How many times have you experienced delayed flights/trains when traveling as a mature woman? Did you feel exhausted? Worn out? Would you say you’re ready to give up travel because of that?

Don’t!

Here are some ideas for what you could do when your travel arrangements become a mess.

In the Airport

If you’re traveling by plane, make the best of the layover time. It’s much better waiting on the ground than in a cramped seat up in the air. Relax. But not too much!

I once fell asleep while waiting for a long line of passengers to board my flight. It had been a long day of delays and stop overs. I was exhausted, so I decided that sitting until the end would be much better than hurrying to get to the front of the line.

Once on board, there would still be a long wait for others to stow their carry-on bags before being seated. I was much more tired than I had imagined.

After all the passengers had been checked through, the staff noticed me sitting all alone in the waiting room, fast asleep.

How embarrassing, but funny, too! They checked me through, and I hurried down the corridor to find people still standing in the aisles.

On a Train

When I’m traveling by train, I feel a bit like Dr. Seuss when Sam I Am lists all the places he won’t eat green eggs and ham. I promise, it’s a short list.

Train travel can be fun or challenging, depending on the country. Waiting for trains is quite different from planes. Many stations are old, often beautifully designed and spacious. I encourage you to look around when you have a stopover in one of the more historic train stations.

Some have brochures with information about the architect, design, and history of the station. Another advantage of train stations is that they are often located in the city.

For example, in both Denver and New Orleans, the train station is just a short walk into the old part of the city. With a two-hour layover, you can have a nice lunch in a special setting.

In Los Angeles, the train station is just around the corner from historic Olivera Street, for shopping and dining in Mexi-Cali style. What’s your favorite train station?

The following suggestions work well for most types of layovers.

Read a Book

You brought a book on your trip, didn’t you? If not, download one to read on your tablet while waiting. My suggestion: Woman on the Road by Joy Harmon. Hee, hee!

Take Out the Needles

Another relaxing thing to do is knit or crochet. Don’t bring your expensive knitting needles, though, if you are flying. Most airports seem ok with them, but I have heard stories of people having to remove needles from works in progress and hand them over to security.

Go for a Walk

Even if you are in the airport, there is plenty of walking space. The challenge here is stowing your luggage, so you don’t have to carry it with you on your walk. Look around or ask airport personnel about convenient lockers along the way to your gate. Every airport is different, so keep that in mind. Train stations, however, usually have convenient storage.

Browse the Shops

A layover could be your last chance to pick up a gift for someone on your list. Personally, I’m not a fan of the high-end designer clothing and accessories in airport malls. However, there are always small shops that offer handmade items from the country you are leaving.

It’s a good time to pick up a sample of local snacks, for the person who has everything. For the collector, there are often handmade items like traditional dolls or woodcarvings. Avoid the key chains, though – they’ve become cliché.

In train stations, you’ll usually find lovely shops close by, but not in the stations themselves. However, Asian train stations often have a mall connected to them. Don’t get lost though, you might miss your train.

Take advantage of the coffee shops, bars, and restaurants. I love having a glass of wine in a bar overlooking the runway. It’s a good opportunity to use leftover currency that was too small to change. This one is hit or miss. Some airports have fantastic restaurants, others are quite dreary.

Strike Up a Conversation

Travelers are all around you in airports and train stations, so strike up a conversation. I’ve met some interesting people in airports. I once met the sweetest lady from India in the lounge. I’ve never been to India, so I was fascinated to hear about her country.

At boarding time, she disappeared into the first-class cabin. I don’t know why she was waiting with us commoners. I never saw her again, but wasn’t that a nice encounter?

Take Some Candid Pictures

Here’s one of my favorite shots taken during a long delay at Charles De Gaulle Airport. Why not share one of yours with us?

Let’s Have a Conversation:

How many times have you had a flight/train delayed in the past year? What was the experience like? What did you do to fill up your time? Please share your bravest/funniest/scariest experiences in the comment box below.

We are all worrying about prices and the cost of energy, aren’t we? We wonder how we will cope in the coming winter. But over the years I have found there are some simple ways to save money.

First, Let’s Look at Food

While I wouldn’t wish anyone to go hungry, it is a fact that we are all more overweight than we used to be. If you look at family photographs taken in the war years, when there was strict rationing, you will not see any of your ancestors looking overweight.

There are many steps we can take which have been advocated by experts in the field of dieting and so here goes.

These are my ideas only and should not be followed by anyone with health issues. If you have some health conditions, your diet may need to vary, but you should consult your doctor or nurse practitioner. But please read on for ideas.

Baby Steps

• Try using a smaller plate.
• Dish up the food and then remove some or half off the plate and put it in the fridge to heat up the next day.
• Fancy egg and bacon? Use one egg and not two.

Shopping and Eating

• Don’t be proud. Stickered (on sale) food that is just about to go out of date is perfectly good. If you can’t eat it all? Put it in the freezer. Stock up when food is on special offer.
• If shopping online, use the drop-down menu to find offers.
• With online shopping, choose a delivery-saver slot, which will usually save you one pound. Sainsbury’s is best for this. Some supermarkets still charge about three pounds for delivery, so be careful. You need to choose a large window, for example 7-11 p.m. but an e-mail will be sent on the day, giving you the hour of delivery, e.g., 7-8 p.m.
• Beans on brown toast once a week is nourishing.
• Salmon pieces are generally very large, so I now cut these in half, use one portion and freeze the other.
• The same can be done with chicken pieces. Have half a large chicken piece hot one day and the other half can be eaten cold the next day.
• Buy cheap cuts of meat. These are more tasty anyway. Shoulder of lamb is cheaper than leg of lamb. Breast of lamb, stewing beef, brisket are all good. They may have some fat on them but once cooked it is easily cut off.
• If you are fit and able, you could get a piece of land in a community garden and grow your own vegetables, something I did for 10 years. As I grew older, it became harder, but I started putting in fruit bushes which cut down the amount of digging. I then froze the fruit. I also froze runner beans and other vegetables when they all prospered together.

Electricity

• When boiling a kettle, only put in the amount of water you need. You could also cut down on some of those extra cups of tea. Do you really need a cup of tea or are you just bored?
• Reduce the number of times you put the cooker on each week. There are frozen jacket potatoes which take only five minutes in the microwave. Perhaps one of your meals can be a jacket potato with salad which saves using the cooker.

Cooking

• When cooking, use the opportunity to cook other meals; a casserole on one shelf and chicken pieces on another. Also, use vegetables that can go in the oven while other food is cooking.
• I have found food can cook quite well in a shorter time than suggested in the instructions. However, do make sure that food is cooked thoroughly.

Using the Hob

• Cook up small amounts of mince with many vegetables such as turnip/onion/potato, using one saucepan to save fuel. If you have a slow cooker, you could have this on for 3 to 4 hours or even less. Divide the cooked meal into several portions and freeze in containers. I save those that come from a Chinese or Indian takeaway.
• Don’t forget fruit. Half an apple is better than none.

Heating and Keeping Warm

• It’s a well-known adage that to save heating we should wear layers and jumpers, but we should also look at our existing heating system and check that it is working efficiently. Timers and thermostats will help. One piece of good advice is to use your local library where you’ll find company, warmth, books and newspapers to read.
• Last year, my daughter bought me some thermal layers to wear under my clothes and this made so much difference that I’m going to add to my stock this year.

Holidays

When our children were young, we went camping with all cooking done on our two-ring stove. It was many years before we treated ourselves to takeaway fish and chips on the way home. Soon after, we managed fish and chips during the week and a meal in a cheap motorway restaurant on the journey home.

General

• Not all appliances are created equal. It is possible to find a chart online (such as this one from Citizen’s advice bureau) which shows the costs of running electrical equipment over a period of say five or ten minutes. You should be able to search for this wherever you are living. This enables you to monitor your use and find alternatives if you find an electrical gadget is using too much energy.
• You can get some useful tips by looking something up online. For example, one gives an estimate of a ten-minute shower but better to use a clock in your bathroom and time yourself. Three or four minutes or even less is probably all you need unless you are washing your hair.
• Read your meter regularly and send in your readings. This is important when the energy prices increase.
• I have invested in an off-peak membership at a local health club where there are showers and hairdryers. I visit twice a week and haven’t used my own shower to wash my hair for months. On a day when I am going to the club, I don’t have a full shower but a short wash.

Exercise

Exercising three times a week will improve circulation and ensure that you do not need your heating turned up so high. Also going out for a walk means you can turn your heating down for a couple of hours while you are out.

Disabled People

There are disability benefits which provide for necessary extras. The Attendance Allowance or PIP (UK) will allow reduced entry for carers into places of interest, cinemas and theatres. Rates of reduced entry vary but at the cinema you should get a free ticket for a carer, with theatre tickets sometimes available for £10 or 40% of the total cost. As a disabled person, I take a friend, and we share the total cost of entry.

With regard to benefits, do check you are getting everything you are entitled to. The Citizens Advice Bureau can help with this. There are charities which can provide wheelie walkers and mobility scooters. CAB will help with this.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do you have any tips for saving money that you could share? Do you have any cheap recipes to share? Are there any websites you use for cost-saving tips?

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is a worthwhile, thought-provoking and sometimes humorous read. Although his novel is set primarily in Bedford, England, the main character, Nora, does a form of time travel to several locations as she waffles between life and death.

Haig’s book tackles a number of difficult and meaningful subjects: kindness, loneliness, mental health, and learning to love life. The subject that resonated most with me was the issue of regrets.

Regret Is a Tough Thing

It’s difficult to undo a decision, an action or an inaction. When we regret any of those, we assume that things would, of course, have been better for ourselves and others had we acted differently.

Is there an alternate universe where we could see or live the life of ourselves and others had we made a different decision or taken a different course, said yes rather than no?

In this book, Hague takes Nora through alternate lives where she learns that many times there was no need for regret. The alternative outcome could have led to a miserable life, or could have had negative ramifications on others that she had no way of seeing.

As the book opens, Nora is going through a bad spot. She lives in a dreary apartment with her cat, her closest companion. She is estranged from her brother and former friend.

Learning that her cat has died in the street is close to the last straw. That last straw comes the following day when she is told she is being let go from her dead-end job.

Despondent, Nora attempts suicide. She wakes in a netherworld between life and death, a world of unnamed books on endless shelves. She meets a muse, a former librarian from her early school years who guides her through the library’s rules.

Each book contains an alternative to the life she lived based on a regret, a decision not made, a choice overlooked or cast aside. Rows and rows of unnamed books, when opened, contained a version of a life she had not lived. They would take her to a universe where she will briefly experience life based on the path not taken.

Where the Alternatives Lead

Nora’s primary regrets are with decisions she made that had an impact on family and friends. She opens a book and time travels to her decision to stop swimming, a sport where she was a young star with a future. Her father was invested in her swimming, attended all of her practice and meets, and was deeply disappointed when she dropped it.

In this alternative life, she continues to swim, and in fact becomes a famous olympian. However, her success turns her mother’s world upside down when her father has an affair with the mother of another swimmer he meets through Nora’s practices.

Another book of regret takes her to the rock band where she is the popular lead singer. Her brother and a friend are fellow band members. As the band began to be successful, she left it. Her brother was hurt and angry and as a result they became estranged.

In her alternative universe, Nora stays with the band and becomes a well-known singer. She learns her brother didn’t handle success as well as she, succumbed to the lifestyle and died. Nora is heartbroken.

In yet another book of regret, she pops into a marriage with a man she walked away from before their wedding. As a couple, they had talked about someday buying a pub in the country and making it their life.

In this book of regret, she has gone through with the wedding, and they are living above a historic pub. She learns quickly that he has had several affairs with patrons and is dismissive of her.

Is It Useful to Regret?

Through many of the books of regret, guided by the library muse, Nora realizes the regrets were primarily based on the dreams and desires of others. Though she had talent in music and sports, those dreams of her success were projected by family members, they were not her own.

The dream of buying a pub in the country was the dream of her fiancé. She simply bought into it. Her decision to walk away from the wedding had been, in fact, the right one.

I recommend reading The Midnight Library to learn how Nora survives her suicide attempt and further, how she redirects her life.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What are your regrets, if any? Do you regret walking away from a relationship? Do you regret moving to a different city, or not moving and still wondering what life would be like had you made that move? Do you regret decisions that made your family unhappy, even though they seemed right for you?

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, STYLECASTER may receive an affiliate commission.

I’ve been telling myself that TikTok’s “bleached eyebrow” filter does not represent what I would look like with platinum brows since it also contours your face like crazy. But I can’t say the beauty trend hasn’t tempted me. These eight celebs and models with bleached eyebrows really aren’t helping the cause because they all look so damn cool.

The trend really took off in the ’90s with celebrities such as Madonna and Jared Leto hitting the runways with lightened eyebrows regardless of hair color. This wasn’t about matching your hair to your eyebrows. This was about making a statement. And since everything old is new again, stars, influencers and models are all taking bleach to their brows for a seriously eye-catching look.

If these photos inspire you to try bleached brows, we recommend heading to the salon to let a professional handle it. You don’t want to end up with orange eyebrows, or worse, an eye injury from getting bleach in your eyes. Ouch. You can also fake the look with concealer. First, slick your brows down with a strong-hold gel, such as Benefit Cosmetics 24-HR Brow Setter Clear Brow Gel with Lamination Effect ($24 at Sephora).

Then, use a clean spoolie to apply concealer in layers until you get the effect you want. Be sure to use a full-coverage concealer, such as Tarte Shape Tape Concealer ($31 at Ulta Beauty) and e.l.f. 16HR Camo Concealer ($7 at Ulta Beauty).

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Maisie Williams

Just last month, the Game of Thrones actor attended the Givenchy Womenswear Spring/Summer 2023 show at Paris Fashion Week with bleached brows. She’s not new to the trend.

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Kendall Jenner

When Jenner showed up to the 2022 Met Gala, jaws dropped at her new, edgier style. The bleached brows are a perfect edition.

Source: Instagram

Noah Cyrus

Miley’s sister is currently on her own tour and she bleached her brows before the San Francisco show. They look amazing.

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Kim Kardashian

Though she has platinum hair with dark brows right now, at the Met Gala in 2016, she did the opposite with bleached brows and dark hair.

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Julia Fox

Fox might be the reigning queen of bleached brows and bold makeup as of late. Her eye-catching beauty looks have helped them become an even bigger trend in 2022.

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Bella Hadid

Both Bella and Gigi Hadid walked the runways with bleached brows.

Source: Instagram

Romane

The French model bleached her brows for Paris Fashion Week.

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Lady Gaga

At the 88th Annual Academy Awards in 2016, Lady Gaga drastically lightened her brows to match her golden blonde hair.