Week Five – meh.

Week Five – meh.

Week Five – meh Five bloody weeks. To be honest, for some reason, I’m a little flat this week. Last Sunday was without doubt the highlight of the last seven days. Finally my eighteen year-old daughter made it home safely. I am in awe of the way she self isolated for fourteen whole days, alone. Read More

Week Four – cabin fever sets in.

Week four – cabin fever sets in.  Four weeks of shielding. Four whole weeks. That’s a long time to not leave your house when you’re used to being busy. Cabin fever set in this week. I didn’t know that was an actual thing, I thought it was a flippant phrase people used. But no. It’s Read More

Week Three – and so it continues.

Hello again. How are you? It’s all getting a bit real and stressful now, right? But you’re all staying at home and saving yourselves, others and the NHS, right? (Unless you are a key worker, obvs. And if you are THANK YOU!) Yes, Jen, you say.  Good.  This week, our third at home, has dragged Read More

Week Two. Shielding.

Hello again! How are you? It’s fair to say week two in isolation hasn’t been as Mary Poppins-esq as week one, but I’ve still learnt a lot and several people have asked for me to carry on writing these posts weekly pointing out, quite rightly, that this helps me too.  Last week, I’m not ashamed Read More

What does ‘being in the middle’ mean to you?

A few weeks ago I was asked what being in the middle meant, and I replied, ‘mundane.’ If you’re in the middle you’re either winning nor losing. The middle is neither success or failure. Neither happy or sad. Being in the middle is nothing, right? I went to a one to one Pilates class this Read More

Words, words everywhere…

My youngest son wears hearing aids, he’s not profoundly deaf, but his condition makes it hard for him to hear. And I find it very frustrating when he gets disciplined at school for ‘not listening.’ What the teacher needs to say is that he hasn’t followed the instruction given, not that he didn’t hear it Read More

Writing and prams in hallways.

There’s been a lot of talk recently on social media and in newspaper articles about prams in hallways and whether in order to be an effective writer you need time away from your children and familial responsibilities, think Doris Lessing. And then there’s the ongoing gender pay gap debate, talk of glass ceilings and the Read More

The waiting game…

You’ll discover the wonderful irony of this blog post as I get going, procrastination is an ever present curse… I’m currently sat in the local coffee shop, with two fellow writer friends, writing novel number two, whilst novel number one is with an editor. And, of course, after every word I type I am checking Read More