Yesterday, I caught myself laughing out loud at an advert on TV.  No-one else was in the room at the time to make it seem normal.  I do laugh a fair amount, but can’t remember the last time I was in stitches.  It was either over a year ago when me and Ryan were trying…

It’s amazing how things you read when you’re wee stay with you.  A lot of the books I raced through when I was ten had a very optimistic outlook.  Just as well, inheriting my mother’s bias towards happy endings, I wouldn’t have tolerated anything else – even Matthew Cuthbert and Beth March dying was pushing…

Just spent the last twenty minutes reading posts from at least 30 people who have MS, finishing the sentence,  ‘if I could, I would…’.  It made me smile, to think that other people have the same wishes as me, but it was sad too. Nobody wished they could start their own business, or get rich…

I’m discovering that I really love the beginning of things, but hate re-living them.  I also look forward to the end though.  The middle, well, that’s the toughest part. Writing the first draught of my latest novel attempt, I was energized with the first few chapters, and quickly jumped to the ending.  Actually, I think…

When I was growing up, every Sunday evening while we were eating barnbrack, mum put on ‘Sounds Sacred’ with Noel Batteye on Radio Ulster.  I’m afraid to say that me and my three siblings always groaned at this – we were certainly not the target audience, as Noel oozed through dedications to 90 year old…

That song from Frozen is caterwauled by my daughter nearly every day in this house.  Actually, not trained to clearly enunciate her words, it usually sounds like the brother-friendly version – ‘Le-go!’. Letting go of the past, or things that have become too cumbersome, can be a good thing.  For example, I’ve spent days going…

“We’re just children walking around, surprised that we’re tall.”  (Noel Fielding). What age are you?  And what age do you feel, really?  For so long, I have blamed it on being ‘the baby of the family’ – my inability to hold my own in an argument, my infuriating indecision, my propensity to burst into tears…

It’s been a lonely couple of weeks.  My weak legs have won out, and the need for the kids to be out and about has meant that other people have taken them away.  I was relieved that they weren’t paying the indoors price for my bad health, and that they were enjoying the glorious September…

I’m sitting here searching for something happy, after spending a morning looking at articles and video clips on the history of the Troubles.  All of a sudden, I am very glad I was born in the eighties, in a leafy suburb of Lisburn, and was spared the huge trauma of 1970s Belfast.  Of course, the…

I did a stupid thing last night.  Or, actually, what I forgot to do was the stupid part.  My wee boy lost another tooth yesterday, and was immediately excited about the tooth fairy.  He had clearly, or conveniently, forgotten that his dad had told him well over a year ago that such a thing didn’t…