PRESENT DAY SNIPPET: JUNE GETAWAY

It's my 38th birthday – or can I just pretend I'm 25?

Anita Bhagwandas

wrote a piece, and I still get replies to my comments about the fact that I have not yet tried Botox or done anything to my face, but the pressure to look young is immense as I approach forty. One person in the replies says her aunt (or some relation) always said she was ten years older than she was, so that instead of thinking, “Oh, you look old for x age,” they thought she looked brilliant. I may try that in future.

I’m 38 today! Approaching the big 4-0. I hope I come up with some brilliant plans to celebrate. Mum and I have been talking about what we will do next March to celebrate when Grammy turns the big 9-0.

When I was living in Germany and teaching on a US military base, I was turning 27 or 28 and joked I was having my 21st birthday with my students. One student who never took a liking to me later slated me in the professor review with how ‘young’ I was – and thus, in his eyes, unqualified or whatever. Obviously, from that comment alone, I could tell who’d written it. A couple of students had jokingly bought me cards with ‘Happy 21st’ on it. It would have been logistically impossible for me to be teaching a class with a master’s degree and be only 21.

Little trips

In May, Michael and I had a few day trips away and in this week in June we were meant to be spending my birthday with Aunty Sheena, my late father’s eldest sister, and her husband, Nick, in Maldon, Essex, but because of circumstances, she’s looking after her cousin in Brighton so we stayed with Nick a couple of fun days this week but came home early.

This time last year, Michael, Grammy, and I were in Madeira. But we haven’t been able to afford an abroad holiday since (tiny violins and all that). I also cried at breakfast, it being the first birthday without my Daddy, who always made a big deal of our birthdays.

Time has a way of moving forward at least. There are still times I’m stabbed with grief at not being able to see him, hug him. He was such a loving Father, and I’ll be forever grateful I had him, even if it wasn’t for long enough.

I’m having a birthday lunch at an Italian restaurant in Milnrow with my cousin Pam and her family; my niece, Caroline; my Grammy; and my husband, Michael, so all in all it works out. Plus, I got to wake up to cuddles from the cat who has very much missed us whilst we have been away but who has been well cared for by my mother-in-law and sister, Jae, and brother-in-law, Rob.

I came home also to a card from baby sister, Hannah. The first she’s ever sent me, and she said it’s only taken her 22 years to send me a card. It was a cute and sentimental one as well, which was kind.

I also got something nice in the post from Grammy and woke up to some presents from my husband – a little Lego typewriter I wanted and a lovely new murder mystery book that we looked at when we were in Cambridge for the day. And this is all for someone who doesn’t usually want or ask for presents, as I try to be more minimalist (sometimes unsuccessfully).

Visiting Saffron Walden

We spent a few nights seeing my Great-Aunties on my late Grandfather’s side of the family in Saffron Walden, which is a charming medieval town that most people haven’t heard of but apparently was voted one of the best places to live. My Great Aunty Gill said that Jojo Moyes lived locally, too, which is quite exciting and also unsurprising as most of the houses there are massive and very expensive – a very tiny terrace cottage with maybe two bedrooms was going for about £800k. Ouch!

I’m lucky that I have such a big family network. We stayed with my Great Aunty Gillian, who was my late Grandfather’s brother’s wife. Unfortunately, Great Uncle Geoffrey, who was a professor and botanist in Cambridge (but not at Cambridge), preceded my Grandfather Mike in death by several years (maybe decades), but I have very fond memories of what a lovely, kind, and soft-spoken man he was.

Cambridge reminds me both of Captain Cambridge (who attended King’s College) and of the lovely Grantchester TV show.

We also saw Great Aunty Pauline, who was my Grandfather’s sister, and only surviving sibling, and we saw her children (my mother’s cousins), Patrick and Rachel.

I haven’t seen the cousins since I was a child, but I always recall how magical visiting that side of the family was.

Great Aunty Gill has a massive countryside ‘cottage’ and I remember big family meals when my Great Grandmother Eva was alive (including venison), a deer park, a massive magical garden, and even a spiral staircase up to an attic bedroom with a telescope to look at the stars.

Even in my late thirties, visiting that house is still magical.

Lovely views to wake up to; sherry on the balcony; an alfresco meal

I love the way my Great-Aunties do everything. They are posh and formal but also lovely and kind – and quite relaxed and unimposing. It’s a balance I aspire to! Heh!

When Great Aunty Pauline invited us over for lunch, she served the lunch from little dishes with covers in a warming cart and on china plates. The food was delicious and we even had a sort of Eton mess for pudding.

Great Aunty Gill puts out all the breakfast things in bowls and on trays, and we have cloth napkins with that too. Everything is always served in the appropriate dishes using the appropriate utensils. She even has a contraption that cracks the top off the dippy egg for you.

All of the cousins on this side of the family (they are my Mum’s cousins) have done very well, and most have their PhDs and hold high positions, including a diplomat for the UN (specialist in meteorology) whose wife received an OBE from the King; a world expert in crop spray drift who has houses all over and travels the world regularly; a former rugby player and horsewoman; and a former banker. But I suppose with people who are happy with their status and position, they have nothing to prove and are thus genial and lovely.

My lovely Great Aunties, who are both around 86.

Some photos

Here’s a bit of a photo dump of this week. I still need to teach my husband to take better photos and learn to pose me for the best angles.

Maya Misikir

and I had a bit of a quip about it on Instagram.

Cambridge and punting! That was the best photo M got which isn't saying something as my hand is being weird but other angles were more unflattering. LOLs. Can't wait to visit Cambridge again.

Is it even a road trip if you don’t take a loo selfie? McDonald’s toilets, but we had too big of a breakfast for me to get anything other than a drink (no milkshakes available – universal problem) and a small McFlurry thingy, which aren’t very nice (disappointing).

Time with Aunty Sheena's husband, Nick. Enjoying a lovely cider that matched my top and at some kind of Aviation museum in Duxford. M was in his element watching old Spitfires take off. I thought, "Oh, we should let you do that." Reader: did you know that sort of thing doesn't cost about £250 which I thought it would cost and costs about £6,000 which is the cost luxury holiday for two people for a week! This is thirty minutes of flying.

Other Substacks I can’t miss out on

Last time, I said there were a few I always looked out for and read, but there are certainly those I missed last time. (Franco Amati, Dr Barbs Honeycutt,

Tacita B

,

Poorna Bell

,

Anita Bhagwandas

,

Katie Lee

,

Katherine Clements

,

Katie Delaney

,

Chris V

,

Emma Kriskinans

, etc – really so many!)

So many talented writers are out there on Substack, big audience or not, and I only wish I had more time to read everyone’s amazing work every week. I do try to read as many as I can. I know publications like mine aren’t always easy when they take ten, twenty-plus minutes to read.

• Charlotte | Baby Brain
  – Charlotte writes so charmingly about having children; I absolutely love it. If I were to be convinced to have children and that it can be loving and lovely, she would be the one to convert me.

• Stevie Martin
  – Check it out. Steve is just hilarious. Random and so funny.

• Delete This Later
  – No idea if these are true stories or just chaotic and funny fiction, but really, read a few!

• Thig
  – Great art and craft with funny stories to accompany the drawings.

• Wendy Varley
  – I would love Wendy to write a memoir because I just love being sucked back in time to the past when my Mum grew up. She has a charming post about diary entries from her mother when her children were growing up, and some of her own travel diaries, and they are all lovely. Wish I had time to dig into all of her archive.

• Ms. Writer
  – Lovely, short pieces on a variety of topics.

Happy reading and THANK YOU so much for subscribing and reading. It does mean the world to me.

Life lately: What’s happening with my novel?

I think I am on the third rewrite of my novel, and some chapters have been rewritten with the help of

Kristen Weber

’s brilliant feedback, even more than that, and things are shaping up to be much better. It’s all a learning process. What I had the first go-round was more like loosely connected short stories rather than a novel with what Kristen calls a ‘staircase’ where one chapter leads to the next.

I suppose now I know, it’s quite obvious. Some people probably know how to write a novel amazingly the first time, but I’m learning, and I’m grateful for the process. I think this will all give me a much better chance of landing an agent and a publisher if I learn how to do it right the first time.

After this novel, I hope to write the sequels as my (hopefully future) debut contained about three novels in one and work with Kristen on the other two books I’ve already written and go from there.

I’m willing to put in the work, and I realise that I’ve surprised myself with my resilience and how it hasn’t been that hard to hear the feedback. Kristen was kind and said that she loved reading what she read, but it just wasn’t all connected the right way.

Beta readers also said they’d enjoyed what they read. And some people may say, well, why didn’t you keep it that way? But I specifically want a traditional rom-com type book published by a Big 5, and Kirsten (who used to work for Penguin and Hachette – among my dream publishers) knows how that looks as she’s edited thousands of novels in her career. I need my book to fit the mould so that I can achieve my dream of getting it published.

I feel like I’m at the very beginning of my journey. It’s all long. Even when the novel is ready to pitch to agents, it takes time to get an agent. Then, once I have an agent, it takes time to get a publisher. Once I have a book deal, it’ll probably take at least two years before the book is published, but I suppose being on this path is better than the alternative (i.e. not having written anything and not trying), so stay tuned.

Next chapter upcoming!

I haven’t forgotten, and I’ll publish my next chapter next week.

I posted this goodbye to my cat on Instagram. It’s silly how much we miss him. Also, I had my eyebrows and nails done for the first time in months (months! yikes!). This is what happens when you work from home and barely see people. I got a full-on unibrow.