Mad Darby Diaries

 I am now  on Substack, mad darby diaries.

A Sting in the Tale In 2009 I decided to sell my  house in Les Rosiers sur Loire and move on to pastures new. ‘What’s that?’  The Estate Agent asked.  He was pointing at a wooden door, a foot square set in the wall of one of the five caves under my house. (and no, I didn't keep wine in all of them).  I opened it and out flew ‘things’.  I wasn’t sure if it was spores or insects but I brushed them away and closed it. Later that evening I was trying to read but my face was itching, just under my left eye.   I rubbed it, and kept rubbing it.   (Lesson number one – don’t!) The next morning I glanced in the mirror.   Quasimodo stared back. Big swollen bags were hanging down my face.   My nose had doubled in size and there were angry, red sores below and beside my left eye.     I looked in the magnified mirror and confirmed it – I was hideous.   I remembered the door and my itchy eye and was convinced that I had been st...

 Once you have children you lose your identity, suddenly becoming, 'this is my mum' then 'this is my grandma.'  He hum I cough politely and smiling I hold out my hand, 'Hi I am Sue.'  'Oh yeah,' my offspring mutter, as though surprised that I exist in some other form, or  ever dared to have another form before becoming their mother/grandma.  The other day a man approached with a lady by his side and said, 'Hi Sue, this is my wife,' leaving me to ask her what her name was, on the assumption that it wasn't 'wife'. Vaguely on the same subject, Trump, while giving evidence in one of his numerous investigations against him, confused the woman he sexually abused with his first wife, and last week he thought Nicky Haley, who is running against him in the Republican party, with Nancy  Pelosi, the former speaker of the House.   Nicky  is 52 and Nancy is in her 80s  but then I suppose all women over the age of 25 look the same to him.   ...