Hello, my first 100

Since we moved to London it has been non-stop. It feels like emerging from an older version of myself, to a newer one. Almost aging in reverse, apart from the inevitable extra tiredness that comes when I keep cramming in more and more! I remind myself, “you’re as young as you’ll ever be today”.

This little substack has crept up in numbers without much marketing. I started writing a substack as a New Year’s resolution. It seemed many of my children were writing and blogging in some way and when we did our traditional family New Year’s resolution game, I thought, “I’ve got some things to say too!”

(In our version of the game, we all write down our resolutions, put them in a hat and then the rest of the group has to guess who is resolving to be calmer, or learn Norwegian) I thought, “they’ll never guess that’s me”. And I was right, they didn’t.

So I started 2023 with my Right Wing Woman blog. It was a joke name that I took from a book by a sixties radical Marxist feminist - it was meant as an insult by the author. 2023 seems an aeon ago. It was when we were still in Long Covid government, Rishi Sunak was PM, and the idea of actively claiming the label “right wing” felt subversive. I kept trying to do things in my minister job that were more right wing (like getting people who earned too much to move out of council homes), but nobody was interested.

I changed the Substack name when I went into the Lords. Within a few days everyone explained to me that I couldn’t be too political in there. But the url can’t be changed, so my right wing identity, which I can’t and don’t want to shed, is freely ranging around the red benches and corridors.

I write every morning between 5-7am. My husband brings me a cup of tea in bed and the dogs come and curl up with me. The birds sing outside my window, and after chortling at the whatsapps that have come in from my friends who stay up later than me (ie, most of the world, seeing as I like to go to bed when we don’t have late votes at 9pm) I open Substack and get going.

The house we live in is one of those tall London houses, and from my bedroom window I can see masses of trees, high sky and a few desirable looking bits of garden architecture. Very elevated sheds or possibly even garden studios. How I long for one of those. Right now the streets (picture above) are wreathed in spectacular blossoms, gently starting to dust the pavements in pink and white.

It is a different world from deepest Worcestershire, my life as an MP, and my roots in the West Midlands.

People ask me if I miss the country. I’ve been thinking carefully about it. As I was drinking my tea this morning, I recalled the many Monday mornings when I would have been rushing to get to Worcestershire Parkway Station to catch the 7.06 to Paddington at just this time. Not one shred of me misses that. Nor do I miss being a public property and a target for abuse, vitriol, scorn and endless complaining.

But there are many things I do miss. I miss the sense of purpose that being an MP gives you. There’s no getting around it, you are so busy - if you are doing the job properly - that it doesn’t give you any time to think “what is the point of my life”. My friends who are still MPs now tell me that being in opposition does make them question their purpose occasionally; but there is loads for them to do.

What I mostly miss about the country is not specifically the house or the country. It is the version of me that existed then. There are some glowing gems in my memory. Lockdown, when we had 8 adults living with us (all family! we weren’t breaking the rules!) I’m overlooking the endless frustrations of never finding anywhere in the house to work because every surface was overflowing with someone else trying to get on zooms, but I will never forget the golden days when we all went for long walks around the glorious spring countryside. The weather was stunning. Our garden became a perfect idyll. We sat out every night on the terrace eating dinner together, taking it in turns to cook. One weekend we entertained ourselves with family Olympics in the garden.

We’ve recently put the house on the market and have gone through the painful process of emptying it and downsizing. That’s when I properly realised that we would never again spend time as a family in that way. Our children have since had children of their own, and are all now married, engaged or coupled up. We still see them all regularly and are close, but if there was another lockdown (God forbid) it would just be me and Dave, not the big family.

Letting go of those times is sad. Just because this is a thing that happens to everyone when they get older doesn’t mean it isn’t surprising in its power to bring grief.

There is Nana-ing which allows me to care and love small people still, but it isn’t the same. My granddaughter sometimes hurts herself when we are out together with her Mum, I go to help her and she wails “I don’t want you!” My daughter pulls a face and occasionally yearns for a tiny bit of personal space, but I recognise that deep emotional tug of primeval need. It crowds out everything else, as it should.

There is no gain without loss. Some things have to shift and pass to let new things in.

I’m navigating the world of the Lords. It is still somewhat alien to a former Commoner, but many kind people are guiding me. It’s possible to find deep fulfilment there. Yesterday we said goodbye to the many hereditary peers who were being unceremoniously turfed out. That made me incredibly grateful to have been appointed there for life, and determined to make the most of the precious opportunity.

16 years ago I was first inspired to pitch up and give the Solihull Conservatives a hand. I never thought that day as I stood handing out leaflets in the High Street that I would serve first on the green benches and then the red ones. Never in a million years. The bitter pain of rejection and loss has been part and parcel of the experience. Not being selected for the seats I went for. Losing the first General Election I fought. Being overlooked for promotions in government and sacked from the roles I did secure. And eventually, the brutality of losing my seat in Parliament. There is no light without dark, no joy without pain.

And then there are other, deeper things about this season. The role of a 60 year old woman in public life and private life. Coming home from a North London dinner party recently I complained to my husband that I felt invisible; talked over and explained to. He doesn’t get it. It is a woman thing.

God is here. He is guiding me to spend more time building our community in our local church. We feel lucky to have landed here.

Thank you for reading, its lovely to have you here.