I am messy. I always have been. I don’t know that I ever really learned how to tidy up in a way that made sense to me, learned how to declutter, downsize, re-order, prioritise. I have a big inbox. I have a floor-drobe and now I have kids, a house heaving with stuff. We’ve tidied […]
Daring to bare is difficult and odd.It also makes you ponder strange things, like why am I persisting in writing about something so embarrassing? Will it come back to bite me in the bum when people realise how rank my health has been? And what will my dad say if he reads a piece I’ve […]
Last week’s episode of Call The Midwife caused a Twitter storm before it had even started. The continuity announcer introduced it as gentle nostalgia. The sort of adjectives suggesting a quaint, mild, uncontroversial, quiet show. I wonder why, I think, snarling and growing another skein, why does the announcer emphasise the idea this show is […]
Being pregnant is a fragile time, and yet it is easy to imagine any complex feelings you have, from ambivilence to fear, from hysterial to doubt, are unusual and some sort of personal indicator of your lack of worthiness. I always think of Antenatal Depression as Postnatal Depression’s slightly more stigmatised and demonised little sister. […]
Every Sunday morning I have a chore. It is just a small job, five minutes, maybe ten tops, but crucial. I have to refill my pill box for the week, and note down if there are any I need to re-repeat. It doesn’t take long, though it is fiddly. It is also a useful thing […]
One of Barack Obama’s books of 2017 was Naomi Alderman’s The Power. Mine were Adam Kay’s This Is Going To Hurt tied with Mary Beard’s Women And Power. But all three had a profound effect on me. I’m interested in Obama’s view, not because I agree with him on everything but because I will always […]
I’ve talked through my traumatic birth many times now, and spent a lot of time wondering whether I will ever be able to get over the sense that I could have done it better. That I could edit or replay the experience. Do a less terrible job. Save myself. Stop things going south down under […]
Sometimes things are a sign. They remind us of who we are and what we should be and what we should do. And sometimes, if we are sensible, we listen to them. As women the discussion of our bodies have been drawn so sharply into mainstream over recent years, that it feels almost dangerous. There […]
Now I’ve been parenting for 9 years, I know there are only three rules or pieces of advice that are worth anything. Two of them I have written about before: Buy a coat with a hood. Not for them, for you. You will never, ever, ever be able to handle an umbrella and a buggy, […]
This post is a bit late, I’ve missed the rush of blogs and features on SATS and school reports and the start of the holidays. It has been in the air though – exam and test results and that dreaded social impetus which is the humble brag.