For a good while I thought the people near us called us ‘them ‘uns’ just because they didn’t know our real name.  It happened on the bus, and at the school gates mainly – they’d look at me and my mum, and then turn to each other to say it.  It was only as I…

Last year, I could…When that photo was taken I had just walked down the field, or up a mountain… ‘Mummy remember when you carried me across the channel to the forest?”   That was then. Before my legs got so weak, I managed many things, and did many things. Before is a difficult place to…

I was out in a beautiful forest park with the family on Easter Monday.  It was fairly busy, so as we walked through the trees, we met a good few people – couples jogging, families with crying toddlers, people who didn’t fit into any neat category.  And that’s when I got to thinking about how,…

Another very tough week has come my way – the part when I couldn’t finish the nursery’s 4 year old-friendly sponsor walk wins the prize for one of the worst, most humiliating moments of my life so far.  So, you can understand how the words ‘His eyes are always upon us’ were not particularly helpful. …

A poor life this is if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. W. H. Davies A few weeks ago, I was hunting for stones and shells on the beach with my wee girl.  Knowing these would have to be brought home, and probably displayed, I was encouraging her to really…

When we went to see the first field Ryan wanted to buy, I hated it.  It was at the edge of a housing estate, there was a scattering of plastic bottles at the gate, and most of it was just lumpy, reedy bogland.  There was a stretch of the river Lagan at the bottom, and…

So I was in the queue waiting to pay for my petrol, when the lady behind (well, kind of in my space beside) changed from talking to herself to talking to me.  Sadly, she was clearly under the influence of something, and although it took me back to my Govan days working with recovering addicts,…

It’s definitely in the blood – my grandfather grew up beside it, my mum wouldn’t go away anywhere without it, and my siblings are the same.  When I’m at my lowest or grumpiest point, my husband often takes us all to the coast.  There, I let the view wash over me, smashing down my anger,…

He was always in stitches at something, you know the face creased up, tears coming, body bent, hands gripping stomach, no noise coming out kind of laughter.  I’d only joked that I was thinking of sending the kids up the chimney to clean it, not exactly side-splittingly funny, but there he was, laughing his leg…

I’ve hummed and hawed over writing this down for a few days now, until something I read set me free. What led up to this was a weekend of walking the streets of London.  My legs have been weak and unsteady for four years now, but I was convinced that I could soldier on.  It…