Seeing the goodness in the world

It was late Autumn last year when I found them. 2 kittens. They ran to me through a rusty, gaping hole of a barn door. A barn that was in the middle of nowhere, really. A barn that I passed each day on a 5 kilometre walk. They were so tiny. I didn't know what to do. I wondered whether to bundle them up right there and then in my coat and take them home. I inspected them closely. They seemed well-fed and their fur—despite the rain and cold—seemed to be soft and shiny. A sign that they were doing [...]

By |2020-04-14T13:07:14+01:0014 April 2020|

Are you doing ok?

I was doing ok, and then I realised that the next time I see my Nan's wrinkly old face and grey-blue eyes might not be for months and months from now, and I cried. This is grief. I wasn't doing ok, and then my kid told me that "Tomorrow, I'm just going to wear my undies all day, Mummy. Nothing else. And you're to call me Captain Underpants, ok?" I smiled and kissed the top of his sweaty little head. This is bone-deep love. I was doing ok, and then a woman standing close to me in the bread aisle [...]

By |2020-04-14T13:07:58+01:002 April 2020|

Self-isolating with Pokemons

We've been self-isolating for a week now. It already feels like a month. My son built an obstacle course in the garden yesterday and timed me as I navigated it. It was a terrible obstacle course, mainly because he's five and five year olds apparently build terrible obstacle courses. I ran around it anyway, catching a glimpse of his proud, beaming face as he watched me sit in a garden chair for 10 seconds, before sitting in another garden chair for 10 seconds, and then running around the tree 3 times before standing on a bucket on one leg, wobbling [...]

By |2020-04-14T13:09:34+01:0020 March 2020|

It took me five fucking minutes.

My son has a plastic turtle night light that he keeps on his bedside table. It projects an underwater effect onto the walls and ceiling of his bedroom and plays ocean sounds. He originally bought it for me for my birthday, but 5 minutes after I'd opened the box, he claimed it as his. 5 weeks ago, the batteries started to run out on the turtle. Sometimes the ocean sounds didn't play, or the underwater effect didn't project properly. Sometimes, the turtle didn't even switch on. "It needs a new battery", I told my son. "I'll have to go to [...]

By |2019-12-12T12:02:12+01:0012 December 2019|

When nothing seems to be happening.

I bought a plant last year. When I bought it, it was 3 times bigger, with lots and lots of bright green, thriving leaves. I put it in my bathroom. Slowly, however, it started to die. I didn't know why. I figured that I had been overwatering it, so I gave it less. Nothing changed. I moved it from one end of the room to another—maybe it was too near the radiator? Nothing changed. In fact, its leaves started to curl up and go brown. After several months, the leaves began to drop off, and finally 4 dry stalks were [...]

By |2019-07-17T08:40:58+01:0016 July 2019|

How to have a backbone and say what you actually mean.

Recently, I needed some help spreading the word about something I’d created. I woke up one morning with the idea of asking some of my friends and clients to share the details about it with their friends and people they know, maybe via their Facebook page or email, or in a way that felt good to them. And yet…I didn’t. Something stopped me from asking them. Instead, I just sat on the idea and went round and round in circles, not wanting to ask and yet feeling frustrated with myself for not. Do you do this too? I hear this [...]

By |2019-07-17T11:39:51+01:0023 June 2019|

If you’re having a rough day, read this.

Our recent road-trip around the USA Pacific Northwest was centred specifically around going to a concert at the epic Gorge Amphitheater. My favourite singer-songwriter of all time, Brandi Carlile, was playing and there was no way I was missing her show at a venue that's considered to be one of the most scenic concert locations in the world. Emmylou Harris was one of her incredible support acts and during her set, as she was introducing a song and strumming the chords on her guitar, she said something along the lines of: "This next song is one I wrote about 30 [...]

By |2019-07-17T08:28:57+01:0023 June 2019|

Road-tripping, whales and learning.

I'm travelling at the moment, with my little family. Mainly around the The Pacific Northwest and Canada. I'm learning a lot on this holiday. I'm learning that travelling is tiring and hard and yet heart-opening and wild. Travel stirs something in me that makes me want to pack up my life back home and live in an RV and hit the road (although I'm also not daft enough to forget that I LOVE regular showers and working toilets and my dream of living a life on the road would last approximately 2.3 days before I got fed up. So there's [...]

By |2019-07-17T08:25:13+01:0023 June 2019|

Girls can’t wear baseballs caps.

When you were a kid, did you ever play the game, Guess Who? You know, the 1980’s mystery face game where each player chooses a person and then using yes or no questions, they try to figure out the other player’s person? Turns out, the game still exists! I've been playing it with my son recently and it's been a total blast from the past. Nothing much has changed with the game. The people are still mostly the same. The format is still the same. The rules are still the same. And yet I've noticed the questions my son has been asking me about my "person" are [...]

By |2019-07-17T08:32:24+01:0016 April 2019|

The cat food.

Every morning and evening, after I've fed Lily, my cat, I leave the house and walk 100 metres across the garden to the garage. I open the garage door and walk to the bin store in the corner and put the empty cat food pouch in the bin. Every morning and evening, after I've fed Lily, my cat, I look down at the empty cat food pouch in my hand and think, "I can't be fucking arsed to walk 100 metres across the garden to the garage, to then have to open the garage door and walk to the bin store in the corner [...]

By |2019-07-17T08:34:22+01:006 January 2019|