No that’s not me in the pic. I would like it to be. It sums up my view of how we should look at life: Up high, preferably from a bike seat, with our eyes always on the next exciting challenge. (With a load of nasty looking grey clouds and sharp pointy rocks to fight through on the way.)

Though I am not convinced about that photo. How did they get famous stunt cyclist Danny MacAskill (My hero. Met him once. He was too busy to chat…) up there, really, how?

Helicopter? Or via photoshop.

My mind wanders as you can see. This is where I am supposed to be writing about where I live and what I do * and how I love being a Mom (sic) because my sunkissed days are so blessed and I spend my days making jam – whoops! Watch out for those sticky little fingers on your new white linen dress but here is a great new product to lift stains that makes my whole home so fresh and hygienic …. (I have been googling other mum blogs and this is the basic gist of many of them).

But I can’t do that because life is really, really difficult for everyone much of the time (see All Coping Posts for emergencies) and as an Old Mum (I had my boy when I was 43) I felt out of sync for ages in my new and bewildering world of Young Mums. I’ve written a lot about the early days on here, got many things wrong but some right: see Boasty Old Mum but really just blundered along, trying to make sense of everything.

I began this blog when my boy was 2. I wrote loads but never pressed the ‘make public’ button so can only assume it served its purpose simply as therapy for me at the time. Now he is 10 and no longer the entire focus of my life (his choice), Old Mum can turn her attention to new pursuits and impart the great wisdom she feels sure she must have in the hope of helping others while possibly being a Bit of a Bossy Know it All, which she enjoys very much.

It cheers me up to think of people reading my stuff. I imagine them slapping their thighs in glee as they read with a hearty: “Hurrah!” or “Yee hah”, depending on which part of the world they’re in. “Nastrovia! I feel zis way too!” (That is Eastern Europe). Or: “Doggone it, the Broad speaks my kinda language”. (That is American).

I hope in these less affluent times (its not an economic crisis. We still have loads of money compared to people in the Forties. No, I do not speak from direct experience of the Forties), that my Mean Old Mum posts will appeal and since I have been around so long you might find a few hints to help you through one of those days where you would like to throw your child (or dog) on the compost heap and run to the nearest pub.

And if you are at the magical time of the Menopause where every day brings a new unfathomable misery to your mind and body, Old Mum Menopause might just save you some time in terms of getting help from the doctor (good luck with that).

Mostly though it’s so that the Guardian (or anyone actually) will see armies of Old Mums logging on to this site and beg me to write them a column for a lot of money. And then Random House will send a crate of Dom Perignon and their most handsome director to thrust a book deal at me where all I have to do is mash all these blog posts together with some REALLY GREAT BOOK PITCHES I HAVE so I never have to do proper work again.

It’s also to stop me going insane.

* (I live in the North of the UK, work for charities and have had a very interesting life: I sang in a Goth band, canoed through central America, wrote for many national newspapers and magazines (Daily Star through to Take a Break) and then zoomed round the world as a travel editor before getting slapped in the face with an eco conscience and doing penance by working on organic farms in Oz and NZ and some wild scottish islands for a few years. The tabloids gave way to the green sections of the kind of papers you are happy to say you work for when asked at a party. (This is one of many I wrote for The Independent). And my day job was trying to solve all of society’s problems with one simple idea. Getting children to cycle to school….

I worked with hundreds of them (children), all over England. I rode with them, taught them, roared with laughter with them, began to understand them and led swathes of them cycling across city centres dressed as Vikings. I began to realise that I really wanted one of my own. That perhaps while striving for an extraordinary life I’d missed the signposts to an even bigger adventure still to come…)

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