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…

I was at a wedding last Saturday, and five minutes after sitting down at a table of strangers, it happened.  They were all younger than my husband and me, two married and all childless.  The guy I was sitting next to was a submariner  in the Navy – what a very exciting and impressive job…

Note to self: when the days get shorter, when the children have gone off to school and you’re left alone to find a different purpose, when winter brings unwelcome, much dreaded spells of bad health, or when unexpected troubles come, don’t forget that you had a bright summer.  That you felt warmth.  The kids were…

I did something yesterday that really was a long time coming, but I never seemed to be able to face it before.  I flung open an over-stuffed wardrobe, and pulled out all my shoes.  The ones I had no chance of walking or even standing in anymore.  I’d kept them in this wild hope that…

You were always there, standing tall when I was rushing around, going here and there.  Sometimes I forgot to look at you, but you stayed the same, ready to be noticed but unaffected if you weren’t.  When I sat down with my tea most mornings, there you were, and then we faced each other. You…