He rummaged through the broken pencils, bits of chalk, rubber bands and old receipts to find a thin ring-bound notepad. He took it and the only working pen to the table. He looked out beyond the dripping tap, the empty counter and checked the sky. Grey but not black. He’d be dry at least. The…

That nursery rhyme has been stuck on repeat in my head for at least a week now. Did you know that it was only in the mid 20th century that people associated it with the Plague and Black Death? When it was originally sung or chanted in the 17th century, there was no such dark…

Last week I read a tweet criticising the common tendency now to dismiss the coronavirus as something that will affect only the elderly and the vulnerable: the ‘only’s’.

My daughter is scared of heights. It took her at least seven months to jump off the edge into a swimming pool. Up until that point she stood, knees bent, ready to go. But she always changed her mind at the last minute. It took the swimming instructor putting his hand out for her to…

‘When a thing is wick, it has a life about itMaybe not a life like you and meBut somewhere there’s a secret streak of green inside itNow come and let me show you what I mean’*

I heard that song by Sia yesterday and felt incredibly sad. You would think that the thought of swinging from anything would be an exhilarating thing… Since November I’ve been having a health blip and all the self-pity that comes with it. I have watched my life shrink, my steps shorten, my movements slow, my…

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe being a more or less house-bound author is to blame. But recently I have discovered that my mood on a Monday has become inextricably bound up with the number of likes I get for the weekly blogs I write. As that number drops, so does my confidence.

Yesterday, my sister and I gave my mum a tape recorder. Yes, it’s like going back twenty, thirty years. The reason is that she has all these tapes that she wants to play again. She phoned last night sounding happy. Her old favourite Don Francisco was blaring in the background. When life is hard, or…

Please accept my apologies for this interruption to your normal blog based service. It’s time for a commercial break. I’ve been blogging here for 10 years, and I would like to keep going. As many of you know, I’ve been calling myself an author for the last few years too, and some of you have…

Sometimes, for a host of reasons, your world shrinks.