Families are busy making Christmas preparations as colder, darker days draw in here in London. There are wreaths going up on front doors, houses dressed in twinkling lights, pantomime tickets being booked, Christmas trees lugged in and decorated, and the constant ring of the doorbell as gifts arrive for loved ones. If this sounds familiar,… Read More Is there a perfect Christmas or do you grin and bear it?
For a long time, I’ve been trying to find some balance in my writing life. A balance between finding enough time for my passion and stopping it bleeding into family time. A balance between creating words and reading them. A balance between consuming story-telling in books and story-telling on screens. A balance between my words… Read More Finding Balance and Genre News
Since leaving a nine to five job, I’ve grown more introverted. My extroversion, necessary for my previous job, was always a skill learned from being part of a big, boisterous family. Today, I prefer interactions in smaller groups. Large gatherings feed my curiosity about people but are ultimately draining. In a world full of megaphones,… Read More Writerly Introversion and the Power of Silence
I didn’t make a concrete plan at the beginning of this year. I knew I had a novel to write this year, perhaps two, but other than that, I thought I would just be. The political landscape has been so tough these past few years, so draining, that living in the moment sometimes seems like… Read More Coming Out of Hibernation
I’ve been thinking recently about superstitions. How even in our post-enlightenment, educated world, with reams of information and expertise at our fingertips, superstitions still have a strong hold. I’m a logical woman and yet sometimes superstitions creep up on me like a beacon from a past life. Bad luck superstitions Superstitions, of course, are beliefs… Read More Superstitions, Intellect and the Unseen
I am sad. There I said it. I don’t like to be the sad one. Not that there’s anything wrong with being sad: we all feel like this sometimes, and some more than others. In fact, I’d argue that if you don’t feel sad sometimes then your skin is probably too thick, and you might… Read More Sadness
This post was originally published in Open Thought Vortex magazine, a wonderful place for discovering new writing. Traditions can be the smallest things. The Spanish wearing red underwear at Christmas. A football team supported by generations of a family. Your grandmother’s curry recipe. Strawberries and cream at Wimbledon. Bonfires on Guy Fawkes Night. Carving pumpkins.… Read More How to Make Traditions Work for You
I’ll tell you how I’m feeling today, if you tell me too. Not for us, the false niceties papering over our humanness. Not for us, the filters to smooth out our skin on social media, to give the grey pallor of our faces a sunlight hue. I’m tired and overwhelmed, and I know it will… Read More Are You Feeling Overwhelmed?
I’ve not been here for a while. The juggling of balls has been hard this summer, and there has not been enough pieces of me to share around. The baby is eight months now, and I’ve been ready for months to smooth out a white page, to fill it with words until every corner is… Read More A Love Letter to Openness and the Creatives in my Life
Some days it seems as though my mobile phone has become an extension of my body: another limb or brain. Or a succubus. Why is it that we long to reach certain goal posts as children, ones which as adults are no longer enticing? Children as young as ten clamour for their own phones. What… Read More On Communication Overload
We went to the beach at East Wittering, a few hours drive away. The sea air was bracing, the sand between my toes cool. Beach huts in primary colours and bold patterns stood against the grey sky. The baby fussed, and I was secretly pleased to leave our frisbee-playing big kids in their father’s care… Read More Yin and Yang, and the Folly of Absolute Certainty
Happy new year, readers. I hope the coming year finds you healthy and hopeful, that you uncover pockets of laughter, reach into your potential and fill the spaces of emptiness that sometimes haunt us all. I’m late with my well wishes, I know. I have an excuse though. Littlest Stelter was born a month ago,… Read More On Beauty, Cynicism and Action
There is a time to be silent. I value it more as I grow older. The quiet after I close the children’s bedroom doors after kissing them goodnight, or when I sink into the bath. I don’t need to fill the space with noise, like I did before. It reminds me of my maternal grandfather,… Read More The Burden of Communication and the Potency of Silence
We’re hurtling into the new year, like a comet coming into land. The past twelve months have flown faster than the ones before, while Old Man Time, scythe in hand, gleefully waits. We make vows to welcome in the fresh year, hoping at the end of it we will be fitter, happier, more successful. Setting… Read More On Becoming, or Finding Flow
I’ve been thinking recently about how responsibilities grow with age. Freedom too, in many ways. When I was younger happiness came readily, bubbling and buoyant, easily read from the smiles on my face. That happiness is no longer a constant effervescent source. It has eased instead into a contentment I have to work at. It’s… Read More Finding Balance: Light and Dark
My mum’s a giver. Instinctively, wilfully, even destructively. That is, she puts herself last. It’s a running joke in our family how often we hear the same phrase when speaking to mum on the phone: “I’ve not had time to brush my teeth yet.” My parents have an open door policy. The phone rings off… Read More On Self-Love and People Pleasing
Today I feel lost and broken and sad. I’m sitting in the conservatory of the house we rent in Geneva. The doors are open and a light breeze is playing with the hem of my dress. The sky is a blue blanket dotted with wisps of cotton. I want to fly into it and disappear.… Read More Coping with the Tide of Life
Hands up if you wrote a list of your priorities at the start of the year and if you have failed to maintain them. A new year holds such promise. Why do we set ourselves up to fail each year and end up feeling miserable? We try to give our lives meaning but what if… Read More On Self-Criticism, Compassion and Progress
There is something enchanting about the innocence of youth. Have you ever noticed how the old take comfort from the young? As if an encounter with youth is a tonic for their own regrets, cleansing, a guard against mortality even. The promise of youth is a wonderful thing. Yet however exhilarating this passionate freefall, disappointments… Read More The Romance of Youth and Romanticising Writing
It’s been almost two weeks since the children and I arrived in Geneva. J had been living with a tiny amount of rented furniture in what was to become our new family home. It felt odd at the time he said, imagining what the house would feel and sound like when it was filled with… Read More Hello New Life