How it all began

I was brought to this blog by a series of unfortunate – and fortunate – events.  I suppose it all started with this continued and aggravating position of singledom – more of that later – made worse by the fact that I had to come on holiday alone as the friend I was meant to be coming away with fell pregnant and was worried she might feel sick.  Maybe I’ve just been self-sufficient for too long, but I didn’t really understand it....still, no arguing when somebody has that ace up their sleeve.  So, I came away alone, to stay in my parents’ static caravan in Dorset, on the Jurassic Coast.  I started by feeling a little sorry for myself – not only unmarried and not pregnant myself but dumped by a friend who has it all!  Well, the self-pity didn’t last too long (it’s very boring) and was helped on its way by a lunch with a family friend I hadn’t seen for nearly 20 years.  A more thoughtful, kind, humorous individual you could hardly hope to meet, who had plenty of gentle advice, the most potent being ‘do what you want to do’.  Sounds almost trite written down, and I’ve probably heard it – and intoned it silently – a hundred times, but for some reason the way she said it, it suddenly made sense.  What do I want to do?  I’ve been subsumed so many times by men and what they want to do – and what they want you to do – as well as posturing in order to impress or convince, that I’ve almost lost sight of some of the things that really please me.  One of those is visiting National Trust properties.  Always interesting, great to go to on your own and offering some perspective in a world awash with riots, recession and (lack of) respect.  I’m so tired of wasting time and money on dull dates in the hope of finding a husband I’m not even sure I want, that when the idea of visiting all these wonderful properties – in the space of a year – occurred to me it seemed like a stroke of genius.  I would please myself, and I wouldn’t worry about the fact that it was in a rather middle-aged way!

The blog title emerged from my first visit, to Lawrence of Arabia’s Dorset hideaway Clouds Hill, and means ‘Why worry?’  How apt!