal’ to the BBC, because they have ‘nurtured’ her; was just what the doctor ordered.  It compounded our naive hope that some good still exists this horrible world, that values count for something, that not everyone does in fact, have their price.

So thank you for that Mary Berry, and Mel and Sue too, so much.  Thank you for being the heroes in this 21st century morality play about the evil and eventual consequences of greed.  Today we have a little bit of redemption…… Lord knows we needed it.

Reasons why I don’t have kids #55

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Some people say to me, often I just realised, “You’re a bit pessimistic/negative”.

What I might have said to elicit that response, is something along the lines of 1. “Jesus H. Christ my knees hurts.  *Age is a big ol’ bitch!” OR 2. “Jesus H. Christ, Monday again, what a c*nt!”, OR 3. “JEHEE-EE-Sus Holy Mother of God alive, I’m perimenopausal and it’s a right pain in my arse!” Well, you know………  And really, (apart from significantly indicating that I enjoy using the Son of God’s name to achieve a satisfying level of drama), it doesn’t really illustrate anything of the sort.  In my mind anyway.

I like to call myself, ‘a realist‘.  Insert smug face here.  The facts are this:
1. my knees do hurt, and it is because I’m in my mid-forties.  They didn’t hurt when I was TWENTY-five.  I know this because the style of dogs is not so easy these days. Oh! And exercise…
2. Anything that pisses on your weekend chips deserves that monicker
AND
3. I am not being pessimistic if I tell you a medical scienceness 

I accept that these are things that happen, and no amount of positive spin or thinking is going to magic it different, and mentioning them does not make me a pessimist.  And anyway, I’m not sure that trying to spin it differently is healthy, I’m not really one for flowering things up.  And I’m quite positive (ironically), that I would not change my realism in a parallel universe where I was a mother.  Imagine the scene.  Little Primrose hugs me tight, in an attempt to seek solace after seeing an old person croak on a

crying-comfort

There, there, death is only natural

popular TV medical drama.  Don’t judge me! It’s Saturday ‘staying up later than normal treat‘ night.  She looks up at me, all doe eyes and says, “Mummy, I don’t want nana to die.”  And I say in my best soothing mama voice, “Well sweetheart, she’s going to, so best you get used to the idea.”  Snuggle, snuggle, kiss on top of the head.  She’s worried about the forthcoming 11+ exam, for entry into one of the new grammar (other ways to be elitist) schools that Prime Minister Theresa May has introduced.  I get down to her level – which is not that far actually, five foot nothing – take her hands in mine, look her in the eye and say, “you should be darling, if you don’t get into the school, the chances are you will be discriminated against in the future, when trying to get into university or the world of work.”

My puberty chat would be, “You will bleed from your vagina once a month which is uncomfortable and wreaks havoc on your skin and appetite for chocolate, this will be a sign that you are a healthy woman able to have children should you choose to, this monthly event will last for decades of your life, and then you will go through an equally uncomfortable process at the end of that, that may last another ten whole years – to indicate the end of your fertility – when your body temperature will reach the dizzying heights of Death Valley in Summer, and sometimes you will feel that somewhere inside you there is an actual leaking rusty tap.  And you will gain an average of seven kilos and grow a beard to rival Captain Birdseye.  You’re welcome.”

Years later she’s waving at me from the train as she heads off to university after achieving the A-level results she needed.  I wave back proudly, tears in my eyes.  “That’s amAZING!! I’m so proud of you….  Don’t forget to have fun!  There’s no guarantee that your degree will get you a good job at the end of your course, so it would be a shame to waste those years of freedom in a new city away from us finding your independence, ONLY studying.  I love you!  Enjoy!  See you when you come back to live with us for the rest of your life, because you can’t get on the housing ladder.”  But she’s already too far down the noisy track of youthful hope, to hear me…….

And that gently does it approach is my ‘reasons why I don’t have kids’ #55.

*And nooooo, age is not just a number, Rumi meme readers, if my body feels different and it is medically proven to affect your physical abilities <I eye roll at your positivity cliches>

 

Female politician with no kids?? *Narrows eyes*

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Another day, another article drawing attention to women without children who appear to be simply getting on with life.  These particular women however, just happen to be getting on with life in public office.

This weekend, The Sunday Times ‘tantalised‘ us with a secret about Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister.  ‘OOOOOooohhhhh’ thought my inner Kenneth Williams.  I expected to see revelations that she cartwheeled around Holyrood when she took up office, naked apart from a pair of leopard-print kitten heels that she’d half inched from Theresa May.  Or that she enjoyed nothing more than eating a full fry-up in bed without cutlery, on a Sunday morning, then staying in her PJs all day watching back to back Keeping up with the Kardashians. In complete contrast to her immaculate, steely public face.  That would have surprised me greatly.

childess politicians

Tigerless female politicians

It was however, the revelation that she had experienced a miscarriage at the age of forty.

Nothing about this is ‘tantalising’.  It is a deeply private, and often painful, matter.  I’m not knocking The Sunday Times for the story, that in fact was an extract from the book, Scottish National Party Leaders,with which the First Minister of Scotland has co-operated fully.  It was the approach to the matter that was, shall we say, a little skewed.  Not least of all because it was accompanied by a fabulously irrelevant guide to other childless MPs.  Only women of course.  Yay!  <solo Mexican wave>.  I’d been wondering about that, how thoughtful of the ST.  Said no-one.  No-one knows why these women don’t have children, but there they are listed like a latter day, women-only version of Guess Who – where the worst possible question you could  ask to eliminate faces is, ‘do they have children?’……. Doh!  Interested in the family status of male politicians?  Well, nothing to see here, move along now.

I mean, whatever next?

“OK!  Hands up!  Who here has had an abortion?”  We simply don’t need to know-unless there is a direct conflict of interests, or with the policies you’re trying to impose on the masses, that  proves you to be an enormous hypocrite.  (eeerrhermm, * coughs KEITH VAZ)….

Imagine the headlines:

  • FIFTY TWO PERCENT OF MALE POLITICIANS MASTURBATED LAST NIGHT 
  • OH!  BOJO PEES SITTING DOWN/ANDREA-MUVVA-LEADSOM PEES STANDING UP

It’s quite simply irrelevant.

We have the equipment and the capacity (but not always), to make and carry a baby – but that doesn’t mean it’s obligatory or we’re not to be trusted if we don’t use it.  Very often it’s a choice.  I’m pretty sure I could lay my hands on a set of golf clubs, but that doesn’t mean I’m under orders to lose a day of my life trying to smack balls into a series of tiny holes…….  I could also enter the lions’ enclosure at the zoo, but I think I’ll give that a miss too thanks.  All logical choices.  And when it isn’t a choice, it can be a sad and sensitive issue.  So, you know, mind your own business.  The information Sturgeon gave to Mandy Rhodes who contributed to the book, was about addressing the issue of miscarriage, stripping away the stigma.  OK.  But the addition of a sidebar of female politicians without children was completely useless, uninteresting and moreover – irrelevant to the article and also their ability to do the job.  What of it?  At the moment, 20%  of British women ages 45 don’t have children (I’m one of them), and that number is set to increase to 25% in the not too distant future.  So you can see, we’re not just all about the baby making.  Higher numbers than you might imagine.

How and why we have no children is of no consequence, unless we ourselves choose to address it.  As Sturgeon has.  It never crosses my mind who in public office does or does not have a family: male or female.  I don’t know and I don’t care.  (I care if they’re a divisive f*cking idiot or not.  Looking at you Farage. Or a bumbling bare-faced liar, looking at YOU Johnson.)  But what I do know is – the death of an unborn child is most certainly NOT ‘tantalising’, and being a woman (in the public eye or otherwise) without children should no longer be presented as something strange or unusual, worthy of scrutiny.

Honestly, for the most part you’ll discover it’s not a very interesting story.  Me for example, well – I just simply forgot to do it.

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy

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Ah August, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways……

Camus done, Gladwell started and Glorious Heresies (not photographed) was indeed – glorious


Exercise, creativity, reading the shit out of stuff, taking better care of myself, a two month health kick.  You know the drill.  So filled with dizzying enthusiasm for a productivity-packed summer vacation was I (again) that I almost completely forgot that I am, in fact, intrinsically lazy.  And like wine.  And food.  And meeting with friends to consume both.  Often.  Especially at this time of year.  And it has been so damn hot!  It’s impossible to do pretty much anything that involves even a modicum of physical exertion, and doesn’t involve consumption – unless you get up at five thirty a.m. or don your lycra after midnight.  And let’s face it, that ain’t going to happen any time soon.  Uurrgghh, so. much. effort.

So here we are approaching the last week of the month, and I have achieved nothing. Maybe except an impressive tan and an extra couple of kilos.  I did however do a little exploring on my doorstep, having relinquished my usual jazz groupie shenanigans.  Almost five years here and I’ve always opted for another European destination in summer, above my adoptive home.  So, first stop was the Costa Brava, in the mountains close to Platja d’Aro, to spend time with one of my oldest friends, her hubby and my nieces  over from Blighty, for a long overdue catch up.  Conversation, giggles, time by the pool (bar), splashing around with the girls, dinner and cocktails (those not with the girls).  Having to return home for work was a massive drag, but kind of lucky as I’d somehow destroyed my back, and classes were with my doctor student who sorted me right out.

Then I hopped over the water to Mallorca to visit someone I barely know, which went about as well as you can imagine….. You win some, you lose some.  We saw a bit of the island before I decided to book myself on a flight home two days earlier than planned, because of my back….. and a stomping hissy fit that La Campbell

River Onyar, Catalunya


would be proud of – him, not me – in the middle of a conversation about the race to The Whitehouse.  I left graciously (probably largely due to being cracked up on pain drugs) with a hug, a thank you gift and an invitation for a return match in BCN and headed to the island capital.  Mallorca is nice, I’ll go back.  I have since however, after I tweeted that I would vote for Sadiq Khan as leader of the Labour Party a gazillion times, been blocked from ALL social media including Instagram, which I didn’t even realise was a thing.  Guess he doesn’t like the mayor of London more than he doesn’t like Hillary Clinton.  That’s life I guess.  *People are strange. 

Back on the mainland I waited for my sis to arrive for a week of panky japes which involved a trip to Girona, gin, beach time, gin, dinner, gin, the Festa Major de Gracia, lots of laughs and roof terraces.  And gin.  And behind all of these lovely summery things, I am as always in August, plunged into the depths of an annual existential crisis.  It becomes longer and harder with each passing year (phnarr).  Thankfully though, you can find a very simple How to Deal with an Existential Crisis (With Pictures) online, for this intensely complicated issue.  So this teamed with the oodles of gorgeousness I’ve shared with loved ones this month has been a hugely welcome distraction.  But one thing I have finally realised this year, the problem is not exclusively connected to being in the company of the creatively gifted and blessed.  Nope.  It would appear that I am more than capable of the feelings of worthlessness, ALL. BY. MYSELF……..  No help needed.

So, you know – winning.

honest passport hunter


This yearly despair of course though, does not at all lend itself well to dipping a toe back into the muddy puddle that is Tinder.  It really, really doesn’t.  (That repetitive emphasis just made me feel like Donald Trump…..)  Eeewww <shudders violently>.  I’d taken a sabbatical from dating since the early part of the year, after having my fill in 2015, but in July as a response to Brexit, I decided to post a new profile stating quite clearly – that I was  looking for a European husband.  They do after all say, that honesty is the best policy.  Straight up, no bullshit; I want to stay in Europe.  But this, as with a lot of what I do, I posted largely to amuse myself, natch. <whispers conspiratorially behind hand>, ‘but you know, if one Euro marriage prospect should come of it, weeeellll, you know….’.  But as a strange twist of fate would have it, this profile attracted more attention than previous ones, go figure, and  I have met a pretty sweet guy.  And now I’m freaking out and wondering if I just have to accept that maybe the fact is: I am actually happier alone and that it’s OK.  Or, am I just panicking that something good will actually transpire.    Questions, questions, questions.  And I have spent the last week trying to figure myself, and this, out.  But this sense of panic is going to take more than a week to understand I think.  Step by step.  

I must admit, a rapid return to work will be a blessed relief from my own internal dialogue, which also apart from questioning my purpose on this planet, includes such ponderings as:
I wonder if Kim Kardashian worries, or is a bit embarrassed, about her bum contouring make-up **messing up the two hundred thread count Egyptian cotton sheets during sex. 

Why did ‘God’ create cockroaches.

And who, in their right mind eats baby eels.

*I am ‘people’
**That’s got to be a massive ballache for the housekeepers

Roll on the new term……

Reasons why I don’t have kids #54

by

The beach. 

I have five different levels of SPF, to ensure an even tan.  And to gradually reduce the strength as the summer progresses.  I have a two litre bottle of water, frozen in the freezer overnight so that it stays cold for the maximum time. No-one likes drinking bath temperature water.  I have a rattan mat to avoid excessive sand in those places we don’t like the sand to go.  You know.  I have a good book for when I’m not sleeping, getting brown. 

There will be alcohol at some point, whether that be a cocktail or gin-in-a-tin. Because: holiday.  (Erstwhile known as life between my classes.)

1 x bag full of the above

1 x rattan mat 

1 x me

It takes dedication and hard work to relax this much


I travel light.  How do mums do it?! Buckets/spades/windcheaters/prams (have you seen the parents struggling with those on the sand?)/snacks for a family of five/armbands/floatation aids/hats/games/any sort of physical activity.  Thirty-four degree heat is not conducive to any form of movement (except the occasional dip), once installed in your pitch on the sand.
Jeeezz. It could be exhausting; and the whole point of a trip to the beach is relaxation….

And that is my ‘reasons why I don’t have kids’ #54