And so, just like that, we have sold our house. 

Of course, it wasn't 'just like that' at all. There were tears, tantrums, endless trips to Wickes and visits to friends, and much late night tidying and sorting and painting. 

But the photographer came (and was here for hours, and made our home look beautiful), and the next day we had a for sale sign in the garden (after a brief period of it being in someone else's garden, which must have been quite alarming for them). 

Over the next week we had sixteen viewings, three offers (and several counter offers, and retracted offers, and increased counter offers), and eventually we said yes. And of course, as soon as we did, someone jumped back in with a higher price. We said no - we're retaining some shred of sanity by acting as much as we can with good manners and integrity. 

It's a strange thing, having people wander round your house. I thought I'd feel judged, but by the time it went up for sale, it really didn't feel like our house any more. We've made so many changes (and I will share some of them), and packed away so many things, that it feels more like a holiday cottage. 

On the first day of viewings the sun shone obligingly, and even I couldn't quite believe how well the house looked. The third person to view went straight to the estate agents and offered, and it was her offer we accepted in the end (after much to-ing and fro-ing between us and with other people - I've never had so many phone calls in my life).

Of course, nothing is ever straightforward. Our buyer has to sell her house before she can buy ours, and we've given her quite a short deadline (I'm confident she can do it!) And we, having finally put ours up for sale after finding our dream house, have decided that the location of our dream house may not be quite as idyllic as the house itself. 

We've found an alternative, but it needs a lot of work. A two hundred year old cottage in a national park, with peeling wallpaper, mouldy carpets and a slightly precarious roof. And a greenhouse, woodland, outbuildings and a beautiful view. 

We've put in an offer, and are keeping our fingers crossed. 

Our searching has taken us to many beautiful places. This is a big move for us, and we want to be as sure as we can about the place we move to. We spend our weekends wandering between cafes and poking around potential new houses as much as we dare, and after work we sometimes drive out and just sit and listen. We've learned a lot doing this, but it's actually a nice activity in its own right. 

In the meantime, I've been pottering in the garden. My efforts have been focused on the house these last few months, and outside the raspberries have died and the willow is reaching for the telephone wires. But at the last minute I spent a small fortune on bedding plants, and with the lavender, the fuchsia, and the redcurrants, the garden looked as beautiful as the house. 

Once we'd accepted an offer, we breathed a sigh of relief, closed the door, and life started to return to some vague kind of normality (albeit still with a lot of phone calls from the estate agent - I'll miss those guys when this is all over). On Sunday, I picked some of the remaining gooseberries, and sat de-stalking them in the garden ready for making jam. 

I haven't actually got round to making that jam yet, and the gooseberries are now in the freezer. I remembered that I do, in fact, have a full time job, and rather inconveniently that has required me to do a fair bit of travelling these last few weeks. Just this week I've spent over 20 hours on trains and buses. I'm tired. 

But we're getting there. This waiting is hard, but being able to sit still makes a nice change from painting and plastering and gluing and sticking. At least while we wait we can drink tea, and see friends, and rest. And, of course, investigate questions like 'are you allowed to replace metal framed windows in a national park?' and 'just how much does it cost to put in a new heating system?' I'm going to know so many things when all this is over. 

I'll miss this little garden when we leave. I might look back at pictures from when I first moved here and see how far we've come. It feels like it looks after itself now (apart from the willow), and now I have a bit more time, I can just sit out there and read. 

Our new garden, if all goes to plan, will be much bigger, and no doubt I'll be marvelling and cursing in equal measure about that. But for now, I'll just sit and wait, with as much patience as I can muster. 

This is what came tumbling out of my purse when we came back from Scarborough last week. Not a pretty sight, but it seems I just can't throw away a receipt without tracking it first.

Do you save your receipts? For a long time I didn't keep track of money at all, partly because I didn't have much and it was quite easy to see what was (or, more often, wasn't) left. Then I ended up with a small but increasing sum on a credit card, and my regular income stopped, and I realised pretty sharpish that I'd have to get a grip. 

About nine years ago, I joined the Money Saving Expert (MSE) forums, and the people on there have been a source of much advice and all round cheerfulness over the years. I've learned a lot about money, and one of the most valuable lessons has been how much it misbehaves if you don't keep a close eye on it. 

I've always been pretty thrifty, again, mostly due to having very little money for a long time. I don't have expensive tastes. I learned on the MSE forums where I could save more, and how to make a bit extra through completing market research surveys and various other little tips. I no longer do most surveys (I don't need the extra money now and I always found them quite tedious), but if I needed a bit extra I'd pick them up again. 

It was MSE folks who encouraged me to keep a spending diary. I'd probably tried to do this on and off over the years, with little success, but they talked me through it, and I finally stuck with it. I created a budget, and wrote down every penny I spent - and it quickly became very obvious that most of my spare money (and some that was allocated for other things) went on cups of tea and cake in cafes. Hmm... 

These days, things are different. Having shot from being in the bottom 20% of income distribution in the UK to being in the top 20% in just a few short years, I'm well aware of two things: 

1. how privileged I am, and
2. how precarious financial 'stability' can be

Privileged is the right word. I feel lucky, but I've worked hard to get where I am, and made some difficult decisions to get too (including living on a very low income and doing multiple jobs for a lot of years while I studied). So it's not just luck, but equally it wasn't all just me - I'm also aware that there was a good degree of circumstance involved. Not everyone has the same opportunities as I did, and by that I mean a decent secondary school education, a family who encouraged (but didn't push) me to learn, no dependants, winning a research grant to pay for my PhD (including living costs), and all manner of other things, without which this might have been achievable, but it would have been a heck of a lot harder. So yes, privileged.

Incidentally, if you'd like to see where your income fits in relation to the rest of the population, this website is interesting.

Anyway, the point is that, while I've been in my new job nearly a year now, I could easily be made redundant tomorrow, as could most of us, and that thought makes me want to keep an eye on what's going on in my bank account. 

These days, I don't use a paper spending diary, I use a programme called You Need A Budget, or YNAB for short, and it turns out that, yes, a fair chunk of what I spend goes on tea and cake in cheery little cafes. YNAB software isn't free, and so I'd never recommend it for anyone who was struggling with money, although you can use the methods without paying for the actual software. I've used it for a couple of years now, and I love it. It forces me to allocate every pound that comes in to a particular 'job' - whether that be 'holiday' or 'emergency' or 'new car' - and doing that means that you don't have a generic 'savings' pot that you mentally allocate to holiday AND emergency AND new car. 

It's basically the age old envelope system, but with a fancy-pants app and lots of pretty colours. 

When I'm about to spend something, I look on the phone app to see how much money I have in that particular category. If there's not as much as I'm about to spend, I have to decide where I'm going to steal it from. Holiday fund? Christmas? Dentist? Hmm. Makes that cake seem slightly less appealing, knowing I'm stealing from a particular fund, doesn't it? And that's the beauty of it - it forces me to acknowledge that by spending on one thing, I'm taking away my ability to spend on something else. 

Anyway, the point of all this waffling is that, every couple of days, you'll find me sat with a cuppa, gathering all my receipts and making sure I've entered them all. Not the most exciting activity, but one that I actually find quite satisfying. Being forced to confront my spending decisions every few days does really make me think twice about what I buy. 

Of course, I'm not perfect by any means. Just this week, for example, I stole from the Christmas savings pot to top up our holiday fund so we could sneak off to Scarborough for a few days. The 'new car' fund only has £54 in it, so the old car had better keep going for a while. But I'm not kidding myself about what I'm doing. For me, whatever you earn, it's about making sensible decisions, based on the information available. And the better that information is, the better decisions you'll make.

I'm not going to stop spending in cafes any time soon. Most of the ones we go to are small local businesses that I'm happy to support. But there are other things I am willing to compromise on. We only have one car, and it's thirteen years old. We've done most of our house renovating ourselves rather than paying other people. We stock up on things when they're on offer, and rarely buy branded anything. When I have the time and head space, I make bread, jam, soap, and many kinds of soft furnishings and household items. We use things til they run out or break (and sometimes we tape them back together and keep them going for a while longer). 

I'm doing a lot of pondering about money at the minute, because at the minute we don't have a mortgage, and pretty soon we're about to take out a rather large one. We won't take on more than we can afford, and we'll try to pay it off as quickly as possible, but it's still quite a commitment. It means I'll be more reliant on my job than I've ever been. Lots to think about... 

This week, I threw my hands up in the air and declared we were never going to move unless we made A List. 

A big list, of all the things we have left to do to the house (and garden) before we can put it on the market. All the things we have left to do, to be accurate, before 26th September, which is our (self-imposed) deadline.

We sat in a cafe and wrote down everything we could think of. We were there for a long time. 

I put everything into a spreadsheet (it may surprise you to know that I'm rather a fan of spreadsheets, as long I can use lots of colours). We allocated names to each task and allocated tasks to one of the next five weeks. Then we printed our list and put it on the kitchen wall (where it will stay until week four, when we're due to do something to make those cupboard doors less hideous). 

Hmm. You can see why we're not quite as calm as we might be at the minute. Most of the contents of the bathroom are in the bedroom. Half the contents of the bedroom are in the attic. Someone appears to have emptied a skip into the spare bedroom. We're in an odd mix between old and new colour schemes, so at the minute royal blue and gold door frames sit jarringly against putty grey and soft cream walls. Washing is hung up wherever it will fit, and there hasn't seem much point in hoovering for weeks now. 

Will we make it? You might think it unlikely, but we have A List, and with A List anything is possible. Watch this space... 

A couple of weeks ago, I hopped across to Belgium to visit a friend who lives in Brussels. 

I love travelling by train, and this trip is always a pleasure. Two hours to London, a nice cup of tea in a cafe, then another two hours to Brussels on the Eurostar (we'll ignore for now the enormous queue and the trouble I caused when the security guard didn't know what my pedometer was).

This was a short visit - I arrived at lunchtime and left early the following afternoon. Of course, we went straight for food, to an organic, biodynamic restaurant called something like 'Den Teapot'. My dinner was all the colours of the rainbow. 

I've never been much of a traveller. I've never yearned after foreign lands, and these two short weekends in Belgium are the closest I've ever come to a foreign holiday. 

And so sometimes I forget just how refreshing it can be to be somewhere else for a little while. Brussels feels familiar, but also strange at the same time, and my short trip felt like an entire week away.  

My friend's flat is small, but I love her sense of decoration, and I always come away thinking how lovely it would be to fill my house with plants (forgetting, of course, my inability to keep them alive). Maybe I'll try again in my new house. 

We ended my weekend with a trip to the local bakery, and I'm convinced was the Best Almond Croissant in the Whole World. I've never tasted anything like it. Those ones you get in the supermarket here are nothing in comparison, nothing at all. Heavy, solid, full of so much sweet almond paste - I could have spent all day eating one after another after another. 

I think if I do ever take up travelling, it'll be the food that tempts me. Can you imagine a sweet pastry based tour? I can feel a plan taking shape... 

I wasn't planning to look back at 2015, but then I found my post looking back on 2014, and realised just how much fun it was, so here goes. 

In January, I added up how much we'd saved by growing food in our small city garden (I'll give you a clue - it wasn't very much). We spent a weekend hibernating in our friend's cottage in the Yorkshire Dales, and the second instalment of my blog book arrived (the third is now here - more on this soon!)

In February, we braved the cold to explore another local nature reserve, and I abandoned my cheerful old blog and set up home here instead. I spent quite a long time pondering about being a musician. 

In March, I sat still for a while, got all misty-eyed about growing food and communities, and learned to plaster. 

In April, I lost my camera (yes, the one I bought to replace the one I'd previously lost, which turned up five months later, sodden and rusty on the community allotment), and spent quite a bit of time outside. 

I got quite enthusiastic about knitting, and together with Robyn went to visit the lovely Fay up in Fife, where I dipped my toes into the sea for the first time in 2015. 

In May, I pondered being half way to seventy, finally got round to planting some seeds, and we sorted most of our possessions into tiny plastic boxes. Needless to say, they're still there... 

In June, I got enthusiastic about running again, bought a new camera, and spent much time sitting amidst the chaos in the house and the garden. 

It looks like I got uncharacteristically verbose in July. We started the month with a trip to Skegness. 

I made a ripple blanket.

In the middle of the month, I did something to my back, and spent what felt like weeks (but was really just a few days) unable to move properly. It's still not quite right now. We packed yet more boxes (bigger ones this time), harvested a teeny tiny amount of berries from the garden, and I learned to plaster - a skill I have yet to put to good use in our house. 

In August, we sneaked away on holiday. 

We had a few picnics, and hung around in the garden, and I went to Chatsworth House and pondered how to live fearlessly. 

In September, in an attempt to live fearlessly, we started to learn German. Needless to say, we soon gave up, but we will rekindle our enthusiasm ready for a visit to friends this year. In our house-packing-up frenzy, the garden got rather neglected, but nevertheless managed to put on a good floral show. 

I went to the International Permaculture Convergence, where I spent a week sleeping in the car, and came back with a renewed enthusiasm for being outside and noting the changing of the seasons. 

In October, I had an interview for a new job, and everything else was ignored for a while. My neglect paid off though, and after working what felt like 47 years worth of notice (actually just 12 weeks) I started my new job this week. Hooray! 

In November I was still running, preparing for another half marathon and noticing as things turned ever more autumnal.

I also had a wisdom tooth removed, which caused no end of trouble, but at least kept me quiet for a while. 

I lost my blogging enthusiasm for a while (again), but regained it slightly in December after my final day at my old job. Just before Christmas, we spent a night at the seaside in Scarborough - a recent tradition which I'm very much enjoying. 

Towards the end of the year, I finally got (relatively) organised, tidying the house, buying presents early in December, and even preparing food in advance. I don't quite know what came over me, but I'm pretty sure it won't last. 

Overall, in comparison to previous years, 2015 felt a little nondescript. I've felt unsettled in a house full of boxes, unwilling to start a new craft project, not wanting to do much in the garden. I've run a couple of races, but nothing too big that required (much) training. The last quarter of the year dragged a lot while I was working my notice, and I lost enthusiasm for many things.

I've felt a lot like I was looking forwards, towards our new house, my new job, change in general. I'm a big fan of change - I like routine and familiarity, but I feel refreshed after a change. I feel like too much of 2015 was spent waiting, and I'm not known for my patience. 

When I thought about 2015 at the start of the year, I didn't want to set any goals, any themes. I pondered that we might move house, but we never quite got round to that. 2015 felt unfocused, wavering somehow. 

In contrast, 2016 will be a year of action and change. I'm a week into my new job, and today we had an estate agent round to value our house. Already things are moving on. I'm excited. 

What are you looking forward to in 2016? 

I swear I've spent most of the last year wondering how the time was flying by so quickly. 

So here I am with yet another 'crikey, it's been a long time since I posted' post. Sorry. I'm aiming for more variety in 2016.

I finished my old job before Christmas, and had two and a half weeks of mostly doing what you see above - sitting on the sofa, looking at the fairy lights, watching a film and crocheting a shawl, all at the same time. Queen of multitasking, I am (as long as the tasks are all things I can do sitting down with my feet up). This picture must have been Boxing Day - presents still strewn all over the floor and I did buy a new pair of leggings swiftly after this, I promise. 

Christmas was quiet. Mostly just the two of us, and a few family visits. 

A bit of wandering round the hills, and a lot of thinking about what 2016 will bring. 

So far, 2016 has mostly brought a new job. An extremely cheerful new job, so cheerful that I have been pinching myself all week, not really believing that this Most Cheerful Job is, in fact, mine. My colleagues are lovely, my work is interesting, nobody keeps track of my time, I have 43 days holiday a year (43 days!!) and there are plans afoot for a cocktail party on our staff roof terrace. 

You can see why it doesn't quite feel real yet. 

It's also looking quite likely that we will finally get round to moving house in the first half of 2016. Exciting, yet also rather terrifying. We have an estate agent coming to value our house on Tuesday, and an appointment with the bank to update the mortgage in principle I had done this time last year (oops) soon after. 

I didn't have a theme for last year, but I think 2016 will have to be about embracing change. 

And now, having decided I wasn't going to do a 'looking back on 2015' post, I've changed my mind. See, embracing change already. 

​Hope you've had a good festive season too. 

I've neglected a lot of things lately. This blog, for a start. The garden, running, any pretence at housework, my friends, knitting, eating properly. 

This hasn't been just idle neglect though. I've spent much of the last few weeks writing a job application, preparing for an interview - and celebrating after being offered an exciting new job. I start in January, and I can't tell you how excited I am. It's full time, so I'll lose my beloved Fridays off (sob) but it's walking distance from home, so I'll regain my early mornings and evenings. 

I've always thought of autumn as a time of change. I love the start of the new school year - always have, even when I've not been at school. There's a sense of possibility in the air - new stationery, a library full of new books, and the chance that this year might just be the one where you're organised and do all your homework on time. 

My new job doesn't start until January, so this autumn for me is more of an ending. I've got nine weeks left at work, and I'll be finishing projects, sorting through papers, clearing out my office, collecting things and saying goodbye. Nine weeks feels like a long time to wait, and yet no time at all to do what needs to be done. 

I've had a week now to get used to the idea of my new job, and so my attention is starting to turn back towards other things in my life that have taken a back seat. Today I answered the nagging voice in my head that has repeatedly been reminding me of the half marathon I'm doing in four weeks, and went for a run. 

I took a detour across the golf course and through the woods, which were hilly and full of rocks, and slowed me down so much I had to take a detour home. But nothing beats the atmosphere of a misty run through the trees on an autumnal Sunday morning. 

I feel mentally revived (and also a bit sleepy). The immediate sense of excitement and giddiness has passed, and I can think more clearly now about what needs to be done. 

I have plenty of priorities at work, of course, but they stay within working hours. Outside of work, well, for a start, that half marathon won't run itself. There are people I'd like to visit while I still have all my Fridays free, so there are trips to organise, starting with a new passport. 

And resting, of course. Most important. I don't want my last few weeks at work to be characterised by stress and grumpiness, and I want to start the new job feeling bright and lively, not harassed and worried. 

I started knitting again yesterday too - prompted by being cold and not being able to find my shawl, and by being invited to a friend's house for a craft evening. I'm making, unsurprisingly, a shawl (and still hoping my old one will turn up eventually). This is alpaca wool - gorgeously soft, and, it turns out, very easy to tangle if you're not paying attention. 

And for those of you wondering whether the house move will go ahead now I have a job round the corner from our current house, here's a picture of our kitchen. 

Hmm. It'll be a long process, but yes, we will still be moving. Probably not in the first few months of my new job, but eventually. 

I feel so much brighter with something new to look forward to. I do need some sense of stability, but there's also a part of me that thrives on novelty and change. I'm impatient to get started now, but know I need to s--l--o--w d--o--w--n and enjoy what I'm doing right now, rather than always reaching forwards to the next thing. 

What a lovely bunch you all are! I was delighted with all your comments on my last post - not because I like to think of you all being fearful scaredy-cats too, but because it's nice not to feel alone when you're feeling like a fearful scaredy-cat yourself. 

My sister's comment is worth repeating in case you missed it the first time... 

Sage advice - and I hope one day to be able to take it. 

In the meantime, I've been focusing on doing something that has been fairly high on my List Of Things I'm Scared Of for many years - learning to speak German. 

Now, I realise speaking German isn't inherently frightening - millions of people do it every single day without wibbling or quavering. I really do understand that nothing bad will happen to me if I open my mouth and speak some German phrases. 

It's not so much the learning German that's been the problem - more a fear of looking like an idiot if I pronounce something wrong. I've got friends from other countries who speak many languages and say this is just something you have to get over, and all are of the opinion that English people are particularly fearful of it on the whole (although of course there are many exceptions). 

I did a German GCSE, and a French one, so I obviously spoke some words in both languages at some point. But clearly I didn't learn them properly, because last week the only words of German I could speak were

(That's 'my name is Jenni, I am 15 years old' in case you don't speak German either). 

But spurred on by one friend moving to Austria, and another two to Berlin, and the thought that it might be nice to visit and say something more than that, I decided it was about time I got over myself. 

Somehow I found myself on the Fluent in 3 Months website, and reading through the blog archives encouraged me to think that I could at least learn a few words, and there was nothing to be scared of really. I told myself I'd only have to speak them in front of my friends, not in public, and that if I was still really scared, I didn't have to speak at all (they all speak English, so we wouldn't have been sitting in silence). 

But as it turns out, it's not actually that difficult to learn a few German phrases! I've been using the Anki app on my phone - it gives you flashcards of the 4000 most common German words, one at a time. If you don't know a word, it comes round again in a few minutes, and through simple repetition the words seem to be going into my head.  

I've also written out a few key phrases, and am trying to say them at every opportunity. Useful things - I need the toilet, I would like a shower, I'm tired, I'm hungry (gosh, I sound like a demanding toddler!)

The thing I'm most excited about is something I haven't started yet. On the Fluent in 3 Months website, they suggest that reading young adult fiction is a good way to get familiar with a language. So you have the same book in both English and German, and a dictionary, and you read a sentence at a time, noting things you don't know. 

Of course, I've chosen Harry Potter. I found an English copy of the first book in a charity shop at the weekend, ordered a German copy online, and have been watching out for the postman ever since.

Of course, my pronunciation is rubbish, and I get words mixed up all the time, but it's only been a week, so I'm hopeful that by the time I get round to visiting my friends I'll be able to have an entire proper conversation. 

Even if it is entirely about wizards. 

I'm scared. 

Not right now, of sitting in my kitchen, drinking tea and staring (or trying to) through the misted up double glazing in the window. 

But in general, there are far too many things I'm scared of, and I can't be the only one. 

Mostly what I'm scared off can be summed up into one thing - getting into trouble. I've always been like this. I once had a day off school feeling utterly sick and miserable because I was terrified Miss Williams would tell me off for losing my exercise book. It took me years to get over accidentally reversing into a parked car and then getting points on my driving licence. I still feel slightly queasy when I think of Mr Herbert yelling at me in junior school for staying behind after assembly for recorder class without asking him.

I have vivid memories of the times when I've been told off. The policeman who stopped me after babysitting one night because I didn't have lights on my bike (I always have done since). The lady who asked us to stop talking in the quiet train carriage. The man who yelled at us for looking in a skip in the road. The park ranger who told us off for walking over a protected area to have a picnic (I still feel guilty about this - I did say I wasn't happy with it at the time but was in a big group and was overruled). 

All this means I can tend to be rather a stickler for the rules. If a sign says 'no entry' it doesn't even occur to me to ask why - 'because someone said so' is good enough reason for me. 

But sometimes this desire to be a decent, law abiding person goes too far, and my fear of getting into trouble becomes a general fear of not being approved of. Look at those examples I gave above - how many of them actually relate to laws? No, we shouldn't have walked over the protected area, and yes I should have had lights on my bike (I was about 14, I think, and travelling two minutes from home, but even so). 

But the other things? Talking in the quiet carriage was inconsiderate (we hadn't seen the signs), and of course I shouldn't have reversed into the parked car - but it was clearly an accident and nobody was hurt. Looking into a skip? You might not like it, but I'd argue that throwing away nearly new toys and furniture is more criminal. 

And being shouted at by a teacher in junior school? I'm 35 for goodness sake - probably ten years older than the teacher was then! Why do I still feel sick, all these years later? 

I think it comes down to wanting people to like me. I like to think of myself as a good person, and when I do something that I don't think of as 'good', or that someone tells me is bad (whether their reasons are valid or not), I feel bad. 

Sometimes, though, I make up reasons to feel bad, and then feel bad anyway - and then I know I've truly slipped down into some strange spiral of gloom. A neighbour is clearing the path of weeds - I say thank you but instantly writhe with guilt that I haven't done it myself. My boss tells me they're changing the 'work at home' policy and I immediately feel bad for all the times I worked at home (with permission) in the past. The neighbours are singing at the tops of their voices at 3am, and I stand outside in the street, in my nightie and bare feet, waiting for them to finish their song so I can ask, ever so politely, if they'll keep it down a bit now please, all the time feeling like a complete spoilsport. 

Well, I've had enough.

Don't worry, I've not had a complete personality transplant and I'm not going to go around breaking the law for no good reason, and walking across the grass just because I can. 

But I've had enough of carrying round the guilt of childhood misdemeanours. I'm bored of worrying about what people in the street think of my garden, whether I've washed my car, or that my attic window isn't painted the same colour as the rest. 

I'm fed up of having arguments in my head with people who aren't there.  

Please tell me I'm not the only one who does this. Please tell me there are some of you who wind yourself up into a frenzy with the boss, or the person walking past your house, or the guy in the supermarket, explaining and justifying why you did this, or didn't do that, until you're hot and grumpy and the next time you see that person you glare at them and they wonder what on earth they've done because (surprise!) while you were arguing with (your imaginary version of) them, they were walking the dog, or having a bath, or on holiday, and not thinking about you at all. 

Well, it ends here. I'm not sure how, and it might take a while, but each time I catch myself arguing with someone who isn't there, or explaining myself when nobody's asked me to, or feeling bad for something I did twenty years ago that didn't hurt anyone, I'm going to stop, and have a nice cup of tea instead, and think pleasant thoughts instead. I'm sure nothing at all will change in the outside world, but it will certainly be a lot more peaceful inside my head.

Are you with me?