Next week I will be celebrating my birthday and entering the final year of my fifties 😱. As the wonderful journey of life continues, I have so far enjoyed celebrating each “big” birthday, apart from my 50th. For some reason I had a real problem turning 50. Still, almost a decade on, chilling in retirement and the big 60 looming on the horizon, I have found a few things I can definitely look forward to:-

1. Free prescriptions
2. Free eye tests
3. Possibly free dental checkups
4. Specsavers and Boots offer 25% discounts on glasses (should have waited till next year to get mine 😢)
5. Additional advantage points at Boots
6. Discounted train, and coach fares (if you purchase a discount card)
7. National Theatre discounts on midweek matinees

Joking aside, I am contemplating how best to celebrate becoming so ancient 👵🏻

The bestie suggested I should have a list of 60 things I’d like to experience in the twelve months leading up to the big day. It sounded like a fabulous idea. So far, life has been good to us and I have been extremely lucky to have already ticked some wonderful experiences off my “would love to do” list.

With this in mind, I sat down to try to put some ideas together, but I failed to come up with a complete 60’s wish list:-

1. Skinny dipping (Besties idea 🤔)
2. Tour of Amazon’s warehouse
3. Go to an opera (recently experienced)
4. Go to a ballet
5. Attend a masked ball (tickets booked for the end of the month)
6. Experience the Edinburgh Festival
7. See Hadrians Wall (maybe need to get a wiggle on in case IndyRef2 happens in near future)
8. Sort out years of photos both printed and digital
9. Get out on our bikes
10. Learn some makaton
11. Have the odd date night (can’t remember last time we went out just the two of us)
12. Watch a cricket match at the Oval (might happen this year as the besties bought us tickets for a ground tour)
13. Make a memory box (too many tickets, brochures, & maps scattered around the house)
14. Visit the War of the Worlds Experience
15. Drink less
16. Experience an Ashes tour in Australia ( might be a strain on the purse strings and next one not till end 2021)
17. Visit Berlin
18. Visit Auschwitz
19. Plan road trip(s) in Kenneth (would love to take the Castle Road through Germany amongst others).
20. Visit the Postal Museum
21. Attend Oktoberfest in Germany
22. Walk more. (since leaving work my daily steps have plummeted)
23. Set myself a monthly clothes budget & try no spend months 😳
24. Have a home movie night with my siblings (dig out our late parents cine films and slides of us as kids)
25. Visit the London Transport Museum
26. Take control of our garden (I’m a bit of a fair weather gardener)
27. Read more
28. Visit the Cheese Bar
29. New hairstyle?
30. Visit the Sky Garden in London

So only half way there. I probably left it a bit late to get completely organised for the coming year, but there is enough to get started with and I will have to take lots of photos (maybe not of the skinny dipping), and report back at the end of the year to see what I’ve achieved.

I need a little help to expand my list and would love to hear your ideas on how to celebrate the lead up to the big 

🥂 60 🥂

Please pop your thoughts in the comments box, and help me reach the magic number of experiences.