Living my best life-written on Oct 6th 2025

i am sitting by the pool on the lido deck on P and O’s Britannia in the port of La Coruna in Spain, feeling like the luckiest girl in the world.

The younger me, the one with the mortgage, overdraft, divorced and bringing up young children alone , never even dreamed that the 50-something future me would be here one day.

But here I am and I am very grateful for it too. Admittedly the Young Me never envisioned I would be diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at 48 years old and reliant on medication to be able to function on any kind of level, but….

there are much worse things I could have had and in a way it has been a blessing. The mortgage has been paid off (well done Younger Me for being sensible enough to take out the slightly more expensive life insurance with Critical Illness cover, you played a blinder, best life decision ever made, after divorcing tosser, that is my first husband btw, it’s his name but he doesn’t get a capital t because he is that insignificant, he doesn’t deserve one) As a result I now feel financially secure for the first time in my adult life.

It has also given me the incentive to ‘get-on-and-do’ the things that i have said i will do ‘one day’, now, while i can.

Writing a book was on the ‘one day’ list and now that book ‘The Adventures of Annie Harrison, the antique dealer who sees dead people’ is available from amazon.co.uk

As is the sequel ‘The Further Adventures of Annie Harrison’ . I am immensely proud of that. Writing two books in 8months is almost as big an achievement as giving birth to my three children (the best three things I have ever and will ever create.)

I have also had the most wonderful, amazing, excellent, exciting and utterly beautiful news that I can’t share with you just now, but will soon, I promise,…..

So yes, despite being one of the winners in the Parkinson’s disease lottery I am actually living my best life and feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

Now excuse me while I ask the waiter to please bring me a cocktail …. Oh bugger, new meds, make that a mocktail, Damn you Mr Parkinson!! Oh well on the bright side, no more hangovers