Today’s post brought my annual statement for my endowment policy. It makes for depressing reading – thank heaven we no longer count on it to pay off the mortgage. A quick mental calculation this morning suggests that I have just about as much in there as I have paid in. I would have done better to pay my money into the Post Office each month – or, as Mr L said, have stuffed it under the mattress.
At least it grows, albeit slowly, and does not diminish. The balance increments by 2 or 3 digits every year I think. We can be thankful for the smallest of mercies.
It was a reminder however that it is the anniversary of my going solo, sixteen years ago. How times have changed. I bought myself a little one bedroom attic flat on the quayside in Leeds and lived alone with .Gif, with no view from the windows except of the sky… and saw nobody for weeks on end – apart from at work.I worked every hour that I could, rather than be all alone in my two room eyrie. Even so, I was far happier being alone than I had been when I was lonely in what was supposed to have been a marriage.
It is funny – if you could put a snapshot of that time alongside a current one, I doubt that anybody could figure out how I made the transition from that life to this one. I’m not sure that even I could – what a series of happy accidents! Little steps along the way to the happiest of futures that I really could not have envisaged all that time ago.
The knitting is making the smallest of increments too. Like none, today.
I have been in the kitchen, contributing to our Saturday Curry. Mr L made Keema with peas and I produced some freshly made naan bread and a dish of Bombay Potatoes. Lovely.
No photos taken today. I’ll cheat if you don’t mind – and show you .Gif in our wee home in the sky (sorry about the poor scans). Added bonus – me, way back then
I think that wee cat probably saved my life or sanity – probably both.
And a rather horrible quality ancient jpg of yours truly. When I was wee, too. See – how trim!
Look at that happy smile – you’d never guess I’d just taken on a my very own mortgage, would you? Just think – only nine years to go now… and we are counting every day, I can tell you!
Oh, those earrings – I wish I still had them! They were gorgeous – enamel on silver, in the form of Fuchias – with dangly stamens. I bought them for my twin sister, for her 40th birthday but decided that they were far too nice to give to her… I think I left them behind in a bedroom at Newcastle Uni when I was away on a Netskills course, learning HTML 1.0Â 🙂