Middle aged contradictions you didn't see coming

[Photosymphysis]

We're on the way to a wedding, all dressed up, kids in the back, I've just pointed out the lovely wildflowers in the verge, and we're both rapping along to Dr Dre. (Clean version, of course, kids aren't old enough to hear the MFs just yet!)

I did not see that coming 20 years ago!

How about you?

I was wearing my new, totally hipster ( then) floaty dress whilst on a walk somewhere with my teen-ish children. I recall commenting to my husband how splendid the gunneras were. I then heard sniggers from my delightful loin-fruits.

Twas a bastard day.

Last night I was curled up on the sofa watching Gardeners' World, feeling sorry for myself as I've got Covid... which I caught at Download festival last weekend 🤷🏼‍♀️

That's awesome! (Not the covid) I've never been to download (or Reading fest), one day I will. (But I may stay in a hotel off site 😆🤘

Ah, I'm looking forward to the kids being a bit more aware of things like this (and being perpetually mortified!)

Loving that our 3 examples so far are all gardening related

We also do a good line in turning up to NT properties playing loud punk music. And then getting out looking respectable and confusing the gentry

Cooking Sunday dinner while screaming singing along to Skunkanansie - “Yes it’s fucking political, everything’s POLITICAAALL!”

Got up with a hangover this morning and went to a forest park to clear it.

20 years ago I was living in a very different country. It was the U.K., but a U.K. that had not yet been totally asset stripped for landlords and foreign companies, that still had some decent quality public services, that still offered the prospect of a decent living for people who worked. Education still paid. Still in the EU too, and I dreamed of moving there one day. Climate change was known to be on the march and there was hope of action - ha - and womens rights were getting somewhere.

So no, did not see this hell-hole coming yet, although being born poor I was already very well aware of inequality and the class system, even as Blair’s lot started screaming that we were all middle class now, and that therefore I and mine did not exist.

Blimey Skunkanasie were right!

Yesterday I was back at my old university from about 20 years ago watching the May Bumps at a garden party. First time in 20 years didn't have long hair (thanks chemo) and had one chopped off breast (cancer surgery) but frozen peas have saved half my hair and a straw hat covered things so I just looked like someone with a bob and uneven breasts.

Got back to one teenage son on sofa with rabbit and one DD was out with friends. With chemo tomorrow. But a lovely Maine Coon kitten as well, a boy cat for first time in my life, had 2 girl cats before. Boy cat is a lot sillier and eats much more.

Looking at the dresses my DS’s girlfriend wears and remembering how I had some like that at the same age. Except mine were shorter! Remembering I can’t tell DS that as he’d be horrified, I am Mum not Me-at-eighteen.
For me it was the point at which I realised that I have the car stereo I wanted at 17- loud, good speakers, and Bluetooth so I can get all my downloads (yes, I know this didn’t exist in the 90s but you get the idea). But now I’m too sensible to drive with hammering music…

Ive been watching Euphoria and then when I was a bit tipsy on Friday I was going on and on about how I love the 20s hip hop sound, playing DMX and getting told off by DH who said it was too loud. I then stayed in the garden once it got dark to watch the bats swoop around.

Sat in a queue of traffic to go into the horse trials at a local stately with a fellow middle aged pal in her sensible mum car when the music shuffle clicked into Bullet in the Head by Rage Against the Machine. And we both knew all the words.

I drive a sensible and far from new family car, which looks completely boring but has had a few modifications in the interests of -ahem -fuel economy. I take great joy in occasionally overtaking Audis complete with obnoxious music blaring Apparently I’m an embarrassment to the dcs.

Awesome! That's my kind of day! I'd like to be friends with you!

Currently listening to RATM on the way home from an open gardens day 😂

This is brilliant! I commend you!

I was a goth back in the day - I look in the mirror and think how did I become sensible ( including visiting NT places looking as my DH said like Kirsty Alsop. - not in a complimentary way🤣).
When did I look and act so ' grown up'! I wonder at how I manage to cook, wash clothes, have a career and have 3 kids! I still think I am 18!

We also often arrive at NT/heritage properties in a slightly muddy very much typical respectable farm vehicle but with rock/metal music. People are all the more amazed somehow because I'm disabled this seems to really jar with them, also DH is the picture of respectability (Dds and I would be a little more "alternative")