How Our Government-Approved Exercise Went Totally According To Plan

When the world got bad, I decided to stop writing. And then the world got even worse, so I started again. I mean, I’m sure you all really need yet another angst-filled blog post about how tough life can be when you’re under virtual house arrest in your reasonable suburban end-of-terrace, enjoying an extended period…

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Why I Am No Longer Writing About My Boring Life

My mother, in her sometimes a little too plain-speaking manner, once told me that blogging was a futile pastime because no one wants to read about other people’s boring lives. She was wrong, of course. People love reading about other people’s boring lives, just as they enjoy watching other people’s boring lives on TV, and…

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Piglet: Faster than Concorde, but not quite winning at Parkrun just yet

I was never much into sport as a child. Any kind of physical activity left me cold. Mainly because I would stand on the freezing sports field shivering in my PE kit refusing to have any part in it. Piglet, I am happy to say, is not like this. Piglet talks a good game. Piglet…

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Has The Whole World Gone Mad Or Are All The Mad People Just Really Loud?

Another day, another outrage. The current big hitter in the outrage stakes is the news that Alabama is banning abortion in all circumstances. As you do. Or at least, as you do when you want to roll back to the bucolic idyll of the 1950s, when men were men, and women were subservient housewives last…

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Some Thoughts on the Return of the Nineties

I recently found myself on the Topshop website. I love Toppers. I mean, I really love it. I swore off it for a bit when Philip Green was accused of whatever-the-last-thing-he-was-accused-of was, and lasted all of a month. I decried the false gods of Fast Fashion and swore I would only buy second-hand (VINTAGE, DAAHLING)…

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The School Disco

I’m not sure who was more excited about Piglet’s school disco, him or me. In fact, it might be time to accept that Piglet, aged four, now has a better social life than me; one including friends, getting sugar-high on Parma Violets and dancing to Baby Shark. In other words, the kind of social life…

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Watch Out Roads of Britain, I Have A Car

Finally, just fourteen years after my first attempt at driving a car, I am being let loose on the roads of Britain. Yes, I have passed my driving test, and I can only hope that a) driving is not as difficult as it first appears, b) other people are patient and c) I have a…

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What to do when your mother rules your life

My mother is on the phone. Actually calling, not texting this time, or asking me for the nightly update on Piglet’s sleeping habits. Has someone died, I wonder, as I nervously answer. It must be something serious to merit an actual real-life phone call. Fortunately not. It’s just Mother, Mother has been on the Internet…

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When Parenting Drives You To Distraction

The other day, a woman on the bus stop complained about my child. She said he was too loud, too boisterous, why didn’t I “control” him? She then flounced off in a huff, saying she could take no more of my son and his appalling behaviour. Another parent at the bus stop turned to me,…

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Doing My (Very Small) Bit for the Insects

I never thought I would find myself making major lifestyle changes on behalf of the insect population of the world. In days gone by, I was guilty of seeing insects as the enemy; moths flitting in through the kitchen window, cockroaches scuttling across my path in the toilets of a Tokyo bar in summertime, That…

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