Being Me

My husband wandered through the house to find me this morning. He often does this, leaning against the door jamb of the room as if about to make a life-shattering statement such as, 'I've come to say we have no money in the bank' or 'The landlord says we have to move house.' or 'We have rats in the kitchen the size of small dogs.' These moments are, thankfully, rare. What he usually has to say is more trivial. But he adopts the same stance, and the same serious intonation, whatever the announcement: 'We could have carrots or peas - which do you prefer?' or 'I've replaced the bag in the vacuum cleaner.' Sometimes he's there to deliver the latest shock-horror headlines about his job as a gardener: 'I'm not sure I've grown the right variety of runner bean this year.' or 'My secateurs are blunt.' This morning's intoned declaration was, 'There's something in the freezer that could be ready-made polen

Did you miss me? Sorry! I was away in Lanzarote. I KNOW!!  Here I am, wearing a cardigan and trying to avoid sunlight. Because that's why people go to Lanzarote, obvs. My sister invited me on the holiday. It was a lastminute.com kind of arrangement and I had about a week's notice. Had I been still working as a schoolteacher, I'd have been forced to say no. But I'm working from home at the moment - tutoring and writing and pretending to clean the kitchen properly - so, I was free to go. I wasn't sure she'd picked the right person for her companion. 'You do realise there are reasons I never go on holiday to hot countries?' I said to her. 'I don't do sun. I rarely do outside, frankly. That's why Paul and I head off to Whitby in Yorkshire each summer, where we know it will rain and we can safely wear anoraks with the hoods up.' She promised Lanzarote would only be 21 degrees at the end of January and I was guaranteed cardigan w