Dear LPG,

I wonder if I am alone with this thought. 

I have been retired for about fifteen years now but occasionally I think back to what my life was like when I worked my nine-to-five day.  When young we feel that our commitment to work is necessary if we want to be able to buy all the important things in life. Being a young girl, that meant shoes, clothes, makeup and all the accessories needed to be uniquely the same as all the other girls of my age that I knew.

I spent hours in the right shops kitting myself out so that I would look good when I was out with the girls in the evenings.  We all thought that the main aim of all that effort was to enjoy ourselves properly after a hard day’s work, but ultimately our subliminal goal was to find the perfect husband if we are honest about it.   I wonder if there are any ladies out there who watched as their friends got married one by one and wondered if it would ever happen for them.

Once we had accomplished that, the children quickly followed and they became the centre of our worlds.  All that clothes shopping suddenly became focussed on buying for them, while being there for school parents’ evenings, picking them up and delivering them to and from various clubs, extracurricular lessons and sports activities and the many trips to the doctor and dentist, became the priority while making sure that their homework was done.

Then we spent the time worrying about them, while they were out until the early hours of the morning, and I am betting that like me there were nights when you never slept for worry wondering if they were all right (I am talking about a time when they didn’t all have their own mobile phone). 

After that, marriage takes them off your hands and you can see retirement on the horizon.  So, you either wonder what you are going to do with all that spare time, or your plans for all the things that you are going to be able to do once you don’t have to get up for work every weekday, becomes your main focus.

It often does not take long for you to resurrect all those things that you have been promising yourself that you would do once work does not interrupt your life anymore and, before you know it, your life is as hectic as it ever was, and you wonder where you ever got the time to live it and work at the same time.

I have to say that I thought that Lock-down would have slowed it all down, and it did for some of us, but for others, after the initial shock that came with the changes to our daily routines, we remembered the state of our neglected houses and spent our time sorting out and looking through all that stuff that gets relegated to boxes in the attic or the back garden shed.

I can only speak from a woman’s point of view, although I have watched my husband live a life which can only be described as the male variation on the same theme.

So, I have concluded that life is like a lady’s handbag: always full.  Somehow we feel the need to keep it absolutely chock-a-block with all those little essentials and, I don’t know why but whenever we feel the need to discard one of its regular dwellers, it never takes long before something slips in there to replace it. 

Perhaps that is why man bags, backpacks, rucksacks and bum bags are becoming more fashionable for men as well as us women.

BC, Lewisham