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Have We Gone Soft?
You might be delighted that to know that I have left my cage of self-pity and I am back in the land of brutally slamming (Kurt’s words) anyone that deserves a piece of my mind, which is why this week I put to you the question of whether you think that we’ve become a bit…
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Those Bloody Crises of Confidence Part 1
You may have sensed it in my writing of late, but I’m going through a bit of a crisis of confidence at the moment. I’ve tried to buoy myself up by trawling through all the memes on my Inspirational Shit board on Pinterest and drinking more wine than usual, but any writer will tell you…
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Royal Baby #3
I like to think that I am a good person, but fundamentally, I must be a bitch, (as well as a hypocrite if you look at my last post about women supporting women), because I can’t help feeling a tad jealous about the way Kate squeezed out another heir, seemingly without a perfectly-coiffed, soft-curled hair out…
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Communities Of Women Supporting Each Other
When I began to write this post, I was going to call it, We’ve Renamed Our Book Club The Menopause Club – something we joked about during our last meeting after our lengthy discussion of the narrative in Hardy’s Tess Of The D’Urbevilles, switched abruptly to mood swings. But as soon as I began to write…
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What To Watch Next? The Viewing Dilemma Faced By Every Middle-Aged Couple
As the final episode of series 3 of The Wire reached its conclusion last night (and if I’m honest, we were no clearer about what the fuck happened during its twelve episodes), the old man and I reached another crisis of epic proportions in our marriage. What to watch next? Because what to watch on…
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Stiffness In Middle Age
Sorry to mislead you with the clickbait of my title, but no, this isn’t a titillating article about the benefits of Viagra in middle age. It is, in fact, a piece on the more boring topic of stiff joints and aching muscles at this stage of our lives. Because it seems to me, that as one…
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Cooking For A Family Of Dietary Heathens
Anyone who is responsible for cooking the evening meal knows what a mindfuck it is. It takes a lot of preparation – you have to remember to defrost, to check you have all the ingredients and that there will be enough food to go around, and if you have kids like mine, one of the…
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Letting Go Of The Shit In Your Life
NC and her friends had a sisterhood meeting the other night. She and her tight band of millennial girlfriends, who have recently experienced a spate of more trials than tribulations in their journeys through young adulthood, decided they needed an intervention. After a rough few weeks of new jobs, new-people stresses, cockroach infestations, the cost…
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In The End, We’re All Just Human Beans
I had my second day-surgery last week; a procedure called an Endometrial Ablation, and the medical profession’s latest attempt to stop my uterus from going all Tarantino on me each month. For any of you middle-aged women out there still suffering a Red Wedding-style of monthly – I’ll let you know if it works. In the…
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The Awkward-Scale For Teenage Boys When Shopping With Mom
I went shopping with my teenage son yesterday, whereupon he bestowed upon me one of the greatest honors of my parenting life when he told me that I was (and I quote) ‘a nightmare to be seen in public with.’ ‘Oh, and these ten packs of condoms and tube of lube for my son over…
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What Happened To The Fearlessness Of My Youth?
It is no secret that anxiety can be linked to menopause, and for some women, the condition can be so bad, it forces them to turn to anti-depressants to get through it. According to Medical News Today: ‘Hormone changes, life stresses, sleep problems, worries about body image, infertility, boring marriages and aging are all factors…
LOUISA SIMMONDS 