Dodo Au Go-Go

The older I become, the more ambivalent I get about celebrating my birthday.  No, it's not necessarily the increasing number - though that's an obvious part of it. It's also confronting all the lofty, unarticulated and half-subconscious expectations about the achievements I thought I would have trailing sunnily in my wake by now. You know - the enviable success in a globe-trotting career making meaningful contributions to the world around me, the regular holiday retreats to amazing parts of the world, the holiday home in the country with the pool and stables and vineyard... Yes, I exaggerate, but I'm sure you know what I mean. Birthdays have become a day for me to confront unmet ideas, ideals and expectations between what is, what has been, what could have been and what should have been... Ambitions which got snuffed or dialled down dramatically, the disquiet of the mismatch between the age you feel on the inside and how life is being etched onto your face... There'...

I'm not a coffee drinker. I can't even stand the smell of it. I'm a tea gal all the way.  It's a multiple-cups-a-day habit. So, while I can pretend to get all virtuous and smug about being a non-coffee person, really, my crippling dependency on tea can pretty much match the coffee addict cup for cup. So you can imagine how I felt on 22 December 2021 - my last day of work in 2021 - when I got to work and realised I only had one tea bag left in my work stash. One tea bag. To last a whole work day. I used the tea bag, enjoyed it, and then rifled all my desk drawers trying to see if I had any other emergency tea supplies. Anything at all. I found 3 Chai teabags and grimaced. I ignored the half-dozen Chamomiles. There was one single Russian Caravan which isn't my cup of tea at all, and I held it in my clenched fist fretfully, doubtfully until...  The angels sang and I saw my lovely, large orange tin. The one I'd taken to and from work a few times while moving house a...