Birthday memories defined by mumps, stitches, and family

Happy birthday. I’d been saving for your education, but decided this would be a better time (a fair assumption given I kept skipping final exams to take summer jobs on newspapers). No Pollyanna, my mother was all realist.

40 years ago I had another baby

When she was three I watched from a viewing platform as she leapt into the deep end of a pool during a swimming lesson. She came up coughing and blubbing and ready to jump again.

It was a metaphor for her life as she makes a difference in this world in ways I can barely comprehend.

The best looking guy in town

Driving home along the lake with my friends Di and Cath. It’s 7 a.m. or so and we’ve been at an all-night beach party.
A car passes in the other direction.
That was my Dad! I shriek.

A laywoman’s guide to shaving

Should you find yourself in charge of a never-before- performed activity, herewith, on the job learning under the tutelage of a nervous Mr WI64. A guide to how shave a man.

Where do we come from: have you taken the test?

Thanks to our flat screen TV and Apple TV box, we have discovered there is life beyond Netflix and Acorn. There is YouTube. Good old, ordinary YouTube provides regular access to our latest indulgence: ancestral searches of the somewhat famous. We discovered the UK version of Who Do You Think You Are by accident (try…

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A year of When I’m 64

It’s my birthday tomorrow, which means two things:

1. It’s been exactly one year since I awoke thinking holy smoke, it’s now or never to put that domain name I bought when I was 62 to work.
1. The name of this blog has now passed from reality to wistful and symbolic. Oh, well.