(The Realities of Holidays With Children) “Can I put this in your bag?”. It’s nice to be asked, but it’s rare. “Where’s the water?” I gasp desperately, at the top of a steep hill. I’ve walked for miles and still there is no sign of the Alhambra anywhere behind the…

“Can anyone speak Spanish?”. It was a request from Pamela, the cabin manager to two hundred people via the tannoy. There were currently two engineers and two pilots squashed into the cockpit. We’d taxied to the runway, already one hour behind schedule, then quickly returned to the stand. There was…

I was running late. My husband was 963 miles away. I had navigated three school drop-offs, supported some last-minute GCSE Physics preparation, unloaded and re-loaded the dishwasher, unblocked the toilet, walked the dog, stopped for diesel, collected a parcel. I wondered would there be others similarly behind schedule due to…

Since I stopped ‘working’ almost 525,600 minutes ago, I have been asked a lot of questions. There is considerable curiosity about my decision to give up my ‘professional’ status, abandon a ‘career’ in my forties and step out into the unknown. I would love to believe that people are tremendously…

It was a split-second decision. I’d been aimlessly scrolling through my camera roll on a Thursday evening, just before heading off to bed. It had been languishing there for at least a week in-between a shot of my wisteria and one of a particularly delicious cheese and mushroom omelette. …

A little poem… I’m delighted,” I say, “to meet so-and-so, to be part of this and that, to get to be here or there or somewhere or anywhere”. I’m delighted to be invited, included, present at, to announce … I’m not the only one. We’re united, in it together. Everyone…

There was a moment, more than half-way through the film, when I glanced sideways at my husband and wondered (1) whether he was ever going to get to the bottom of the infinite tub of popcorn he’d been endlessly chomping and (2) why despite only being a boy in short…

“Where have you been?” the man with the glasses asked me. “All over the place,“ I thought, “On a journey of self-discovery”, “In the land of confusion”, “To hell and back”, “Searching for myself”. He looked at me, I looked at him. It was almost midnight. There was a queue…

Yesterday, I called 999. It’s only the second time, I’ve said those words, “ambulance, please”. I was propelled back to the last time, to a cardiac arrest twenty-five years ago. It was history repeating itself. …