TGIF: Hello From Ibiza & My Rambling Thoughts #4

A few days later than promised ....

View from our hotel balcony

I promised I would write on a Friday no matter where I was.

Never believe me when I promise that.

In all honesty I’ve had plenty of time to write while I’ve been in Ibiza but I get well and truly lost in my thoughts on holiday. This time it’s been good to be away and not have too much to worry about. I’ve thought a lot about my brother. He took his own life in November 2022 and he’s never far from my thoughts. Holidays are always when I think about him even when he was alive as I have so many great memories of when we holidayed when all our kids were young. Happy times.

The waves are crashing against the shore as I’m sat here writing this. I love the sound especially as a storm seems to be brewing. It’s such a powerful sound. Weather not so great here today and it seems a lot of the Med is similar, too. We decided we don’t actually mind. As we’ve grown older it seems the weather is much less important to us.

What matters is that we are here together.

While I’m writing here Mr B is on the day bed on our balcony reading Bob Mortimer’s autobiography and chuckling away to himself. He keeps trying to recount bits to me but I hate that. Let me read it myself .. eyes rolling.

I’ve dreamed while here of a book plot. It’s about vampires that prey on holiday makers on the Mediterranean.

Across the tiny bay from our hotel there’s a small pine tree grove and I imagined the head honcho vampires meeting there under the waning moonlight to discuss all matters blood sucking post Covid. I’ve loosely laid out a story line in my head.

Yep, like I said lost in my thoughts. How am I even thinking about vampires? He said he’ll never understand the things I think about. I said it’s what makes me fascinating to be with .. ha ha!

What else has have I been thinking about along with the vampire story?

For starters, Helen Mirren’s latest red carpet look with her fabulous blue hair. She could easily be the vampire boss in my story, what d’you think?

The Sports Illustrated Martha Stewart cover is still causing a stir. The article I’ve linked from The Guardian written by Nancy Jo Sales packs so much in about how hot are older women?

“We’re hot because we’ve lived some life, and it shows on our faces. And it wasn’t until we got to be old, when that other kind of hotness went away, that we finally got to see that we’re hot for who we are, not how we look.”

I actually got my 80 year old mum to model for me recently. I featured her on the homepage of my Shout Louder t-shirt shop. I think she looks great and she is a proud flag flyer of ‘Not Past My Expiry Date.’ Eat your heart out Sports Illustrated … well … with more clothes on that is.

I’ve also been powering through Unwell Women while I’ve been here. I’ve had it a while but I can only read small amounts in one sitting. It’s the only way I can really get to grips with the subject matter. I think I might write a review as it’s such a powerful and jaw dropping read about how much women have been let down medically forever.

As I am now 60 since I posted last week, articles about dementia always catch my attention. We lost my father in law to this ugly disease. I also lost a grandma to it although they called it ‘old age’ back then.

We are all living longer with scientific advances and I think it’s up to us to learn more about what we can do to help ourselves. Gut health is a topic that comes up time and time again. It’s not for nothing that there’s that famous quote … ‘You Are What You Eat’. I’ll be the first to admit need to start thinking seriously about this. I don’t smoke and drink very little alcohol but I need to think more about what I eat.

Talking about my birthday … here’s me with my birthday balloons.

I had such a happy 60th birthday weekend surrounded by the people that are most important to me. And now I’m in Ibiza with my favourite person. Life doesn’t get much better than this.

Ciao for now x