Some of you will know that I have another less popular blog site, where I wanted to write about my 50th year, having become the big 5-oh in April 2013.  You can see the blog here and some of you who are a certain age might like the play-list there too.  I know I made a big song and dance about getting to 50 but I sort of wanted it to be celebratory, rather than see in my 50th year with any sense of regret.

I decided to write my final #annies50th blog here because I’ve discovered on my social media journey that, for me, personal and professional can co-exist and that although some people might be irritated by my complex online persona of home, baking, chickens, diabetes, nursing and technology, and find me light-weight, many also tolerate me and some might even enjoy the diversity I bring.

So here it is – my final #annies50th blog.

Primroses on the cliff side – they are a flower that blooms during my birthday month and much remembered from my childhood

During the year some of you will have noticed that I have regularly changed my Avatar, in fact those most observant will have watched the pictures present an aging Anne over the year.  It was a sort of mini twitter project.  I know it broke some of the rules around being recognisable but digging through all my old photos was so much fun 🙂 The last one was of me in my glorious hat, that I wore to a wedding in around 2012.  So my Avatar and photographs play a key part of my final celebration of being 50.

Many of you also know I did my nurse training in Scarborough and met my best friend there.  Here is a link to a blog where I tell exactly that story.

To celebrate my 51st birthday I went back to Scarborough with my friend and we had some photographs taken that represent my sense of our friendship and the place.  They are deliberately ‘retro’ in style in a vague attempt to recreate the early 1960’s look, when we were both born. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

The photographs were taken by Jess Petrie who was an amazingly lucky find.  I wanted a female photographer who I thought would gently handle the middle-agedness of us and Jess did exactly that.  She likes to shoot with natural light and she is a wonderful calm, gentle photographer.  You can find out more about Jess here and her twitter name is @jesspetriephoto – I recommend her to you.

So here are some of the shots and I hope you will agree they present a fitting start to my 5th decade and mark our friendship and I now look forward to our 60th!  Self indulgent – I know – but friendships and making memories are so very important.

The above photo is me on 14th April 2014, aged 51, and will remain my Twitter avatar for a while.