I find myself craving for the clocks to change this week. The street lights are out of kilter with the darkness and it feels too easy to shirk a morning run because it’s so dark outside (I know it will still be dark at the end of October, but at least my running route will…
a semi colon kind of week
When a student asked last summer if she could sell t-shirts to reduce the stigma around mental health I was delighted. I was even more enthusiastic when she talked me through the semi colon campaign (Project; your story … is not over). Naturally, I literally bought the t shirt and have been wearing it ever…
Join Our Club
The highlight item in my 1970’s school pack lunch box was a Jacob’s chocolate bar (our’s was definitely a make-your-own-pack-lunch family, so forget 5-a-day, brown bread or layered rainbows of goodness displayed in a kiln jar, we’re talking dairylea triangles on pappy white bread). If you got to the treats cupboard at the start of…
Silver Service
The comeback kid – otherwise known as my mother – decides that her make up needs updating before leaving the care home and returning to her own house. This is a sentence I thought I’d never write for two reasons: This summer I thought I was saying goodbye to mum. Mum’s make up bag, and…
Bog off, Mildred
Apologies may be needed for not telling the full story the other week, but back then it wasn’t time to worry, and I still refuse to believe that worrying will help now. Sadly there is an unwelcome guest in our midst and my friend’s husband has christened her Mildred*; she’s extremely thick skinned, has already…
Water works
In the last week of the holiday I’ve worked hard to maximise outside shenanigans, for tomorrow my sensible (inside) head needs to reemerge when I walk back into the classroom. I’m not sure that you can bottle fresh air, but perhaps the memory of it will see me through that fetid after-lunch gas cloud that…
A shout out
I’ve been in and out of school over the last two weeks and not spending as much time with Favourite Daughter as I’d like. She starts her new life in London in one week and will then become a teacher too. Two weeks of exam results remind me, however, just how brilliant students are –…
Scaffolding
Despite being a giddy kipper about meeting up in London with my oldest friend (not oldest in birthday cake candles, but the friend I have known since school days) I leave my flat feeling frustrated; my soul-saving sea view is being obliterated by scaffolding which rapidly and noisily creeps across the front of the building…
Kintsugi
The Japanese believe that when something has suffered damage or has a history it is more beautiful; broken objects are often repaired with gold to make a feature of the flaw. I love this idea. It’s called kintsugi. This could be my 50+ alternative to getting a tattoo. I could embroider my appendix scar, laughter…
Gold Rush
Two months on from my last Italian jaunt, I find myself there again, this time with my sister and her husband – it’s only fair, they own the lakeside apartment after all and it would seem churlish to travel alone. Sometimes it’s good to go back somewhere you’ve been before because it throws down a marker…
The Dragonfly Jar 