Being Me

My husband sent his flute in for repair a couple of weeks ago and has been waiting for the shop to call. Just now, while I was watching TV, the phone rang in the hall and I went to pick it up. A man's voice said, 'It's the music shop. Can I speak to Mr Hill, please?' I don't know why, but I said 'Speaking.'  I swear the menopause gives women a form of Tourette's. 'Oh,' he said, clearly surprised that Mr Hill had a woman's voice, especially as, in the shop two weeks ago, he'd had a deep bass voice, substantial facial hair, and was wearing a flat cap. I wasn't sure how to backtrack. 'One second,' I said, and stepped into the kitchen where my husband was making bread. 'It's the music shop for you,' I said, thrusting the phone at him, keen to escape the embarrassing situation and get back to watching Homes under the Hammer. 'They'll have to hang on,' my husband said, making no attempt to keep...

I broke a tooth the day before we travelled to the Lyme Regis holiday I posted about last Saturday. It was one of the big molars, right at the back, and already had a filling. And it wasn't just a crack - a large section of the tooth had snapped off and disappeared down my gullet masquerading as one of the cashew nuts I was guzzling indiscriminately at the time. So I feared the tooth was doomed. But I haven't had an extraction since my childhood. I wasn't sure what to expect. I decided to push my luck and see the dentist about it when we got back. Therefore, on holiday, I ate carefully. (That's the first time I've ever used that sentence.) 'Oh, heck,' said Anna, my dentist, this morning when I turned up for my appointment. This was after she'd looked in my mouth at the broken tooth, I hasten to add - not a negative reaction as soon as I poked my head around her surgery door. She apologised after saying 'Oh, heck.' 'That's no...

I've been in Dorset for the week on holiday. Here's a flavour. Mint choc chip. Joke! I mean, here's a flavour of the holiday. In pictures and captions. You know by now not to expect pictures of fields or beaches or sunsets from my holiday pics, don't you? The saddest way to advertise a vacancy. I almost applied, I felt so sorry for them. So unfortunate, to get it right in the small writing and then bugger it up in the big writing. Outside the RNLI shop in Lyme Regis - a dog made of wellies. That's just genius. The worst case of misquotation ever. To be funeral directors was their destiny. We were on the top deck of a double decker bus, hurtling down 1 in 8 slopes. Skiing is so last year.  Two approaches to decorating one's beach hut. And, finally, you know that scene at the beginning of 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' in which Meryl Streep stands on the end of the Cobb in L...