The Perimenopause Brain: Estrogen, Brain Fog, Libido, ADHD & Why You’re Not Losing Your Mind

In this episode of On the ’Mones, Kate Thomas, pharmacist, midlife woman, and professional oversharer, tackles one of the most distressing and misunderstood parts of perimenopause: what’s actually happening to your brain.

If you’ve found yourself forgetting words, losing focus, feeling anxious “for no reason,” questioning whether you suddenly have ADHD in your 40s, or quietly Googling early-onset dementia at 2am, this episode is for you.

Because here’s the truth:
You are not stupid. You are not lazy. And you are not losing your mind.
Your estrogen has simply stopped doing its full-time job.

Kate explains how estrogen functions as the brain’s unseen office manager, coordinating dopamine, serotonin and acetylcholine, and what happens when that system starts running on skeleton staff. The result? Brain fog, anxiety, poor memory, emotional volatility, sleep disruption, and a sudden collapse in cognitive resilience.

This episode covers:

• What estrogen actually does in the brain (spoiler: it’s not just about reproduction)
• Why brain fog feels cognitive, not emotional
• How perimenopause can unmask ADHD traits in midlife women
• The critical differences between brain fog, anxiety and burnout
• Why treating hormonal symptoms with productivity hacks or “just manage stress” advice backfires
• The role of sleep loss as a cognitive and emotional multiplier
• What estrogen therapy can, and can’t, do for cognition
• Where SSRIs, SNRIs, stimulants and off-label menopause medications do fit (and where they don’t)

Kate also shares a brutally honest story from a midlife dinner party that spirals into a candid conversation about libido, testosterone therapy, HSDD, and the unequal way men’s and women’s sexual health is treated in medicine, including why prescribing Viagra or Cialis without considering the partner is clinically short-sighted.

And in this week’s Woo of the Week, Kate takes a hard look at black cohosh:

• What it is (and what it definitely isn’t)
• What randomised controlled trials and Cochrane reviews actually show
• Why “natural” doesn’t mean effective
• And how oversold supplements cost women time, money and confidence

If you’ve ever felt gaslit by your own body, dismissed by well-meaning advice, or ashamed of changes you couldn’t explain, this episode gives you language, biology, and relief.

Because desire, clarity and resilience aren’t personality traits.
 They’re physiological processes, and they deserve real information, real medicine, and real conversations.

You’re not broken.
You’re early to the conversation.

Whether you are in perimenopause, approaching menopause, or simply trying to understand your hormones, I've got you. 

Read more about topics in this episode: www.medicationclarity.com.au

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You're listening to On the Moans, where we have conversations about hormones, midlife, and the moments that make us wonder Is it just me? I'm Kate. I'm a 48-year-old pharmacist and newly minted perimenopausal oversharer. This is where we talk openly about the changes we aren't prepared for, so we never have to feel alone in them again. I acknowledge the Camaragle people of the Iora Nation, the traditional custodians of the land which I am recording today. I pay my respects to elders past and present, and I extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal Land. Hello friends, welcome back to On the Moans, the podcast where we talk about hormones, midlife, and the precise moment you walk into a room, stop dead and think, I had a plan. I definitely had a plan. Today's episode is called the Perimenopause Brain, and before we do anything else, I want to say something clearly, emphatically, and ideally directly into the limbic system of every woman listening. You are not stupid. You are not lazy. You are not losing your mind. Your estrogen has simply stopped doing its full-time job. And not in a dramatic way. No exit interview, no handover. It just slowly and over time disengaged. Estrogen hasn't left. That would be too clean, too organized, too professional. What actually happened is worse. Do you remember that lovely movie Inside Out where the five emotions run the child's mind from headquarters? I think of Estrogen as the office manager who used to be incredible. She used to be first in and last out. Colour coded calendars, knew everyone's birthday. She made sure dopamine showed up on time. Serotonin stayed regulated. Acetylcholine kept the filing system neat. She ran the place so smoothly you didn't even know she existed. Then gradually, over the years, she stopped replying to emails and still has her out of office reply on from months ago. Started delegating things she used to handle herself. Began saying, let's circle back to that, and then never revisiting it. Now she's still technically employed. She shows up, she logs in. She's even still wearing pants. But the productivity is variable. Some days she's on it, sharp, efficient, back in charge, and you think she's back, baby. Other days she's taken a very long lunch, poured a glass of wine at two PM, and is having a nap under the desk. She just started doing the job part-time. And the problem is no one told your brain. So the systems she used to run seamlessly, focus, memory, mood regulation, task switching, are now being managed by a skeleton staff and a post-it note that says May the force be with you. As I'm saying this, it's starting to sound like any government department. Do more with us. You're still expected to perform at the same level, however, meet the same deadlines, remember all the things. But the thing that used to make that possible has quietly disengaged from her full time role. And she took all the neurotransmitters with her. So if you're forgetting words, losing focus, feeling anxious for no obvious reason, wondering if you've suddenly developed ADHD at forty something, or quietly Googling early onset dementia but make it subtle, congratulations, you're in exactly the right place. Today we're going to talk about what estrogen actually does in the brain, why ADHD symptoms love a midlife cameo, how to tell brain fog from anxiety from burnout, and which medications help versus the ones that just pat you on the head and say, Have you tried a planner? But first I need to tell you about a party. I was at Frenz birthday drinks. Well I say drinks. Her husband produces canapes and four roast pork bellies and salads and a huge cake, but she's described it as basic. Cracked me up. She's a bit older than I am, mid-50s, so the room was essentially a Venn diagram of women in midlife. Which means, statistically, everyone was tired, everyone had opinions, and everyone had at least one hormone-related grievance. Now I had literally just dropped an episode of On the Moans, so I was, let's call it, professionally uncontained. Anyone who stood next to me for more than five seconds was getting the pitch. Not the men. These things always split early into women here and men over there, but the women, no escape routes. Exits blocked, you're staying, we're talking hormones. And as the night went on and the wine kept flowing, because my friend's husband is one of those with a seller and feelings about tannins, so the wine was amazing. The conversation got louder, looser, and much more honest. Now, you already know I'm an oversharer. So picture this. Me, wine glass the size of a small aquarium, saying very casually, probably not at all casually, so I was on three pumps of the gel, but it takes forever to dry, and we're going to Hawaii, so I thought I'd try the patch. Oh, do you want to see it? And before anyone can answer, I'm multitasking, badly, holding the wine, pulling down the waistband of my pants, revealing the upper curve of my bum, and what looks like a circle of cling wrap with ambition stuck to it. And I take a micronized progesterone every night, no not cyclical, and I've got a marina, and I'm on Androphem 1% testosterone cream as well. That was it. That sentence was the starter pistol. Suddenly the whole group is comparing notes like we're at a pharmacy conference with better earrings and much better drinks. Gel versus patch, cyclical versus continuous progesterone, drospirinone, marina regret. Oh, I had one and I took it out. Well I couldn't tolerate it. The full menu, indications and side effects included. It helps that we all work in health. The language is fluent, fast, almost comforting. And then I noticed something. No one else was on testosterone, and let me tell you, there was interest. Which led, very naturally, to libido. Because in Australia, the only indication for testosterone in women is HSD, hypoactive sexual desire disorder. Which is a name that could only have been invented by a man who has never once been responsible for work, dinner, laundry, and the emotional regulation of the entire family group in the same 24 hour period. And I find myself saying out loud what I suspect so many women feel but rarely articulate. I just didn't want sex. I never initiated it. I could tolerate it, but it was distressing because I love my husband, my dear lovely husband. I want to be close to him, and I could see that this is hurting both of us. Every woman nodded. Someone said By the end of the day, I've got nothing left. It just feels like someone asking for more. Another said there's no spontaneity. I've got three kids. Which yes, correct. Aside, our youngest finished school in 2025, but when she was writing essays, and she wrote a lot of essays, she could barge into our room at any hour wanting us to listen to something she'd just written. Eleven PM midnight, and nothing kills the mood like the thought someone might barge in. Or, I'm guessing, traumatizes a 17 year old and throws off all HSE focus like walking in on your parents. So spontaneity wasn't exactly in the lexicon. And the thought I kept having back then was this I love this man and I want a partnered life with this man, but I don't want sex with this man. What does that mean? Are we just best friends? Am I missing something fundamental? It wasn't that I wanted sex with someone else, I didn't want sex with anyone. No thoughts, no drive, no spark, just nothing. Inert. And it's so easy to explain that away. Work, life, stress, familiarity, midlife, take your pick. And in previous hushed, embarrassed Soto Voce hints at conversations about this with my girlfriends, which always felt like I was in some way disrespecting my husband by the way, I would get the feeling that the same thing was happening to them too, and that it was just what happened as you got older, a fae accompli. But it was putting real strain on our relationship. When I went to see my incredible GP about estrogen for my osteopinic spine, she took a full and detailed medical history which included asking about my libido. How good is she? That's proper holistic care. She told me about testosterone therapy and said, there's about a 60% chance you'll notice a benefit. The relief I felt was enormous. I cannot overstate it. The relief that I wasn't the only one experiencing this. The relief that there wasn't something wrong with me. The relief that it wasn't a lack of effort or affection on my part. The relief that she wasn't judging me for it. The relief of talking to someone openly and honestly about it. The relief that there might be a solution. Back at the party, and at some point, now several wines deep, one of the women summed it up perfectly. Because now we're talking about erectile dysfunction and how effortlessly men can access sildenophil or tidalophil, whilst women need six months of distressing symptoms to qualify for HSDD and testosterone. And she said, every doctor prescribing Viagra or Cialis should be required to take a history that includes the partner. Not to police anyone's sex life, not to ask permission, but because prescribing a medication that enables sex to one person in a relationship without understanding what's happening for the other person is clinically irresponsible. If you're increasing one partner's capacity for sex, it stands to reason you should ask whether the other partner is struggling, symptomatic, or in need of support themselves. Because in midlife these things don't happen in isolation. The man sitting in your consult room is likely partnered with someone the same age, likely a woman who may be perimenopausal or menopausal, losing libido, experiencing pain, fatigue, brain fog, vaginal atrophy, or hormonal distress. So if you prescribe a PDE5 inhibitor to one half of the relationship without acknowledging what's happening to the other half, you're not solving a problem. You're shifting the pressure. The medication may be doing exactly what it's designed to do, while the relationship quietly absorbs the cost. Good medicine doesn't just treat organs, it treats people and sometimes the space between them. Mic drop. Brilliant. Absolutely fucking brilliant. Another aside, I did a TikTok video on sildenophyll todalophil, how they work, PDE5 inhibitors, and what that actually does. Means the signaling molecule, CGMP, hangs around for longer, therefore smooth muscle relaxes and blood vessels dilate and blood flow increases, and well you can imagine the result. And I said in this TikTok that the partner should give informed consent, as in not consent to take the medication, but more about mutual expectation and safety in a shared sexual context because the PDE 5 inhibitors can change timing, arousal, and assumptions, and sex works better when both people are on the same page and both people know what is in play, just like with contraception or alcohol or anything else that affects capacity or experience. And I was astounded by the number of comments from men saying that getting consent from the partner was insane or asking why you would need to. Maybe that's a longer conversation for another episode, but aren't we teaching consent to our children and young adults? So wouldn't it stand to reason that we should also be gaining consent from our sexual partners at an older age? Just because we've been married or equivalent for 25 years doesn't mean consent is a given, especially if one side of the relationship is undergoing medical treatment that will change the sexual landscape in that relationship. Anyway, the thing I keep coming back to after nights like that is none of us are broken, and none of us are failing at marriage, intimacy, or womanhood. We are just hormonally changed, and no one had explained that desire isn't a personality trait, that it is just bloody biology. Incidentally, I wonder how much of the conversation in the other half of the Venn diagram, i.e. amongst the guys in the room, was about the same topic. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that none of the guys were talking about the literally life-changing hormonal shift that their wives were undergoing and how that has affected their sexual relationship, which is interesting in itself, right? Such a hormonal change in one half of the relationship, yet the other half either isn't aware or is aware but doesn't know how to talk about it. Maybe they really want to talk about it, but they feel too ashamed or embarrassed, or keep in mind that the vast majority of our friends are in healthcare. Actually, the majority are doctors. So if male doctors don't feel like they can talk to their closest friends about the changes that are occurring in their relationship, then what chance do other men out there have? These are men that are comfortable with medical language and medical conditions and intellectually know what is happening to their poor wives. But heaven forbid they talk about it with their friends. That might normalise it, and then where would we be? When you finally have language for what is happening either in your body or in your relationship, the shame lifts, the silence breaks, and you realise you're not alone. You're just early to the conversation. When most of us think sex hormones, we think ovaries, uteruses, periods, libido, reproductive organs, sexual function. That's the mental filing cabinet we've all been given. Only just recently I've realized something. My own light bulb moment after starting estrogen therapy, which I might add was started because I have osteopenia in my spine, and estrogen will help me hold on to the skeleton I have. And not because I was cognizant of any brain fog or mood shifts or weight gain. I was having some hot flushes, but they were under control by way of phesolinitant or viosa, which is a non hormonal treatment for hot flushes. I didn't identify as having any cognition symptoms of estrogen withdrawal. Or so I thought, until I started it, and wow, can I feel the difference now? Estrogen is not just a reproductive hormone, it's a neurological hormone. Estrogen doesn't just live in your pelvis, it lives in your brain. It's deeply involved in how your brain processes information, regulates mood, holds attention, forms memories, and switches between tasks. Which is to say it's involved in how you function as a human being. And it does this by interacting with neurotransmitters, your brain's chemical messengers, the tiny office workers keeping the whole operation running. Let's start with dopamine. Dopamine is motivation, focus, reward, drive. It's the I can start this task and finish it chemical. Estrogen helps dopamine fire efficiently. When estrogen drops, dopamine signaling gets floppy. And that mess looks like poor concentration, procrastination, staring at a simple task thinking I physically cannot begin this. Sound familiar? Next, serotonin. Serotonin is mood stability, emotional regulation, anxiety buffering. Estrogen increases serotonin availability and receptor sensitivity. It helps serotonin do its job. So when estrogen fluctuates, anxiety rises, mood feels fragile, resilience disappears. You're not overreacting, your serotonin system is under-supporting. And then there's acetylcholine, the unsung hero. This one does not get enough airtime, but it is critical for memory, learning, word recall. Estrogen supports acetylcholine production and activity. So when estrogen drops, this is where word finding problems, short-term memory lapses, tip of the tongue moments come from. This is why perimenopause brain fog feels cognitive, not emotional. You're not imagining it, your brain chemistry has changed. And this is usually the point where women say, Why do I suddenly think I have undiagnosed ADHD at 45? Estrogen has been quietly compensating for dopamine vulnerability your entire life. Many women, especially high-functioning, high masking women, have mild to moderate ADHD traits that estrogen smooths over. Remember, ADHD is a spectrum and we're all on it somewhere. I'm talking about organization, task initiation, emotional regulation. Then perimenopause arrives, estrogen becomes unpredictable, dopamine loses its support, and suddenly you can't focus, you interrupt people, you forget appointments, you can't find the dog's eye drops, that was me. Noise feels unbearable, mess feels aggressive, your tolerance evaporates. Nothing new has appeared, the scaffolding has been removed. This is why ADHD diagnoses spike in midlife women. Well, that and the fact that we now have awareness about it, unlike 30 years ago when the conversation was very hush-hush, and you were told to try harder or be more organized or other such nonsense. And it's why stimulant medications feel life-changing for some and absolutely feral-inducing for others. Brain fog versus anxiety versus burnout. Because these get lumped together and they shouldn't. Brain fog feels like slow thinking, word loss, poor recall, mental fatigue. This is largely neurochemical and hormonal. Anxiety looks like racing thoughts, hypervigilance, doom spirals, physical symptoms like palpitation. This is often estrogen, serotonin, GABA disruption. Burnout looks like emotional numbness, cynicism, exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix, loss of joy. Burnout is not a personal failure, it's often layered on top of hormonal vulnerability and life. So here's my take. If you treat brain fog with anxiety medication alone, or burnout with motivational hacks, you will feel gas-lit by your own body. Let me explain. If your primary problem is hormonal brain chemistry, fluctuating estrogen affecting dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, sleep, and stress circuits, but the solution offered doesn't match that biology, your experience stops making sense to you. So treat brain fog with anxiety meds and your anxiety might ease, but your memory and focus don't come back. You're calmer, but still can't think. Treat burnout with productivity systems or push-through advice, and effort goes up but capacity doesn't. Output stays flat. And then you start thinking, why isn't this working for me? Everyone else seems fine. What's wrong with me? Maybe I'm just weak, lazy, or bad at coping. Nothing's wrong with you. The intervention is aimed at behavior. The driver is neurochemistry and hormones. Your body keeps sending signals, fatigue, fog, irritability, poor sleep, and when the advice doesn't resolve them, it feels like your body is lying to you. It isn't, it's being incredibly consistent. We're just not always listening to the right message. Sleep loss isn't just a side effect of perimenopause, it's a multiplier. Poor sleep worsens dopamine signaling, memory consolidation, emotional regulation, pain perception. You know this already. Estrogen normally protects sleep architecture. So when estrogen fluctuates, night waking increases, early morning waking increases, sleep becomes lighter and more fragmented. Then the next day, cognition tanks, anxiety spikes, tolerance disappears. You're not failing at sleep hygiene, your hormones are sabotaging it. Estrogen therapy and cognition. Estrogen therapy can improve cognitive symptoms in perimenopause, but timing matters. Estrogen helps neurotransmitter signaling, cerebral blood flow, sleep quality, but it's not a stimulant and it's not instant. Improvements tend to show up as clearer thinking, less mental effort, better word recall, improved emotional resilience. If cognition is your primary issue, estrogen is treating the cause, not the coping mechanism. SSRIs, SNRIs and stimulants. Context matters. These medications absolutely have a place. SSRIs and SNRIs can help when anxiety is dominant, mood symptoms are persistent, rumination is overwhelming, SSRIs are used to treat hot flushes. They support serotonin and noradrenaline, but they don't replace estrogen. They can reduce distress, but they're not treating the hormonal driver. Stimulants help when true ADHD is present. Dopamine deficit is prominent. But in estrogen deficient non ADHD brains, stimulants can increase anxiety, worsen sleep. amplify emotional reactivity, which is why some women feel incredible and others feel like they've had three espresso and an argument. Welcome to the off-label world of menopause care. These aren't antidepressants, they're system modulators. Clonidine reduces sympathetic overdrive, helps with hot flushes and sleep, calms the nervous system. Gabapentin helps with sleep maintenance, reduces night sweats, can ease neuropathic discomfort. Melatonin supports circadian rhythm, helps with sleep onset, but dose matters more is not better. Works best as a course, not a random one off. For some women these are absolute game changers. And we'll go into them in another episode because there's a lot more to learn here. And now it's time for woo of the week. This is the segment where we take a popular supplement, something you've seen on Instagram, something a well meaning friend has pressed into your hand at a dinner party, or in this case quite possibly something an old fashioned GP told you about, and we ask a very simple question. What does the evidence actually say? This week's woo is black kohosh. Black cohosh is everywhere in midlife conversations. It gets recommended for hot flushes, mood swings, irritability, sleep, hormone balance. Black cohosh is often spoken about like it's herbal estrogen, like it's oestrogen's earthy cousin who wears long flowy dresses from the tree of life, doesn't need a prescription and won't upset anyone at a dinner party. And that framing is doing a lot of work. When women in perimenopause say I feel flat, I can't think, I'm irritable, I don't feel like myself, they're not describing a vague vibe problem. They are describing a neurological hormone shift. And blackkahosh has in some circles become the default answer to a question it was never designed to solve. So what does the science and there's quite a bit of it around Blackcohos say first what Blackkahosh is not? Blackkahosh does not contain estrogen it does not increase estrogen levels. It does not replace estrogen's role in the brain. That matters because estrogen is not just about periods and ovaries. As we've talked about estrogen was the office manager in the brain. She coordinated dopamine, supported serotonin, kept acetylcholine running the filing system. Blackcoche does not do that job. At best, Blackcoche appears to have weak effects on serotonin receptors. Which means if it helps at all it's likely through mood modulation not hormone replacement. That's the theory anyway. Now let's look at the trials there was a large well-designed NIH-funded randomized controlled trial in the early 2000s that looked at black cohosh in peri and postmenopausal women to test the efficacy of three herbal regimens and hormone therapy for the relief of vasomotor symptoms compared with placebo. This was 351 women between the ages of 45 and 55 randomized, double blind placebo controlled followed for 12 months. They compared black cohosh 160m daily a multibotanical supplement with black cohosh 200 mg daily plus nine other ingredients a multibotanical plus dietary soy counselling conjugated estrogen 0.625 micrograms plus or minus madroxy progesterone and placebo. Rate and intensity of vasomotor symptoms were measured on a scale. Their conclusion black cohosh used in isolation or as part of a multibotanical regimen shows little potential as an important therapy for relief of vasomotor symptoms. When black cohosh had every opportunity to show up and do something meaningful it didn't. But I've heard it works for some women yes you have and that's because there are smaller trials that show modest benefit but when you zoom in the pattern is familiar. Small sample sizes, short durations six to eight weeks, subjective endpoints, different extracts, different doses, sometimes industry funding and the effects when present are usually small and often barely better than placebo. This is the crucial point. Something can be statistically significant without being clinically meaningful. Feeling five percent less irritable on a questionnaire does not mean your brain chemistry has been restored. What do the systematic reviews say? When all of these trials are pulled together and they have been multiple Cochrane reviews the conclusion is consistent, the evidence is mixed, the quality is low and the results are inconsistent. That's not a ringing endorsement. That's science politely saying we really tried to find something here. Mood is where black cohosh keeps its foothold. There is some suggestion and I'm being very precise with my language that black cohosh may have mild serotonergic effects which means some women may feel a bit calmer, a bit less edgy, a bit less irritable. That does not mean hormones are being balanced, it means mood may be slightly modulated and that distinction matters especially in this episode because if what's driving your symptoms is estrogen slowly disengaging from her role as the brain's office manager, then a supplement that gently nudges serotonin is not addressing the core issue. It's handing the remaining staff a lavender scented candle and saying do your best. Safety, briefly, because it matters Blackkahosh is not oestrogenic which is why it's often suggested to women who can't take estrogen but it's not completely benign. There are rare reports of liver toxicity quality varies wildly between products formulation matters more than people realize which is another reason results are all over the place. So why does blackkahosh keep coming up? Because it sits in a very comfortable space it's natural non-confrontational doesn't require a prescription and doesn't force anyone to have a bigger conversation about hormones, sex, aging or medicine. And for women who are already being told your labs are normal, try stress management, have you tried yoga? Black cohosh feels like doing something. That impulse makes sense but we need to be honest about what it can and can't do. The bottom line yes black cohosh has been studied in randomized controlled trials. No, it has not shown consistent clinically meaningful benefit for estrogen loss, cognition, libido or hot flushes. If it helps you feel a little calmer and you're tolerating it, then that experience is real and valid for you. But the evidence does not support black cohosh as a solution to what's actually happening in perimenopause. This week's woo isn't dangerous necessarily but it doesn't offer any benefits we now know that replacing estrogen offers like cardiac protection or dementia risk reduction. It's just oversold. And in midlife when the biology is already complex oversold solutions cost women time, clarity, money and confidence and that's why we are talking about it. So here's where I want to leave you. If you've been listening to this episode and quietly thinking oh that's me that explains a lot hear this clearly nothing about what you're experiencing means you're failing. You're not bad at coping you're not weak you're not dramatic and you're definitely not imagining things. What's changing is not your character it's your biology. Estrogen didn't just regulate periods and pregnancies it regulated how your brain worked quietly in the background how you focused remembered tolerated desired recovered and now it's taking a step back from that role not all at once not politely but slowly unevenly and without much warning and the world has not adjusted its expectations accordingly you're still expected to perform at the same level care the same amount give the same energy want the same things while the systems that once made that possible are running on reduced staff. That disconnect between what's expected of you and what your biology can realistically deliver is where the shame creeps in and remember shame thrives in silence. That is why language matters and that's why this conversation matters because once you know what's happening you stop blaming yourself for it. You stop trying to fix a hormonal problem with willpower you stop treating neurochemistry like it's a motivational issue you stop assuming that desire, clarity and resilience are personality traits you've somehow misplaced. They're not they're physiological processes and they deserve physiological solutions, thoughtful care and honest conversations not woo, not platitudes, not endurance and push through and definitely not the idea that you should just be grateful and quiet about it. So if there's one thing I hope you take from this episode it is this. You don't need to try harder you need better information better support and better medicine delivered with respect for the fact that you are still the same intelligent capable person you've always been your brain hasn't failed you it's asking for backup. And now you know that you're no longer alone in it. Lovely friends see you next time we get on the mines. Bye bye