Being Me

I'm in love with this colour. I think it's called teal. Here's a square of teal.




I have the following possessions, all in teal.

1. My laptop. (I think I told you that story. The man in the computer shop wasn't impressed that I chose a piece of kit based on its colour alone, without asking questions about megabytes or other such young-people nonsense.)

2. The cover for my Kindle Paperwhite. (My daughter gave me this. She thought my reactions overstated when I realised it matched my laptop cover, but she was probably worried I would dance on her ginger cat if I didn't calm down.)

3. Some teeshirts.

4. Some jumpers.

5. Some scarves.

6. Some socks.

All I lack is a pair of teal trousers and some teal shoes, but one can overdo things. If I went out dressed all in teal, perhaps with a teal hat, I would be mistaken for a bright summer sky and that might not end well.

What I didn't know, until a minute after I began this blog post, was that a teal was a duck and that we…

We're all wired so differently.

My youngest sister's approach to crossing roads is this:

Cross the damn road.

Mine is this:

Spot a level crossing or zebra crossing in the far distance with a pair of binoculars. Walk a mile to it. Wait, checking carefully that cars have stopped, and that the light is green/the way across is clear. Check again for feckless motorists who don't believe in stopping despite the presence of a human body. Cross the road, checking all the time. Walk the mile back to original position.

I am not a risk-taker. She is. I like to check, do a risk assessment, then move. She just MOVES.


She's the same sister who hates public transport because it doesn't go straight from A to B. For me, I like the fact that my favourite bus, which could get me from home to work in five minutes if it went directly, travels via four housing estates, stopping seventeen times to pick up locals with whom the driver has a long chat about the weather or Mrs Jones' ope…

I am very suspicious of vouchers, offers and free gifts from stores, given out in an attempt to create customer loyalty. Here are my thoughts.

1. Whenever we do an online grocery shop, I'm about to press 'Pay' when my husband scuttles in with a sheaf of tiny vouchers he's just found in a drawer, like a bird who's collected bits of torn paper for its nest. 'Can we use these?' he says. He's always been more save-the-pennies than I have, I think it's safe to say.  Cue fifteen minutes of squinting at minuscule numbers on vouchers for bleach, and shortening the lifespan of my eyesight by ten years, tapping them all in. Then the store tells me, 'You have saved £3.02 on your £110 order by using your vouchers. Well done!' Hallelujah, I'm thinking. I'd rather have had the eyesight. It's hard, plucking middle-age upper lip hairs with blurred vision.

2. I went to a department store last week and spent £60 on two tops for work. I don't o…