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Lee talks about realising how “thin-skinned” he is at home and at work, and how that sensitivity both hurts (wanting to cry over a throwaway comment about his clothes) and helps him get more quickly to the truth of what’s actually going on emotionally. He and Simon fold this into a wider question of whether you want to be “a radiator or a drain” in relationships, and how different couples’ styles of teasing or volatility shape what feels possible or survivable in a long-term partnership.

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net.

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Simon and Lee chew over how trauma and pain can’t really be compared or ranked, even inside cushioned-but-precarious academic lives where people still don’t feel safe. They then push a fraught hypothetical about raising a daughter into a misogynist world.

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net.

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Lee and Simon meet in person for the first time in three years and move from gallbladder scares and overstretched health systems into a reflection on post-pandemic disconnection, social capital and the erosion of community. They sit with the discomfort of feeling more willing to be “a doer, the joiner” abroad than in the UK, and the unsettling knowledge that not joining in also helps democracy to unravel.

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net.

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Lee’s rebellious gallbladder and the realisation that he’s not “a box with a brain in it” spark a conversation about midlife bodies that can no longer be ignored. From Lisbon-airport dehydration to shamelessly helping-while-queue-jumping anxious Americans, they sit with the mix of pride, shame and “curiosity, not judgement” toward other people’s (and their own) fragilities.

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net.

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Lee and Simon explore what it means to remove yourself – physically and psychically – from one life while tentatively building another. A wardrobe installation in Sassari becomes an existential reflection on identity, work and the quiet liberation of decoupling.

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net.

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A lively riff on “Good luck to you Leo Grande” becomes a tender meditation on grief, intimacy and how performances can feel “mannered” or disappear into truth. Plus a quick detour into house anatomy -- those elusive eaves and the ever-misnamed “Gabel end.”

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net.

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Lee arrives wildly apologetic (sugar hangover and “pre-arranged lateness”), then recounts a calm immigration-enforcement raid spotted on a dog walk where Jeff and Poppy bristled first. The pair unpack the crowd’s quiet “witnessing,” the shaky economics versus the “beautifully shiny ideology” of such raids, and how immigration talk often masks racism.

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net.

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Simon’s grim HMO viewing – “a cupboard with a toilet in it” – kicks off a sharp rant about rent, greed and our own complicity in gentrification (yes, palazzo included). Lee’s just out of Covid, still “quite brain foggy,” as they juggle setup jitters, wool-winding, and the uneasy balance of rights vs responsibilities.

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at info@midlifing.net.

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)