I’ve been single now for coming up five months.

On the one hand I am perfectly happy – work is good, I’m settling into my house, and have the kitties obviously. Who could fail to be happy with three cats of their very own to stroke every single day? I love being able to do everything on my own terms, have all the kittens on the bed without anyone raising their eyebrows at me, spend all my spare money on yellow velvet armchairs from eBay, all that jazz.

But also sometimes I feel lonely.

When I say this to people, or words to this effect, there isn’t a huge amount of sympathy.

‘You don’t need a man!’ people say. (Normally married people. Cheers guys.)

‘Embrace being single!’ (Okay…)

‘You’re perfectly fine just you!’ (Obviously.)

I do know all those things. I don’t NEED a man. I am perfectly capable of doing all the things that need to be done, I have loving friends and family, I can work a drill and I can kick back with a puzzle as well as the next person. I GET IT.

But still, sometimes I feel lonely.

Not in a way where I feel physically alone, but a little bit like something is missing. Just sometimes. Not like I’m sobbing into a tub of Ben & Jerry’s every night or anything, but from time to time it would be nice to have someone squeeze my hand and exchange a glance that’s just for me.

And this is OKAY. View Post

This week we went down to Cornwall to stay with my Dad and Step-Mum for a bit of post-Christmas family time. On Wednesday evening we settled down to a game of Balderdash, my Dad’s favourite.

For those of you who don’t know, Balderdash is a game where you each make up an alternative definition of a word, a law, an acronym – things like that – with the aim of convincing the other players that yours is the correct one.

So, it was my turn to be the ‘dasher’, who’s the person that reads out the clue, and while everyone else was writing down their ideas I had a look at the other categories on the card. I looked at the acronym – B.H.G.A. I turned the card over the see what it was.

British Hang Gliding Association.

Cool.

EXCEPT WAIT, WHAT??

British HANG Gliding Association?? What on earth is HANG gliding? View Post

I was checking my direct messages on Twitter yesterday. I have it set up so that anyone can message me, even if I don’t follow them, so that I can be contacted by potential clients, bloggers asking for advice, fans wanting signed photos, that sort of thing.

One message was a photo.

‘That’s weird,’ I thought to myself, ‘is that just a hand?’

I looked again. It was a cupped hand, palm up.

‘What’s he holding?’ I wondered, ‘is that Caesar salad dressing?’

Oh.

(Not salad dressing.)

So my question here is, what the actual hell?? In what world is this is a normal thing to send a woman you have never even spoken to before? What part of someone’s brain tells them that this is okay? View Post

I had a boyfriend once who refused to kick piles of autumn leaves.

Every time I did it, he would do that thing where you draw your breath in sharply between your teeth.

‘What’s the matter?’ I would say, foot mid air, ready to send a heap of red and gold leaves flying across the path.

‘You shouldn’t kick the leaves like that,’ he would reply. ‘You never know what might be under them. You’ll probably end up kicking dog shit.’

It took the edge of my autumnal fun, that’s for sure.

It made me sad too, because as an attitude to life, what even is this??

why you should kick autumn leaves View Post

This is a post about salted caramel.

I hadn’t given a lot of thought, past vague annoyance, to salted caramel as a concept until I did a poll on Twitter about scones. (It’s afternoon tea week.) Someone replied to my poll saying that they had actually just come onto Twitter to complain about the fact that they had seen a salted caramel scone which, we agreed, is all kinds of wrong.

Firstly, scones should be plain. The jam and the cream are the stars there. But that’s not the point. The point is that SALTED CARAMEL HAS TAKEN OVER THE WORLD.

too much salted caramel

(Not literally obviously, that would be impractical.)

Salted caramel needs to get back in its box.

Salted caramel was fun and exciting for a little while back in 20XX*, but JUST STOP NOW. Yes, yes, it was very clever, putting something so sweet with something so salty, (salt), but enough already. We’re over it.

I had a quick look at all of the different salted caramel things you can get now and it’s just stupid.

Salted caramel rice pudding, salted caramel coffee, salted caramel tequila, salted caramel lip balm, SALTED CARAMEL GREEN TEA?! Nope. If you’re looking to build a bit of muscle you can even get salted caramel flavour ‘impact whey protein’, whatever that is.

That’s enough salted caramel. We tasted your salty sweet goodness and we liked it, but hush now.

*I was going to do some research and pin it down but I didn’t want salted caramel to WIN.

Image – by MaraZe/shutterstock

 

‘Are you busy?’

I swear I’ve been asked this at least half a dozen times this week by different people. And not in an ‘are you busy because I need a quick word’ sort of way, but in an ‘is work generally busy’ way.

‘No,’ I answer.

That throws people. They look confused, as though I’ve just admitted out loud to being a FAILURE AT LIFE.

I’ve had to start explaining to people that the reason I wanted to work for myself in the first place was for the flexibility to take time off whenever I liked, or to have quieter periods during the school holidays. For me, that’s the whole point of self-employment. Why on earth would you give up a stable, reliable income and then continue to work like someone was watching you all the time?

I’m not busy at the moment because I choose not to be. SHOCK HORROR.

It’s the middle of the summer holidays and next year Belle goes into year eleven, so I want to be at home while she’s still vaguely interested in hanging out with me. We also moved into a new house at the end of June, and it’s nice to be able to potter about arranging books into pretty colours and generally settling in.

Just because I’m not busy, does that mean I’m not successful or hard working? Does it mean I’m lazy, or that no one wants to work with me? View Post