You are ill
You are ill. You are becoming more and more ill. The illness makes you unhappy. The infection has taken control of your body, and you are living in constant pain. The pain makes you behave in ways...
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Breathe
One day, when I was a wee girl, I was out with my mum, brother and sister. We bumped into an old school friend of Mum’s, who looked at us three siblings (brother, curly black hair, blue eyes....
View ArticleFive More Years
Memory’s a funny thing. I’d swear blind that this evening is so much lighter than at six o’clock on this day five years ago. I remember it as being colder, darker, bleaker. In this place. At that...
View ArticleBad Wolf
You know how, you notice something, once, and then suddenly it seems like it’s everywhere? I’ve been having that the last ten days or so. Generally, it’s jokes. A deliberate spelling mistake or...
View ArticleA marble-hearted fiend
Here goes then. No preamble. No leading in joke. No relevant quote. No beating about the bush. No gentle introduction. No faffing about. No procrastinating. No long rambling anecdote. I’m just...
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Fenland
There are lots of things in life I dislike. Cucumber. Walking barefoot on sand. Hoovering. Quite a few things I hate too, and I’m not going to start listing those because you have homes to go,...
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Our proud heritage
Before you read this, you probably ought to read this*. I was vaguely aware of this taking place, but not really all that well informed. My fault? Maybe. Or perhaps sometimes, professionals...
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Selffiti
I know I bang on about graffiti a lot. I know, ok? It started a long time ago, and in the last eighteen months, it’s became a habit to notice stuff around me, take a photo of it, then… not really...
View ArticleYou've got a friend
I have, against all logic, realised that I have become a grown up. This doesn’t mean that my house is suddenly tidy, I am responsible with money, and I never swear in front of my children. No....
View ArticleThe truth about love
I keep going back to a conversation I had with a friend a few years ago. We were in the early stages of getting to know one another, and we talking about how we got together with our respective...
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Great white dark
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the shadow It happened, as so many things in my life do, as a result of a glass of wine. Curled up on the...
View ArticleEvery dead end
I’ve written this before. But I kind of need to reinforce it, in my head if nowhere else.We are born, we live, we die. We endure. That’s what life is. Endurance. Not joy, not loveliness, not great. We...
View ArticleWelcome guests
I hate guest blogging. I hate it. I hate the enforced deadline that fires me into a sweaty, panicked caffeine overdose. I hate the suggested word count that hampers my thought process,...
View ArticleThe devil in the details
Doing some reading for a friend lately, I realised that with each piece I read, there was a pattern developing in my responses to it. I kept thinking of an inverted pyramid, with each piece...
View ArticleHow to Blog
Just lately, I keep seeing blogposts about ‘how to blog’, or how to increase your blogging reach’, or ‘how to make your blog more successful’. And they irritate the shit out of me. Seriously. I...
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A single tooth
The area of Norwich, north of Dereham Road. I spent the first few years of my life here. Learnt to walk on these streets. Picked siblings up from first and middle schools here. Played in the park...
View ArticleSplinters
So. It’s over. Nine years of doing a job I was patently unsuited for, a job that stretched me beyond endurance, a job that I took great pride in, even as it broke me. A job that took me to the point...
View ArticleMorning has broken. Me.
I wish I was The Boy. No, honestly, I do. Instead of being my cynical, sarcastic, unimpressed self, I wish I could wake up every weekday morning in the same mood that he does. Instead of rolling...
View ArticleThe girl who
The thing about shit stuff happening to you when you’re a child is that it doesn’t just fuck up that one thing. It fucks up everything, in variously different ways. Your relationships, how you see...
View ArticleExtract
We sit next to one another, side by side on a bench. Leaning against one another, shoulders and arms pressed together, thighs touching. Half turning our heads to face one another, we smile, and I,...
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