Gillian Kirkbride
Bio
Writing for fun
Stories (7)
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Meeting a Soulmate Later in Life
Abigail met him online. How did that happen? She still cringes inwardly when people ask how they met. She was not young anymore and she had never been married. There had been a few serious relationships but they didn’t last. What was wrong with her? she often wondered.
By Gillian Kirkbride5 years ago in Humans
From Heartbreak to New Beginnings
It was the end of March 2020. We were just beginning to grasp the extent of the pandemic that was causing havoc across the globe and our little world was about to implode in a different way. We had come to realise that it was time to accept the inevitable: we had to let our almost 18-year-old, much-loved tortoiseshell cat, Tabitha, go to pussycat heaven. It was heartbreaking. I didn’t know how I was going to manage without her.
By Gillian Kirkbride5 years ago in Petlife
Vaccinate or Vacillate
Let me be clear, I am not wanting to tell you what to do with your bodies. Seriously. You need to make your own decisions but there is a lot of misinformation out there and it's confusing. Right? I think it's fairly safe to say that we all know we are living through a pandemic. I don't like to make generalisations but unless you've been living alone on a remote island or off chasing unicorns somewhere, you're aware that life has been slightly off-kilter for the last 14 months or so. I am just trying to navigate around all the conflicting arguments and counter arguments to find a truth that I can live with.
By Gillian Kirkbride5 years ago in Longevity
What Comes After Outlander
If you’re like me and love all things Scottish you will have devoured the series Outlander and will be hanging out for the next season. I binge-watched the first 5 seasons and then started to rewatch from the beginning. We are now in what we call a “Droughtlander”. Covid 19 destroyed all the plans for Season 6 and we are desperate to see more of our beloved Laird Jamie and his Sassenach bride, Claire. I believe there is still something in me of the Scottish blood from my Ayrshire ancestors who braved the seas to travel across the world to Australia all those many years ago. The skirl of the bagpipes makes my heart soar. The scenery is to die for – and Outlander is full of beautiful scenery. The food – okay some of the food, while delicious and filling, is probably not terribly healthy, but haggis...and yes I have eaten it...is a surprising delight. Scotland calls to my soul.
By Gillian Kirkbride5 years ago in Wander
Big, Beautiful, and Sexy
Black women have been making music from the beginning of time. Traditional songs and rhythms passed down from grandmothers and aunts and mothers to the next generation of women. The first recording by an Australian black woman though appears to be a wax cylinder recording of Aboriginal songs in an indigenous Tasmanian language, by Fanny Cochrane Smith in the late 1890s and 1903. Since then, the music of the Australian First People has metamorphosed over time to the songs we are familiar with from the 20th and 21st centuries. There is not a large number of native Australian female musicians, but among the pioneering Aboriginal women musicians to become known in the music industry were Georgia Lee and Wilma Reading who paved the way for Auriel Andrew, Ruby Hunter, and more recently Deborah Cheetham, Christine Anu, Jessica Mauboy, and Casey Donovan.
By Gillian Kirkbride5 years ago in Beat
Declutter Despair
Let me be clear right from the beginning: I love my husband. I do. We've only been married three years but in that time I have discovered that there is a lot of truth in the saying "opposites attract". We are so different in so many ways. We follow different football teams, which makes for some interesting winter weekends when our teams are battling each other; we have diametrically opposite ways of dealing with drama in our lives, I can be a drama queen, he just says “get over it”; I am musical, he is not; I have hobbies, he does not. I don't need to go on. The difference that gives me the most grief though, the thing that will make me retreat to another room and refuse to discuss it, is that I am sentimental about my stuff: very sentimental. He is not. To him, if something hasn’t been used for three months, it has no business being in our house.
By Gillian Kirkbride5 years ago in Motivation
Magic Numbers
Angela sits on her usual seat on the train. She sits there every day on her journey to her city job, at the back of the carriage, where, usually, nobody disturbs her. Angela enjoys these daily moments of peace before arriving at the hospital, where she will be on her feet all day long, tending to those who are ill and some who just think they are ill. Sometimes it is a rewarding profession, but mostly it seems like a thankless task. Yet she has always wanted to work in this industry. Caring just seems to come naturally to her.
By Gillian Kirkbride5 years ago in Humans
