How To Be 60 with Kaye Adams

On this week’s Midweek Catchup, we read out a listener’s mum’s diary of good deeds, including the day she cleaned her husband’s toothbrush and warmed his feet. Karen is calling in from Spain, where she has been recognised three times since leaving home and is not handling it quietly. Kaye is in a London hotel, having forgotten her room number and tried most of the doors on the third floor.
Kaye also owns up to a crisis of conscience about colouring her hair. With so many women going grey, does carrying on with the dye mean letting the side down? Karen has a theory, and it involves eyelashes. We also look ahead to Friday’s episode with bestselling author Amanda Prowse, who talks frankly about parenting adult children.
Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.
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On this week's episode, we're joined by clinical psychologist and broadcaster Professor Tanya Byron, of The House of Tiny Tearaways fame. She's six months off 60 and celebrating all year with friends she's known since she was 11. Tanya wrote much of her new book, You Are Not a Diagnosis, at her mother's bedside. Her mum lived with Alzheimer's, the long goodbye, and was in Tanya's words a model of courage, acceptance and distress tolerance. When her father died, Tanya wanted a diagnosis of depression so she could be cured. What she had was grief. She tells Kaye and Karen why we rush to pathologise ordinary feelings, why we've lost the why and gone straight to the what, and how getting back to real conversation might help. Plus old-school bingo. You Are Not a Diagnosis is out now from Penguin Life. Get in touch at podcast@htb60.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's Midweek Catchup, Lildl has stopped selling full-fat cottage cheese, and Karen, who eats it daily for her bones, is touring the supermarkets for the perfect lumpy, not watery, pot. Kaye finally ditches her grim old water bottle and nearly vomits at the £40 price of a new one. And there's chocolate orange mini rolls for Mrs Pre-diabetic, a family holiday to Malaga, a hedge boundary row, and your treasured heirlooms, from 1890 steps to a curling stone. On Friday we're joined by Professor Tanya Byron.
Get in touch at podcast@htb60.com and follow Kaye on Instagram @kayeadamsofficial.
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On this week's episode, we're joined by Louise Doughty, who found a rusted black suitcase at the bottom of her late mum's wardrobe and nearly put it out with the bins. Inside were scores of undated letters charting the secret affair her parents had in 1950s Melton Mowbray, when her dad was a married man and her mum was his boss's secretary. Louise tells us how she pieced them together, why her parents took the story to their graves, and how losing them to Alzheimer's and a sudden heart attack almost hid who they really were. There's also a sister who kept fishing things back out of the bin liners. She was right, as it turns out.
Louise also talks about what clearing out a family home teaches you about stuff, why 63 is her favourite decade so far, and admits she may have been the worst-dressed student of the early 80s. Her memoir, On This Spot Fell One Tear of Love, is out now. Whether you've cleared a parent's house or are dreading it, this one stays with you.
Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

Louise Doughty’s new book, On This Spot Fell One Tear of Love, is available now in hardback, ebook and audiobook.
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On this week's Midweek Catchup, Karen is up at the family home in a winged velour chair that Kaye swears belongs in a care home. She's been foraging for chanterelles, the only mushroom she can identify, and with nothing else to carry them in, she used a dog poo bag. Then she took it to the counter of the local gift shop. She's not going back. Kaye is wondering whether her mango habit is making her pre-diabetic, looks back on 37 years of friendship with Shereen Nanjiani after their Sunday on STV Radio, and has been sent a blackmail email about a porn addiction she definitely doesn't have. Plus Karen's big toe has grown, and a breast surgeon tries his best to read her knee MRI. Your emails now have a new home in the midweek, starting with Jennifer from Corfu, her husband and a mosquito spray that went where no mosquito spray should go.

On Friday we're joined by Louise Doughty, author of Apple Tree Yard, talking about her first non-fiction book, a memoir built on letters her parents wrote to each other. Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.
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