The Power of Words
Ok, the gap between two and three is all you need to know about coping with online teaching and toddler management during lockdown! Better late than never. This one is inspired by the rather brilliant Simone Segouin (codename Nicole Minet. I wish I had a codename) who joined the French resistance at 17. She received […]
Read More
Much more lighthearted and unusual this week. I was reading the introduction to Cathy Newman’s book Bloody Brilliant Women and I came across an nun from the 10th century who wore golden gowns and argued with the male clergy. I loved the idea of a celebrity culture existing back then around kings and bishops, and thought […]
Read More
Like most people at the moment, I don’t know what to do. Scrolling through endless feeds and WhatsApp messages bring a strange feeling into my gut – helplessness. So many people working hard to help others, while I spend the day checking in online for my students or finding ways to amuse my toddler. Somehow, […]
Read More
You may have noticed a large gap since I last wrote a blog. I certainly have. I’m currently working my way (very slowly, baby/job/rest of life permitting) through The Artist’s Way. It’s a wonderful book that is forcing me to stop and look at when I really stopped writing, stopped believing I could do it. […]
Read More
Over the past few weeks, something strange has happened. In the tiny bubbles of time I get between work and baby, I’ve started to write again. At first, it wasn’t much. A few scenes that barely reached 300 words. Some thoughts, a memory, nothing substantial. But it was something. I opened up ‘stickies’ on my […]
Read More
It dangles at the end of the bed. The plastic clips rattle against the bed frame when I walk past it. The straps have yielded to the stretch of my baby’s changing size, the buckles clasped around me in snow, wind and sun. It’s been left there like a forgotten thing – the sling that we […]
Read More
With one week to go, the nature of our trip has changed a lot. We’ve gone from itinerant dwellers and lone travellers to cohabiters with a group of four others in a flat in LA for an entire week. No more quiet meals and being in bed by 9pm. We’ve been chatting around the table […]
Read More
Moments of consequence only become so after they have passed. Once you have enough distance to appreciate their magnitude. Sitting on a plane, the world shrunk to a line of glass circles, the only thing I have in my head is a string of lyrics to an inane pop song. At some point I will […]
Read More
We al love the idea of leaving the dreary hum of normality behind. Magical realism, science fiction, fantasy, call it what you like, almost everyone can think of an example that has transported them to a new world and made them come back to earth with something lingering in the back of their mind. Yet […]
Read More
My shelf is in danger of falling down. We put it up to replace the bedside tables, so it hovers above our heads, laden with all the stuff I used to cram into those drawers. A basket filled with far too many tubes of half-finished hand cream, assorted earphones, toe separators, the tiny glass pig […]
Read More