Cast adrift

I wrote this shortly after my mum died in 2007, and it was published in its complete format in the Guardian’s Family section later that year.  I’m posting an edited version here because it deals with a side of bereavement that affected me at the time, and many people who read it said it reflected their own feelings.  To my Scottish family mentioned here, time and your generosity has meant that I feel I do have a home in Scotland again.

“My mum came to visit me at my home in London for a week’s holiday and less than 12 hours after I’d picked her up from the airport, she was dead.

Before we’d had a chance to have a decent conversation about those important inconsequences of life – how was the rest of the family back in Scotland, what was the doctor saying about her stomach pain – I was doing CPR on her in my guest bedroom, desperately trying to keep her alive until the ambulance arrived.

At the hospital, they tried everything they could to save her, but none of it was any use and, just as dawn broke on a new day, they turned off her ventilator. 

Over the course of the following days I struggled to work out what had happened. Emotions ran riot – guilt that this had happened on my watch; gratitude that at least I had been with her; worry – how on earth was I going to get her back to Scotland?; and deep, despairing, devastating sadness – my lovely mum, gone.

And then, a dawning realisation that as Mum had lived in a council property I would have just a few weeks to clear her house and hand back the keys.  With that house would go my home in Scotland, my Scottish foothold.  A new emotion, of feeling cast adrift washed over me.

I’ve lived in London for more than 20 years but I still consider Scotland and the house we’d lived in since I was 14, where my daughters had a bedroom specially covered with Barbie stickers, where my David Cassidy posters used to hang on the wall, my home. We’d moved in on the day Scotland beat Zaire in the 1974 World Cup.  I always remember that the TV was the first thing out of the removal van and set up by my dad and uncles, ready for the match. I’ll never forget the look of horror on Mum’s face as they all suddenly stopped unpacking and congregated around the set, boxes and furniture dumped everywhere.

My relatives have been fantastic and have said ‘You must come and stay with us,’ and I know that I will do that, and we’ll build new traditions, but it won’t be quite the same.

Eight weeks after Mum died I travelled to the family home for the last time. The moment I turned the key in the back door lock – only tradesmen and the doctor used the front – I began to cry, because I knew that when I opened the door into the kitchen, the spot where mum would usually be standing, ready to greet me, would be empty.

From there it got steadily worse.  As I waited for family to arrive to help I got on with the job of clearing out my bedroom. When I left home in my 20s, I took just what I needed at the time. Mum had long commandeered my wardrobes for her enormous clothes collection, but the drawers and cupboards were still full of my things.  School books, jotters, science projects, birthday cards, letters from long-forgotten friends, rosary beads, chocolate boxes made into jewellery cases using instructions from Jackie magazine.  And then, just when I thought I was coping with the task of sifting through all these memories, I found an enormous card with the numbers ‘21’ on the front. Inside was written a birthday message, just from my dad.  I was stunned because Mum usually wrote the cards. As I traced the letters with my fingers I realised I hadn’t seen Dad’s long, lopping writing in the 20-odd years since he’d died. And that’s when I realised the size of this.

It wasn’t just about finding a good home for Mum’s extensive shoe collection, or deciding what to do with the radiogram she seldom played but still had pride of place in the living room.  It wasn’t even about me clearing out teenage clutter that I should have tackled long ago.  It was about the breaking up of a family, my family, a family that had existed in my home town for several decades, where my mum and dad had been born and grew up, met and married and had their children. Went to school. Visited their friends. Shopped in the Co-op. Drew their pension at the post office. And now none of us would be there, or the living have any reason to go there again. That was heartbreaking and plain hard.

Now I feel like one of those bits of seaweed that you see floating aimlessly just under the surface of the water when the tide is going out, rootless, swaying to and fro, this way and that. Maybe I should have seen this coming, bought my own place in Scotland, but like all life-changing, profoundly emotional events, you don’t really understand what it means until it happens.

I have some roots of course in London, with my husband and my children, but are we where we should be? I’m Scottish and Scotland to me is Mum’s house. But now that’s the scene for another family’s life. Do I feel cast adrift because I’ve lost my foothold in Scotland or because I’ve lost my mum?  Perhaps time will tell.”

MY NICE THING FOR MARCH…so far…

Spring comes to Denman College – scene of learning and fun

A weekend trip with my Women’s Institute friends to Denman College in Oxfordshire, where we fused glass, worked willow, rang handbells, danced for fun, sang, walked, ate, chatted and laughed. There were 20 of us and we had such fun. What a wonderful weekend of friendship.

Showing friendship

Over the past few months I’ve learned a lot about friendship.  About who my friends are, the various ways in which friendship can be shown, and how sometimes it’s the small things carried out with thought, and the most unexpected people, that can mean the most.


I’ve also realised what a terrible friend I’ve been over the years.  Such gestures of goodwill that came flooding in in the days after my husband died – friends arriving daily with casserole dishes of nourishing stews, home baked cakes, bread fresh out of the oven — were so welcome in that time of turmoil when you can’t think about food yet there are people to feed, when visitors arrive hourly to support and chat and discuss over tea and cake but there’s no time to stock up at the shops, and when there’s a simple comfort in just being surrounded by lovely food.  Each arrival showed such compassion that I was immensely touched –  and put to shame because I confess that I’ve never done that for a friend in a similar circumstance.


I’ve made the usual offers of help in a card – ‘Just let me know if I can do anything’ – and of course I would have helped had I been asked, but I’ve never just thought for myself what might be needed, and then provided it. I suppose I’ve always stood back, slightly afraid to push my way into someone else’s life. What I’ve discovered thought, is that in difficult times, especially when you’re in shock, you usually have absolutely no idea what you need, and you’re desperately grateful for someone tuning up at your door with a vegan lasagne that you can quickly heat up and serve for dinner without any further thought, and that works for everyone who might be in the house at the time, regardless of their dietary preferences.

Outside of the food, one gesture stood out for me. Within minutes of hearing that my husband had died, my niece — who lives 500 miles away  – had booked a flight and was by my side within hours.  This was all the more remarkable when you consider it was almost midnight when I called her and she had to work out the best route to an unfamiliar part of the country, make all the arrangements for travel and her family, and then get to me.  I’ll never forget that, how grateful I was to her, and that she just did it without being asked!  I’d have mulled over whether I should go or not for days!

Almost the antithesis of this was a chance meeting I had with a friend of my husband’s a couple of months after he died.  She’d know all about his death, had visited at the time, attended the funeral and we’d parted with her saying: ‘We’ll meet up for coffee soon.’  Four months later I saw her as I was running for the train and she looked slightly sheepish as she apologised for not contacting me sooner saying: ‘Life’s just been so chaotic’.  What does she think my life’s been like!!!

Far from sitting by my mobile waiting for her text, I’ve been getting on with the business of coming to terms with the fact that my life’s been turned upside down,  I no longer have a husband, instead of a future full of promise and happy things I’m facing a blank wall, and doing the odd bit of sobbing.  What I wanted to say to her was ‘Actually I’ve been too busy to remember you mentioned coffee’, but I was brought up better than that and my mother would have been horrified if I’d uttered those words, so instead I suggested a date when we could meet for that coffee.

While I was stewing over this, a sympathy card arrived from an old friend I haven’t seen in 30 years and who I usually only keep in contact with via Christmas card.  She’d written about 200 words, the first 100 of which were apologising for not writing sooner because she’d been so busy with holidays, family issues, and buying a new house.  Only then did she say how sorry she was to hear about my husband.  It actually made me laugh out loud.

On one hand, you might say, at least she took the trouble to write, and that’s true, and it’s more than I’ve done on occasion.  But what I’ve learned is that in a difficult time, an act that’s useful, well-timed, and thoughtfully conceived will usually be well received even if not requested.  A sympathy card doesn’t have to be a work of prosaic art, or even have both sides and the back filled with writing. It just has to be a simple message of sympathy sent with thought and friendship. And if you have delayed in contacting the person, just say you’re sorry  – no explanation needed. 

I’m sure I won’t always get it right, but in future I’ll know how to try.

MY NICE THING FOR FEBRUARY

Charlotte’s yummy cream tea

For weeks I’d been planning a weekend trip to visit my youngest daughter who’s at university in Cornwall. All was going well and we were enjoying our time together when Storm Ciara blew into town and I had to leave early to stand any chance of getting home in one piece.  I was devastated, and now very wary of ever visiting that part of the world again because I seem to have such bad luck every time I go. On my first trip 18 months ago, I was stuck alone on the hard shoulder of the M4 for an hour waiting for the AA to come and help me with a burst tyre; nine months ago on a visit I was involved in an accident so serious that my car was written off; and then six months go my husband died there. Cornwall, I get the message! But before Ciara whipped up her mischief my daughter and I were having a lovely time, the highlight of which was a visit to Charlotte’s Tea House in Truro.  The scones are sublime.

Future imperfect

Two things happen when your partner dies.  The first is that you lose your partner. The second is that you lose yourself.

All those plans that you had for the future, big and small, the things you were going to do together, are gone.  The trip to Pisa, renovating the kitchen, enjoying watching your children fall in love, becoming grandparents, arguing about where to retire to.  Even just those early Saturday and Sunday morning games of tennis at the courts round the corner from the house.  All of it wiped away.  The future a blank.

When you’re younger, in your 20s, and you have your whole life ahead, there’s a sense that you can do anything. The future is unknown but rich with possibility, and it feels exciting.  Aged 60, the future landscape looks bleaker, more arid, less bountiful.  Yet it’s accompanied by a sense of urgency.  For me anyway, the long learning curve that life takes us on through our 20s into the more confident 30s is a luxury I don’t have.  I want to do things now. But what?

Two books I’ve read recently have given me some insight into this dilemma.  Neither is due out until March –  a perk of my job is that I get to read books before they’re published- and regardless of whether you’re a bereaved person or not, they’re both worth making a note to buy.

The first is a novel called My One True North by Milly Johnson.   One of the characters, whose husband was killed in a car crash, is telling her boss that she can’t find the place in life where she used to be. He says: ‘You have to find a new place and that takes time. More than you think. Three steps forward, four steps backwards mainly in the beginning. But there will come a time when you find you’re one step in front and you don’t slip back.’

Good advice.  It’s advice I’ve given to others in my position on many occasions.  But when you’re the bereaved person time seems to move both quickly – how can it already be another month without him? – and as slowly as treacle running up a hill.  And when you’re 60, every day counts.

The other book is Things I Learned from Falling by Claire Nelson. It’s a true story about a thirty-something woman who went for a hike alone in the dessert, fell, shattered her pelvis and lay severely injured and undetected for several days.  She obviously survived, because she’s written the book , which is part record of the terrible ordeal she went through, and part voyage of self discovery. 

There were so many things in her character that I recognised in my own, flaws that floated to the surface for each of us in our individual tragedies.  As she recuperates, she realises that she’s lost the sense of fear that has always held her back.  Now, things that would usually be too challenging for her to ever contemplate doing, she’s tackling. Because she has known the greatest fear, that she might die, and nothing could ever be that scary again.  So no matter whether things work out or not, she’s at least prepared to try them.

Applying that thought to my situation, I’m experiencing one of the greatest losses, so what else do I have to lose?  If I want to try out things to help me find a new path in life, does it matter if I make a few mistakes along the way? I’m lost already, so what if I take a few wrong turns in an effort to find myself?  Except that each wrong turn uses time.  But then, perhaps the wisdom of age will help me recognise that painful though those wrong turns can be, they’re not the end of the world, and in fact are often part of what shapes personality, character and the future.  It’s a quandary…

MY NICE THING THIS MONTH…SO FAR

Well it’s only the start of February but already I’ve had a wonderful evening at a wine tasting organised by my local Women’s Institute.  It was run as a ‘Call My Bluff’ type of quiz, and since I have absolutely no wine knowledge and a totally undiscerning palate, I just enjoyed drinking wine, eating cheese and being with friends.  But I have more plans for February, so watch this space!

Head in the clouds

There’s a scene at the start of the first Mary Poppins film where she’s sitting on a cloud, powdering her nose, waiting I assume for her next call to help a family in need.  That’s me. Not the face powdering part – I prefer the natural look – or the helping the family in need.  But sitting very firmly and happily on a cloud.

It may well be a cloud of denial, of not wanting to, or being able to, face the reality of what’s happened, but on this cloud the sky is blue, above my head all seems bright and sunny, and I feel buoyant, happy.  Sometimes I look over the edge of the fluffy stuff and see a world that’s grey and rainy and sad.  Why would I want to go down there?

The practical side of my brain tells me that some days I’ll have to, and who knows what will be the catalyst.  Sometimes I just wake up in the morning with feet of lead and a spirit to match. On those days my brain seems foggy, I can’t concentrate on anything, I walk slowly and I have a heavy, ball-shaped sense of dread in the pit of my stomach.  Everything is such an effort, and I can see clearly the horrible consequences of my loss.  Other days I’m up with the cirrus, feeling bright and breezy. 

Each up or down lasts a few days. Who knows when and why it’ll change.  But one thing I do know is that being on that cloud is very much more preferable to being on the ground.

That view does present me with a dilemma though, when friends, family, colleagues or acquaintances try to sympathise/empathise/cheer me up.  If I’m on my cloud, believe me I’m cheerier that anyone in the wide world and I most definitely don’t want to be dragged down among the sad people!  So how to react when I realise that people, meaning only the best, are inadvertently knocking me off my cloud?  Take this example.

Just before Christmas I was shopping in one of the malls near my home. Everything was sparkly.  The shops were full of tinsel and sequins.  I’d just bought a rather fetching Chanel-style cardigan with a scattering of crystals across the shoulders and was feeling pretty pleased with myself.  I’d also completed two emotionally draining tasks that I’d been dreading doing, and so I decided to treat myself to an extremely naughty slice of gooey cake.  Me and my cloud were so high I was on waving terms with high-flying aircraft.

On the way into the tearoom, I met a woman that I know but not very well and that I hadn’t seen since my husband died.  ‘Oh’ she said coming over to me, ‘I was so very sorry to hear about your husband.  That was just terrible.’

‘Yes,’ I said in a voice that sounded so chipper I could have been a temporary stand in for the laughing policeman at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. ‘Terrible.’

She looked confused.  I felt panicked.  While she continued empathising, telling me about a really terrible bereavement that she’d suffered a few years before and how she’d found it difficult to deal with the circus that is Christmas (all very well meant and all exactly what you WOULD say to someone in my position), all I could think was ‘My cloud!  Please don’t pull me off my cloud!’

Too late. To say I landed back to earth with a bump would be an understatement. I was down, grey, sad and on the verge of tears. We spoke a little longer in a much more appropriate tone about how awful it all is and shared a few more sad thoughts and then she went off and left me to ponder the cake cabinet with infinitely less enthusiasm.  

It wasn’t her fault, but it highlights the problem – how to stop people who want to support and help pulling you off your cloud?  Or maybe that isn’t the problem at all, maybe it’s the cloud that’s the problem and maybe it’s working through the rain and the grey and the sadness that one day means the sun comes out more often until it’s a permanent fixture.  I guess only time will answer that one.

MY LOVELY PLACE FOR JANUARY…so far

The ballet!  My youngest daughter bought me tickets to see The Nutcracker at the Coliseum in London as my Christmas gift.  She was supposed to come with me but was ill which was such rotten luck.  I went with a friend instead and we witnessed a truly beautiful ballet in stunning surroundings.  I’d not been at the Coliseum before, and to be honest just sitting having a pre-performance drink in its glorious balcony lounges would have been treat enough.  Hopefully later in the year, my daughter and I will find another ballet to enjoy there together.

When I try to work out how to be me

One of the many things I’ve learned in these last few months is that you’re never quite sure how you’re going to feel about anything.  Things I’ve dreaded – my birthday, putting up the Christmas tree, singing Auld Lang Syne at New Year – turn out to be much less emotional than I imagined, while other things – a walk in the park, a beautiful view, a book – turn out to be emotional rollercoasters, that invariably end up with me a snivelling wreck at the bottom.

One thing I’ve been very clear about was that I wanted to spend Christmas and New Year with my family in Scotland.  Although my parents are dead, I have nieces, nephews and cousins there that I get on with very well, and I knew that the warm, busy and fun way that they celebrate the festive season would allow me and my daughters to be supported and cared for.

On the first day there, my lovely niece said to me:  ‘Whatever you want to do is fine by us. You just do you!’    Perfect, I thought.  Followed by,  but what is ‘me’?

When you’re in a couple, you get used to thinking as a couple. Automatically and unconsciously shedding thoughts and ideas that you know won’t appeal to your partner, working within parameters that you know you’ll BOTH be happy with, only considering holidays/furniture/friends/invitations that you know will meet the least resistance.  Compromising.  But when that partner is no longer there, do you still work within those designated lines?  And if you don’t, how do you find what makes you, as a single person with only yourself to please, happy?

Take, as an example, choosing curtains.  After the dreaded task of sorting through and disposing of my husbands things, our bedroom seemed so empty, dreary and cold.  I decided that a new pair of curtains might cheer it up and make it feel cosier, so I went to John Lewis’s curtain hall.   As I browsed their substantial selection, I realised that I had absolutely no idea what I wanted.  My husband and I could only ever agree on three colours – blue, yellow and beige – and they dominate our home’s decor. But on this shopping trip did I want to stick to those colours?  In theory I could have anything, but I didn’t know what I wanted or how to decide. Two visits and a week of pondering later, I chose blue, because it’s my favourite colour, in an Ikat pattern with daring shades of grey. Within minutes of hanging the curtains, I realised I’d made a mistake.

Two weeks later, I was chatting with an old friend who asked how I was finding being alone in the house.  ‘After all,’ she said, ‘it’s years since you lived on your own.’  At first I felt quite miffed by what she’d said.  I’d happily and successfully lived on my own for a decade before I got married.  I know how to do all those practical things like changing lightbulbs and plugs, using a drill, and dealing with the household finances . But then it dawned on me that while I was ahead on the practicalities, I felt much less confident about how I wanted to live? What is my style? What kind of furniture do I like? What colours make me happy?

Of course, this may all seem totally inconsequential in the context of a life lost.  And in many ways it is.  But in the context of me rebuilding my life, jettisoning the plans that my husband and I had to renovate our kitchen, to visit Pisa in the spring, to take a trip to China, and trying to devise new plans involving just me, these questions are pretty fundamental. They’re the questions I need to answer to help me discover and rediscover myself so that I can create a happy home for myself and my daughters, and a fulfilling life for me.   

It’s both sad and exciting.  A voyage of discovery. One I’d much rather NOT be on, but one I don’t have much choice about undertaking.  And hopefully as it progresses, I’ll begin to understand how to do ‘me’.

The sparkling Seamill sea

MY NICE TRIP FOR DECEMBER

At the beginning of my 60th year I decided I’d aim to do at least one nice thing a month, and for December it was my festive stay in Scotland, which involved a memorable trip to the seaside!  My nephew married his very lovely fiance at Seamill Hydro on the Ayrshire coast. At one end of the hotel’s wedding room is a floor to ceiling plate glass window that overlooks the sea, and it was against this stunning backdrop that they were wed in a traditional Scottish ceremony.  My walk along the beach (pictured) the following morning was definitely bracing, but it was also life-affirming to hear the waves crash on the shore and feel that soft, fresh wind on my face. A simple but glorious way to finish off the happiest of occasions!

I have a mini revelation

I’m thinking of buying a mini skirt.  My legs are pretty good.  I play tennis and do pilates twice a week so they’re strong and shapely, and if I look at them without wearing my glasses, there’s not a hint of cellulite.

I was born too late to be a child of the 60s so Mary Quant was never my fashion guru, but I did own a selection of hot pants, and in the 80s when it was all shoulder pads, red jackets and mini skirts, I was in my element. I even remember wearing a black silk cross-over mini skirt on my 50th birthday.  And then something happened…

People began saying to me things like, ‘Oooh aren’t you brave, wearing short skirts in your 50s’.  To clarify, they were very tasteful short skirts, usually worn with black opaque tights and knee-high boots. But gradually my confidence ebbed away and my skirts got longer until they turned into trousers.  I gave away my short skirts and stuck to boot leg trousers and jeans.

Then, for my 60th birthday, a friend took me to see Tina: The Tina Turner Musical at the Aldwych Theatre in London’s West End.

What a woman she is!  What terrible things she’s overcome. What horrible people she’s had in her life who physically abused her, tried to undermine her talent and destroy her success. And what resilience to keep fighting back, to reinvent herself in her 40s, and to keep wearing those famous sparkling mini skirts well into her 70s.  She knew her legs were among her best features and she showed them off loud and proud. 

It set me to thinking how easy it is to lose sight of the good things about us, and once lost how hard it is to find them again.  So in the spirit of rediscovering some of those good things about myself, I decided to go further than just buying a mini skirt.  I decided to book a spontaneous trip away.

I used to love travelling, but in the last couple of decades I haven’t done it much – too little time, too little money, too little courage. But Tina plus the determination to make the most of my life following the sudden death of my husband two months previously, gave me the inspiration to book a flight and join friends on their annual trip to a Christmas market.

Although I knew the people I was travelling with, and although we were visiting a city I was familiar with, Edinburgh,  I felt extremely nervous.  On the way to the airport my hands were shaking, my stomach was churning and I could happily have wheeled my suitcase back home. But I swallowed hard and kept going.

I ordered a gin and tonic at the airport bar – not something I’d ever do when travelling alone– and found myself enjoying the decadence of it. I know that when I’m on my game I can be good company, even funny sometimes, and so once I joined my friends I decided to breathe out, relax and just go with whatever flow they suggested.  We had a ball!  It wasn’t so much that I was out of my comfort zone, but back in one I’d forgotten I used to enjoy visiting!

The surprise came on the return journey. Rather than looking forward to the familiarity and security of home, I was overwhelmed by the prospect of being home alone. Just me and the two cats.  I had that sudden sickening flash of realisation that hits the bereaved like a smack across the face: this is my life now.  There’s no going back. This new life isn’t like a new haircut you hate but if you wait a while it’ll grow out. Or an expensive jumper that you change your mind about and take back to the shop.  This is it.  Unwanted but it.  And how to make the best of it?  How to make anything of it at all?

And then I thought about Tina and how she kept on being true to herself and how that got her through the very worst of times. So I’ve learned that I have to keep reminding myself of who I am, rediscover what it is about me that I like both physically and emotionally, and use that to give me the confidence to take on life’s challenges. With or without the mini skirt.

The first one

Today is my 60th birthday. A few months ago when I was thinking about how I’d like to mark it there really was only one option for me – a massive, fun Glam Rock Disco Party where we dressed up in sequins and velvet and boogied the night away to ALL my favourite songs from the 70s and 80s.

I sent ‘Save the dates’ to lots of friends and within seconds of the texts going out I had dozens of replies saying ‘YES! And I know EXACTLY what I’m going to wear!’  I was working on the playlist – apparently there’s no need for a DJ and disco unit these days – when tragedy, and I mean tragedy, struck.  Exactly two months ago, my husband of 27 years dropped dead. No warning. Alive and enjoying a weekend away in Cornwall one minute, dead the next.  Ironically, he was my toyboy, seven years younger than me, and I remember thinking years ago that I was going to reach retirement age a full decade ahead of him, and how was that going to work!? I needn’t have given it a second thought.

Naturally, the idea of sequins and bopping to Abba and Wham!, didn’t seem quite so appealing, so I cancelled the party, and the future I thought I was going to have faded before me.

But while I was trying to get my head around what had happened and why – I’m not succeeding – I couldn’t help thinking that my impending new decade was still worth a celebration.  I mean getting to 60 is a feat, and one that, well, some people never reach.  So I decided to find a different way to mark my birthday.

Whoever said that 60 is the new 40 is wrong.  For me 60 feels like the new 25.  Okay so you don’t have quite the same aches and pains at that age, but you do have a sense of achievement: you’ve got a job; you’re out of student digs and into somewhere of your own; you’re earning and so have money to spend. When I was 25, the fact that I’d achieved all of these things gave me a confidence to want to get out and experience the world. 

Aged 60, I’m experiencing the freedom that comes with having almost grown up children, my mortgage paid off,  still in a job, and with enough health and fitness to enjoy playing tennis and practicing Pilates several times a week.  I have re-found the desire to get out there and see the world.

So…my new way of celebrating my 60th birthday is to plan something new and fun for each month of the next year.  It might be something big (a we-deserve-it-get-away-from-it-all holiday to Bali with my two daughters); something small (maybe a trip to the theatre to see a top West End production); or something I’ve always wanted to do (front row seats at the US Open Tennis Championships in New York). I’m keen to learn a new skill (I’ve already enrolled in a one week intensive Pilates course), and maybe take up a new hobby (dancing? swimming? all ideas welcome).   And of course, I’m hoping that there will be lots of laughter involved in all of this.

At the end of the year I plan to reorganise that Glam Rock Disco party, and celebrate the fact that I have, hopefully, survived and had a year to remember.

I appreciate that given what’s happened to my husband, this might sound rather hard-hearted and selfish, especially as it will involve having a lot of fun without him to share it with me.  Yes,  I guess in lots of ways it is selfish.  But his inexplicable and sudden death has made me all the more determined to live life, to laugh, to hold my daughters, my family and my friends more closely and dearly and to enjoy my time with them. And what better time to be selfish than when you’re 60 – hence Selfish At Sixty.

In the words of that other SAS – ‘Who dares wins’ – I’m going to dare.  I hope you’ll join me on my journey and see if I win.