Today I went to the doctors to have my booster vaccination, which means I am now covered for travelling to all those places again for another 25 years. Which if I am still gallivanting around the world at the age of 90, I think it will be a small miracle, but you never can tell what life is going to put your way. I have been very mindful of the fact that the anniversary of my departure was coming up, and reflecting quite a lot on the past few months and the space I find myself in. I realised that I have missed blogging quite a lot and out for dinner with friends last night talking about my plans, my hopes for future travels and what I am up to at the moment, it was suggested to me that I should be blogging again. So here goes.
It’s been a funny old time I have to say, I arrived home, and everyone was pleased to see me. I had already planned a couple of trips, one to the Liverpool and Lytham St Annes and the second to Newcastle and Scotland. In amongst all that frantic activity my eldest son was preparing to move into his first owned property, with his lovely girlfriend. There was lots of decorating and I taught him how to wallpaper. He managed to do half of his hallway alone, after an afternoon working with me on the other half of the hallway. It was not an easy space to wallpaper, especially as a first wallpapering job. They then had a new kitchen and bathroom installed so I was on hand for a bit of advice and guidance, and I did some curtain alterations together with some blackout curtains. It was all a bit frantic because they were expecting an addition to their family, in the form of a mini Dachshund, named Arlo. Now everyone who knows me knows I am not a dog person, but as I know I have mentioned previously I met a lot of dogs on my travels, the result of which I finally have come to appreciate them a little more. Needless to say, I fell in love with Arlo almost immediately and when he comes to visit me his little tail wags immediately, so I guess he likes me too.
Their little family was getting settled, and it was time for me to get on with some work. I have to admit here after all the good work I did exercising and eating well whilst I was on my travels, all the gadding about and meeting up with friends, eating and drinking, really took its toll, and I found the big roll around my midriff reappearing with a vengeance. Deep joy.
My husband and I were off to France for the month of June, I suppose that kept me quite buoyed up, I was looking forward to it enormously. The holiday was a complete disaster for so many reasons, it was literally so bad that after 5 days there we knew we had to think about coming home. We booked a flight home two weeks early, it was the best decision and such a relief to get home. Thank goodness that hadn’t happened whilst I was on my adventure is all I can say.
I had made great progress in writing my story and had started thinking about how to publish it on the web site, when I was reminded that that wasn’t my highest priority if I wanted to get Mentors for Women up and running.
I changed tack and started to work on slide sets and business plans etc., it was really at this point that I started to feel the impact of no longer being employed. All the excitement of my journey and the subsequent travels had meant it didn’t really hit me until I had been home for about three months. Before I went away last year I had started a new exercise class called Barrecore, it’s a combination of Ballet, Yoga and Pilates. They had a challenge on when I got back from France to attend 25 times in a period of six weeks.
I thought this will be perfect to get me going again and try to remove that midriff bulge as we used to call it many years ago. I attended four sessions in a week and was really loving it but then disaster struck, I fell down the stairs, yes fell down the stairs. I really hurt my back.
The next two months I was in pretty much a state of despair, the pain moving from one place to another, every day I felt a little better, but it was a long hard road to recovery. I have to say I became very depressed, I tried to exercise a bit, but started to comfort eat and drink too much wine………………………………. Which of course meant I put even more weight on and in turn became even more depressed. I did make a bit of progress on plans. But when even sitting in a chair is painful it becomes a very tedious process to get anything done.
Another friend of mine came to visit, and we were chatting about this and that. One of the things that I was fed up about was I had always planned to move to the south coast when I finished working 9-5, but the property market has been so depressed that selling the house has been a problem.
I was trying to come to terms with staying put for another year, but I wanted to do some new things and its difficult where I live to find anything exciting/interesting to do. My friend was an absolute star, she found me a therapist nearby to help sort my back out, and she found a community choir I could join, which is run by the Royal Opera House. I also decided it was time it take my weight in hand and made a decision to join Slimming World and again a young friend of mine inspired me to join, as she has been logging her Slimming World journey on Instagram and has transformed herself. I was not sleeping well at all, and I decided to go to the health food shop for something to help me to sleep and something to help lift the depression. After four weeks I can report that three sessions of Bowen Therapy have made me virtually pain free.
I have gone back to my Barrecore class and also done a couple of sessions of Yoga there. I am on my second week of slimming world. I lost four pounds in my first week. I have been on my bike this week for the first time in months, and although it wasn’t easy it was a start. I am aiming to do some form of exercise every day… well maybe every other day. Of course, you can count digging the garden as well as exercise, and I have been doing a bit of that too.
I went for my taster session with the choir and really enjoyed it, although it’s very scary because I can’t read music and it’s all operatic choruses in different languages and you have to learn it off by heart for the performances. Eek. I decided to take a leap of faith and to go for it.
Yesterday I was up early and at my desk by 9, I worked on business plans and research all day and then went into London and did my first full Barrecore class, not a light one, without collapsing into a heap and then out to dinner with friends eating within the limits of my diet and drinking only one and a half glasses of wine. I felt on top of the world, and the last time I felt like this was when I was travelling. Long may it continue.
