It startles me to think that next year I am going to complete my 60th year on Planet Earth. Absolutely mind-boggling. And I remember a while ago, I was thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be FUN to do sixty new things before I reach sixty?’ but I think that was when I was 58 and I convinced myself that I shouldn’t start this sixty before sixty thing whilst there was more than a year to go, as it would a) be tantamount to cheating and b) defeat the object of the challenge. And so I didn’t give the idea much more thought, other stuff getting in the way and occupying my mind. This evening, I thought about it again. The thought was triggered by watching Sarah Hadland on ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ talking about women of a certain age being very good at telling themselves they couldn’t do something when, in fact, they jolly well could if they tried. And although Sarah is six years younger than me, I thought, ‘She’s right. Women of a certain age are often left to moulder on the scrap heap once they lose
Emboldened by my triumphant tidy up and turf out in the laundry, I decided yesterday to tackle the woodshed in the same ruthless and gimlet-eyed manner. Actually, the woodshed is the only space at Damson Cottage that I haven’t fully cleared out since we moved here, and it was full of tat even then, with stuff left behind by the previous owners. And ever since then, it’s become, basically, a dumping space for stuff that needs a home but not necessarily a dry, warm and hospitable one. Whenever I’ve needed to store deliveries of logs, or the barbecue, or potentially useful cardboard boxes, I’ve had to shove everything just inside the door further back to make space, preferably without having to enter the shed on account of it being full of spiders, snails, dust, cobwebs, unidentified objects and, for all I know, the dried and shrivelled remains of a 13th century hermit. The woodshed does, after all, give off a cave-like vibe. But the point had arrived where I could push the shed’s conte