Journal Saturday 8th November (just left it sat in drafts like a right plank).

Morning all. Apologies for the absence. As my regular social media buddies will already know, we had to have our beloved Sheldon put to sleep a few weeks ago. He was 13, it was time, but it’s incredibly painful and I can’t talk about it.

I’m just about getting my sleep cycle back into some sort of normal rhythm, after all of those early mornings and sleepless nights. With the lack of early mornings, so there has also been the lack of opportunity to write, because that had become my normal routine. Perhaps I’d also associated writing with those times and I really haven’t wanted to be reminded.

In the in-between my last journal post and now, we had new windows fitted, spent a few days in London and I went to Self Esteems homecoming gig at the Sheffield Arena. That’s the last of my 50th birthday celebrations, and I can honestly say I’ve had a lovely time. Massive thanks to my friends and family for just being a delight. It’s a funny old time of life this. You finally feel like you know who you are, you’re comfortable in your own skin, and then menopause just yanks the rug out from underneath. You lose yourself a bit, you honestly have days where you look in the mirror and don’t really recognise your own reflection. The invisibility begins to creep in from the ground up, like how your 90’s jeans would slowly absorb water via raggedy hem capillary action. Thank Christ that people talk more about it now, because I genuinely thought I had MS at one point. I think what I’m saying is, perhaps I needed to be reminded that, to quote Frank Turner, the best people I know are looking out for me.

Enough of this talk anyway.

If we don’t much care for old routines, then we make new routines.

Onwards….

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In other news.

This little blog has just had its 50,000th view so that’s nice. 50 years old, 50,000 views. it’s a pleasing symmetry.

It’s occurred to me that I’ve got lots to actually tell you. I still haven’t written about our day trip to Oxford in the summer, which merits a post of its own. I’ve added a fair few things to my Atlas Obscura list of strange places visited. We visited the V&A, Imperial War Museum, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London & the National Gallery. We saw Operation Mincemeat the musical in the West End, and Elis James and John Robins at the Hammersmith Apollo. We snagged a dinner reservation at the Devonshire in Soho, that we very nearly missed due to yet another 5 hour Ryanair flight delay, but cheers for the compensation you arses.

So to conclude. Bit melancholy, not remotely bothered about the number of candles on the last cake, have a lot to be thankful for. Will try to resume normal service. Thanks for stopping by.

TTFN,

V xx

PS. I’ve always tried to use my own photos, but daily blogs sometimes mean this isn’t possible. I’m ditching the wholly frivolous use of AI to generate my primary photo in favour of a stock image in the absence of one of my own. There’s no need to be wasting any water on my account.