Hello 👋🏼 friends!

I’m away from home at the 60th birthday party of one of J’s college friends so please excuse any basicness or shonky formatting.

And so it begins. 60. When I was a teenager, Joan Collins et al looking “fabulous at 40” was a cliche but 40 still seemed old. Now I’m staring 60 down and none of us feels old, my friends, I mean. (Personally I still feel about 27.) We are all pretty fit and pretty well turned out. Here I think I need to check my enormous privilege of access to good, fresh food and the ability, space and time in which to cook it, which is not by any means available to all, but should be.

Visiting my GP on Monday, though, I had a longstanding fear confirmed: I have arthritic thumbs. I started losing my grip a year or so ago (literally, not figuratively, though some might disagree) and suddenly realised the value of those specially-designed kitchen utensils that I’d always previously scoffed at. My wrists were painful then but that pain largely disappeared when I began my HRT estrogen treatment.

Then came the intermittent pain at the base of my thumb joints, worse on the left hand. My doctor assured me that this is just normal wear and tear but I can’t help wondering if it’s partly due to my avid posting and messaging on social media, especially a few years ago when it was all new and fun. The doctor has advised me to try and protect my thumbs from cold and to use wrist supports and ibuprofen gel if necessary. These had to be added to my packing list for this party. I realise that I’m doing that old person thing of going on about my ailments. I’ll stop that now.

Bye-bye Threads

I turned my back on the Threads platform this week. I’d been considering doing it for a while because the whole vibe there was starting to irritate, enrage, me. I don’t have much sympathy for the “echo chamber” argument used by right wing people when people migrate to a nicer space than Twitter or Threads and then curate their timelines for the sake of their peace. I think everyone has a right to do that.

I tend to block people who tell me that I’m awful because I don’t believe in Jesus; or people who pick on a tiny, vulnerable minority because they themselves don’t want to open their minds. And besides, we are subjected to an echo chamber in our lives outside social media by people parroting the same inflammatory, discriminatory and lazy hatred from tabloid press and, indeed other media that deludes itself that it’s more respectable. I don’t like being told what to think.

My Threads timeline was becoming a more left-wing bubble. Nothing inherently wrong with that but too many people had the tribal mindset of “If you’re not with us, you’re against us,” and this militates against civil discussion if you’re of a liberal, Liberal, disposition like me. I was really fed up with all the tribal spite and mudslinging on there.

I know that many people have beef with the LibDems, and I understand that but they don’t seem to hold other parties to the same standards. I wasn’t even a party member in 2015.

We are a broad church and our members face both right and left. We are currently in opposition so we will oppose stuff because that’s our job. With this majority Labour will pass what it wants anyway, it doesn’t do any harm to subject the government to scrutiny. We target centrists for our political message but they currently come from disenchanted conservatives and therefore our messaging is set to appeal to them. It can be difficult to stomach for some of us - indeed there are things with which many of us strongly disagree - but we cannot do anything if we have no power. I could go on, and no doubt I will but not now.

Party

We have spent the weekend in a small town east of Nottingham. Gary’s birthday party was a great chance to reconnect lapsed friendships. Nobody has really changed though life’s different opportunities and circumstances have taken us all in different directions from the huddle of college friends (His. I’m a honorary) that used to meet in Leicester Square for a meal and a film and a group hug in the early ‘90s.

Some of us are now struggling with the demands of elderly parents, grown up children, changed circumstances. There are several long marriages and a few new relationships. There are friends who painfully drifted apart and never really knew what happened, and there are those who have reconnected after decades, now vowing never to lose touch again. At our age, we are thankful to still be around and life is just too short to be mindful of the hurtful “You and I,” as my mum would have called them. We all behaved nicely, nobody drank very much, nobody stomped. It was lovely. Will any of us actually make room in our busy lives for re-found friends? That remains to be seen.

Works for me

Finally, I have fallen in love with these https://frame-store.com/en-gb/products/jetset-crop-mini-boot-leo leopard print jeans from Frame, one of my hero brands this year. I have worn them for almost the whole week since they were delivered. They are slinky and also comfortable.