I sometimes imagine my grief plotted on a graph, like the London Stock Exchange, or the milestones of a serial dieter. Time marches along the bottom, survival charted first in hours; then weeks and months; now years. Seven years of grief. Along the side, invisible markers of emotional wellbeing: happy; stable; broken. A thick black […]
Ten inspiring ideas to try instead of NaNoWriMo
As we hurtle through October towards November, writers’ thoughts turn to NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month. The NaNoWriMo challenge is to complete the first draft of a novel (a minimum of 50,000 words) in just thirty days, and fans of the annual event maintain it is perfect for bashing out early drafts, pushing through writer’s […]
The domino effect
It has been a challenging week. As we drove back from a weekend up North, Georgie was sick so violently it hit the windscreen, and so copiously I had to scoop it out of the footwell with my bare hands. Parked on the hard shoulder of the M1, I hosed poor naked Georgie down with […]
Ten thousand steps a day
In order to maintain a healthy level of fitness, one should take around ten thousand steps each day. I bought a pedometer and decided I would track my progress over the course of a few days. The last time I did this I was working full-time, and averaged almost 20,000 steps a day, thanks to […]
I am a terrible driver
I have been driving for twenty years. I have driven around the infamous Arc de Triomphe, across several countries and on Britain’s motorways, dual-carriageways and rural B roads. I have been through police driving school, and am trained in high-speed pursuits. All in all, I am an experienced motorist. I am also a terrible, terrible […]
I am a fallen tree
When life becomes a little overwhelming, and the past threatens to interrupt the peace of the present, I go for a walk. I was on such a walk when I saw a tree stretching right across the path. It must have fallen many, many years ago: the ground is settled, and the earth has built […]