Being Me

My husband swears he's seen a buzzard circling overhead recently while we've been sitting in the garden. Not good for the self-esteem, being viewed as potential carrion.  I've told my husband that every hour or so we ought to shift about a bit in our chairs, just to give the impression of continuing life. Here are ten other signs that you are in your 50s and can't pretend any longer: 1. When you bend to put your socks on, you start seeing it as an opportunity to put in plugs, dust skirting boards and pick fluff off the carpet while you're down there. 2. Other people with frown lines and recent bunion operation scars let you on the bus first. 3. When you meet long-term friends, you talk about recent visits to the doctor before you even mention the weather. 4. You view Thornton's Special Toffee - the stuff you have to break with a hammer - like you would a potential mugger. 5. When the Avon Lady comes to the door, you look down the street and say, ...

Dear Fran Hill Convention would demand that I begin this letter by saying how pleased I was to hear from you.  This being far from the case, however, forgive me for sending a contract killer to your door omitting this. Most people begin each year making New Year Resolutions, often ones which they have not been able to conquer the previous year.  It is the same, alas, for me.  Each January, I resolve not to give in to the desire to leap off a high wall natural anxiety I feel at the thought that I may, yet again, before the summer is out, receive a letter from you listing unreasonable demands to be met by Christmas. I have been trying to cope without the tablets and rely just on the weekly therapy sessions, the head massages, the reiki treatments and a warm bath with candles each night, and until this morning, these seem to have kept me level. And then the shakes post arrived. At the risk of sounding repetitive (your letters have been arriving yearly since 1974,...

If you were driving along a country lane in Warwickshire today and saw a woman in a blue top kicking off her sandal into the middle of the road just as you were approaching, so that you had to brake while she hopped into the road to retrieve it, she's very sorry. She thought there was a wasp in it.  She didn't mean to kick it so far.  As she was walking along, she could swear she'd felt something dive in between the sole of her foot and the sandal and, rather than getting stung, she tried just flipping the sandal off.  But instead of flipping, it flew like a missile, right into the centre of the road. I don't know what you thought she was doing, driver.  It must have looked very strange.  Normally you have to stop for groups of teenagers who've lost control of their ball, or perhaps for a lazy cat making its way casually across, or for an old lady with a stick.  Women flinging their shoes into the road probably don't figure that often in your driving da...

REVISION The loft in the house they were in now didn’t have old school books in it, just frayed scraps of carpet and an electric fire left there by the previous tenants.  No brown suitcase, heavy with school memories.  No photograph of her with missing teeth.  She couldn’t, then, trace her childhood through large round writing, Tudor kings, neat Maths, revision notes, school photos with shy smiles.  She could remember writing about birds, though, when she was about seven.  A project.  Choose your favourite subject and do a project on it.  She’d been given a good mark for that.  Funny, really.  She had no interest in birds at all now.  That made her wish even more that she could see her old school books.  How had she changed since childhood, that birds used to fascinate her?  Where that part of her had been, now there was nothing. At some point, presumably, her mother, or somebody, had thrown her school books away....

Once upon a time, a girl with hair as yellow as sunflowers was skipping through the woods when she spied a wolf. 'Cut!' said the director.  'What moron brought the wolf in here?  There's no wolf in this story.  What a bunch of IDIOTS I work with.  They can't do anything right.  Why the hell did I ever ....' Just as he was saying this, and flailing his hands in the air in frustration, an assistant was taking a call on his mobile, and saying, 'Yeah, it's in studio 3.  Sorry, sorry.  Yeah, Studio 13, I got it.  I'll get someone to bring it along.' Once upon a time, a girl with hair as yellow as sunflowers was skipping through the woods when she spied a bent-over old lady in a badly-fitting headscarf and holding an apple with one shiny side. 'Cut!' yelled the director again.  'Who brought in the crone?  Get. Rid. Of. The. Crone.  There IS no crone in this story.  Give me STRENGTH!  You guys couldn't organise yourse...

Here are some musings inspired by the sofa which I am sitting on on which I am sitting never-end-a-sentence-with-a-preposition-call-yourself-an-English-teacher? You could probably do without these musings, but if you, like me, are trying to avoid getting on with the real business of the day, you may find some random thoughts on a piece of furniture intensely fascinating.  Put it this way, do you want to stay with me, or do you want to go and iron those tricky pairs of jeans or make that awkward phone call to your Aunty Pat about the family party you are shunning, ostensibly because of a prior arrangement you have yet to invent, but primarily because you can't stand Uncle Frank? I rest my case. Unnecessary subtitle: My sofa . Unnecessary picture of a sofa like mine: I was intending to tell you a story about my sofa.  I may well yet do so.  The day is young.  But, before that, I want to know.  Why is a sofa called a sofa?  I'm going to look it ...

How to write satirical articles by U.N.Published She was trying to resist visiting Fran's blog for advice on writing,  in case she came across pictures of dead frogs or bushy eyebrows, but she knew she'd have to give in eventually. I’ve been writing satirical articles for a while now.  I’m hoping, some day, to get one of them into print.  But I know you’ll benefit from my years of experience.  So, here are my top tips. 1. If you want to write a satirical article, put pen to paper and let it flow.  You feel strongly about something?  Then forget all that rubbish about planning and structuring (yawn, yawn).  Who’s got time for that when there are politicians to poke fun at and society to slander?  I see it as a kind of therapy.  When I’ve had a good old bash at someone, I feel so much better.  And I wouldn’t dream of going back and changing anything, even if editors ask me to, which they often do.  What’s on that p...