the life of a 60-something woman who lives in Wales

Month: July 2023

The Birthday Party

(A short, no-image-needed post.)

I’m a nervous person. Specifically I am nervous when I have to go to an event which includes a group of people. More than 10 and less than 100, shall we say. So when one of the women I walk with every week, invited us all to her 70th birthday party, I said yes, but my heart say OMG no way! It went on; are you mad? there will people you don’t know! My heart likes to really pile it on. But as husbands were also invited I thought, what the hey, it might even be fun. And you know, it was.

G’s husband had planned it all; lunch followed by afternoon tea, wine and champagne, in their local village hall. He invited everyone G knew, WI, walking groups, friends. They’d lived in that area for a very long time, so they knew a lot of people. Around 60 people turned up for a fantastic buffet lunch of salad, quiches, pasta and rice salads, all sorts. Followed by several kinds of cheesecake, roulade and fruit platters. All of it was baked by G’s friends. Afternoon tea was three kinds of sandwiches and three-tier cake stands, of butterfly cacks, chocolate cakes, and Welsh cakes with jam and cream. We ate until we couldn’t eat any more! Yes, there were a lot of people there I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter quite as much as I had dreaded.

Which just goes to show you, it’s silly to get so worked up and afraid before an event. It’s rarely as dreadful as one thinks it will be.

The Sea, The Sea

Well, not much of the sea really. It was the weekly wednesday walk along the Prom with “the girls”. Wednesday morning walk I should say, but I didn’t want to smudge the alliteration. But as you can see from the ominous dark clouds, and the equally dark waves, it was not really a good day for walking. The wind was prodigious! So as there were only three of us, we decided to knock it on the head, turned our backs on the sea, and went into town for coffee at the Athro. As I was early, as usual, I nipped across the road and took this picture. And breathed in some of the lovely sea air. Hopefully that will end this streak of nights of insomnia. I’m getting a tad tired (hah!) of still being awake at 2am and then waking up at 5 or 6.

Holiday Nightmares

‘Tis the season to be going away from home, preferably abroad, staying in the country you’re already in, if you must. You’ll have seen those ads with beautiful people in bathing cossies, playing by the sea, eating ice cream and generally having a fab old time. I can count on one hand the times when I’ve had a time, fab, wonderful and just plain fun. Most of those; actually, all of those, are the times when the chap and I went somewhere. When we were first together and couldn’t afford much, we went camping in Wales. We actually went to Aberystwyth one year and found we’d pitched our tent between two larger tents that belonged to one family. Bless them, they didn’t mind and no one asked us to move along. Of course now we live in Aber. When we’re walking along the Prom one of us will say, “wouldn’t this be a nice place to go on holiday”, and the other says “we’re not on holiday, we live here”! Oh yes, we’re smug about it.

2 Eyes? Check!

I have something new to worry about. sigh Just what I needed. I had to have an eye test as a follow-up to having had the cataract in my right eye removed six weeks ago. Everything seemed to be fine. I can see very well again. It’s amazing how you can get used to squinting through a cataract. And then when it’s removed, well, it’s just wonderful how one’s vision is suddenly perfectly clear.

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