I hadn’t expected my mum to die. I remember that, as I look at the shoes – a pair of cheap, shiny black ballet pumps that I had to go out and buy, because I didn’t have any shoes with me that were suitable for a funeral. Shoes I haven’t seen in 8 years, because […]
Tag Archives: personal
Christmas 2020 was never going to be normal, was it? But I suspect I am not alone in feeling a little sad that we’re approaching the end of the year and all that ‘it’ll be over by summer!’ optimism now feels like a far-away fever dream. Many people are facing a stressful, complicated Christmas – […]
I suspect turning 50 is a weird milestone for many people, even if it doesn’t happen in the middle of a pandemic. But as my half-century is now only a few weeks away, I’ve naturally been thinking about what it means for me – as a freelancer in an industry that’s in freefall, as a […]
So this week I hit what I had thought was an impossible milestone – 150 coffees bought for me on Ko-fi! I originally started this page (nearly 2 years ago) as a bit of an experiment. As someone who has always struggled a bit with impostor syndrome, and marvelled at the ability of my more […]
This blog previously appeared on my Newcastle blog, Prodigal Geordie “Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same […]
So, a confession, and one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to admit: for the past couple of years, I have lost all interest in writing. No biggie, right? There are worse things to admit, even to yourself. But when you’ve spent more than half of your life defining yourself as ‘writer’, what happens […]
Your gentle reminder that: no kindness is too small, because no kindness is actually small. So, last year I started a Ko-fi page partly as an experiment: I wanted to be OK with accepting money for my work, especially all the blogs and stuff I put out for free. I wanted to at least start getting past […]
Yes, I am shamelessly recycling some of my older posts at the moment. In part because I have zero focus and concentration, in part because (yes, admit this) am trying to keep myself visible and in the market for work, and in part because I feel like so many of us are going through so […]
I’ve been revisiting a few old posts recently. In part because I seem to have little energy or concentration to write anything new, in part because I am proud of some of these older pieces and hope that by looking at them again they will find a wider audience, and, perhaps most of all, in […]
This is an old post, revisited in the time of Corona because I think so many of its lessons are now even more valid. In part this is because I am once again facing grief – my beloved aunt (there she is below, with my lovely cousins and me looking like a mardy brat behind […]
