Being Me

I had my first pedicure recently. I went with my daughter-in-law as I'd bought her a salon voucher for her birthday and she said it would be more fun if we went together. I wasn't sure about it. I'm not fussed about being pampered and handled. For instance, I'm in and out of hairdressers as quick as I can be. If I can get away with a dry trim and just enough time to say hello, goodbye and 'You want HOW much?' I will. I'm not at my happiest sitting in front of a mirror, gawping at my own image for an hour. It distorts my perspective of myself. It's like when you write out the same sentence many times, as if doing lines at school. Write it once: 'I must not run in school corridors.' It looks normal the first time. By the time you've written it fifty times, the words seem surreal, unfamiliar. 'Are they real words? Is corridors really spelled that way?' In the same way, if I stare at my own face for longer than necessary, what start

'How many years after the Great Fire of London were you born, Grandpa?' our 6 year old grandson asked my husband on Monday when we went round to their house for Grandpa's birthday meal. The Great Fire of London is one of Elijah's 'markers'. He learned about it at school and knows the date: 1666. So, why not use it to try and get his head around time? Logical. But when my husband told him, 'About 300,' he was flummoxed. 300 years? Is that even a THING? 'When were you a baby, Grandma?' 4 year old Phoebe then asked me at the dinner table, looking up at my face as if to say, 'Was this ever possible?' It reminded me of when I tried to tell a little girl in a shop who was buying a Mars Bar that, when I'd been a child, Mars Bars had been four pence. She stared at me as one might gaze at the Acropolis and said, 'Were Mars Bars even invented then?' I love this stage, though, when they're not quite sure about time and how