Half a century. Not out!

I’m 50 this week. When I was 40 I was scared about being old and anxious about the milestone. Now that I’m 50, I’m delighted to still be here. To have survived leukaemia this decade, and to have the amazing privilege of being alive is something worth celebrating.

I don’t want to write clichés about living every day as it comes – we’ve heard all those before and quite often I find them a bit panicky.

“Enjoy every minute?" 

"No thanks. Some of the minutes have been bone marrow biopsies or bad spray tans, and those minutes are utterly horrendous and best forgotten as quickly as possible."

“Yes Debs, but you’re writing about them to the mailing list!”

"Yes love, but that’s to exorcise the horror. You try to enjoy walking out of a salon San Tropez'd up, 35 quid down and into a rainstorm without an umbrella and see what it does to your legs*. Or you try shaking with laughter without wanting to die when you realise you’ve just told a junior doctor to shove whatever he’s got into the top of your arse. When what you meant was shove whatever anaesthetic you’ve got in sunshine because I want extra helpings of drugs to make drilling into a bone not hurt.”

“Enjoy every minute?” Ha! Some of them are bloody awful and that’s OK.

I’m getting distracted. What I really came here to say was that in the next decade I want to explore the world, embrace the good minutes, attempt to forget the bad ones and crack on with my beautiful family regardless of everything that life throws at us. Thanks as always for being such great customers and friends.

Lots of love to all!
X Deb

*The spray tan happened a while back. I haven’t got streaky legs now. Please don’t look at my legs to check.

Also the Summer Sale’s on. There, that’ll do for marketing, won’t it?