I’d never set foot inside a hospice until my lovely aunt Betty was nearing the end of her life. She had been in pain for some time, mainly from the side-effects of the radiotherapy she’d had many years earlier, and her cancer had returned. By now aged 89, she made the...

Day 15 of my 21 Days of Transience takes me back to my earliest days in the workplace... My career — and I still get echoes of the ‘not good enough’ thing going on when I call it that — has bounced around a bit since I left school at 17 and jumped straight into my...

It's Day 8 of my 21 Days of Transience, and today we're off to Glasgow for Hogmanay... There are whole chunks I couldn’t remember the next day, never mind nudging 50 years down the line. It’s new year’s eve 1972, I am 18, and I am in Glasgow. I am in Glasgow with two...

Here we are on Day 5 of my 21 Days of Transience, pondering what it is that makes somewhere safe... When, exactly, in the past year did everyone start ending conversations, meetings, calls, emails with ‘stay safe’? And what does ‘stay safe’ even mean? What’s safe for...

Day 4 of my 21 Days of Transience takes me beyond check-in and off-grid... Was a time when I’d head for an airport and pull on this endearing mantle of anonymity, and have it comfortably in place before reaching check-in. I’d park ‘regular me’ and morph effortlessly...

One brief flurry of activity apart, I have added nothing to this blog since Megan Macedo’s 2020 writing challenge.   That was never my plan, but as last year’s 21-day roller coaster of words drew to a close in late February, the coronavirus storm clouds were well and...

It's Day 18 of my 21 Days of Courage (yup, only three more to go!) and it's time to get mixing in the kitchen... If I were to single out one true constant that has woven its way right through my life, from the far reaches of childhood to now, it would be... …...

It’s Day 5 of 21 Days of Courage and I’m back at the kitchen table with my parents... There weren’t many subjects that were taboo around the kitchen table when I was growing up — in fact, I struggle to find much of consequence my parents weren’t prepared to discuss...

It’s been the best part of a year since I updated this blog and I’m happy to report that I am still alive. The truth of it is that — just a few days into Megan Mecado’s 2019 21-Day Writing Challenge — I mislaid my mojo. I completely lost my confidence in my writing...

This summer I went swimming, This summer I might have drowned But I held my breath and I kicked my feet And I moved my arms around, I moved my arms around. 'The Swimming Song' — Loudon Wainwright III You possibly have to be of a certain age to remember it, but this...

Megan Macedo kept arguably the most challenging for last: the 21st of my 21 Daring Days dares me to ‘write something about a secret you keep (or have kept) from yourself’...   I’ve always carried around this secret notion that one day, some day, I’d be famous....

For my penultimate 21 Daring Days challenge, I'm writing 'something about a fact related to your work or your industry that concerns you'.   For the longest time, I felt uneasy around the word ‘marketing’ — even though it’s plainly what I do. It’s a word that can...

As we roll closer to the finale, here's the challenge for Day 19 of my 21 Daring Days: 'Tell a story about a time you got what you wanted but it didn't work out well for you.' The answer comes on two wheels...   Many moons ago, I was a motorcycling correspondent....

And so to Day 18 of my 21 Daring Days, and today's challenge is to 'write about something you know about your family or your history and how might that have influenced your personal or professional philosophy'.   We didn’t do God or Tories when I was growing up....

It's Day 16 of my 21 Daring Days, and this has proved a particularly challenging one: 'Tell a story about a piece of your family folklore. What stories are told again and again? Which ones stand out from your youth?'     One of the stranger things about my...

For Day 15 of my 21 Daring Days writing challenge, I'm to 'write the truth about something you previously told a bad and inauthentic story about.'    Ah, yes — Eugenie. She’s crap at sport. That was the story I told about myself, and consequently had told back to...

For Day 14 of my 21 Daring Days, the challenge is tough: 'Write something inspired by something you’ve recently read, watched or heard.  If you can, focus on a particular detail (a quote, an idea, a scene, a story) that made you think.'   ‘The Jews are just the...

For Day 13, Megan Macedo has given us the challenge of writing about 'something you’re a connoisseur of or something you’re a bit of a snob about, perhaps despite your best efforts.' Ouch... Another little brush with judgment on the horizon here. Let’s look at the...

And now it’s Day 12 of my 21 Daring Days and I’ve to ‘write about extremes or opposites and how they have played out in your life or work at one time’. This one is pretty daring, in fact... Nothing generates extreme experiences for me quite as efficiently as my...

We're at Day 11 and this 21 Daring Days challenge is to 'write about something you used to get in trouble for when you were younger'. I'd like to say that this had me scratching my head, but it didn’t. This was easy. Without any effort at all, I am back at school once...

For Day 10 of my 21 Daring Days challenge, I have to ‘write about a time you brought a crisis upon yourself, big or small, and what you learned from it.’   Oh lordy, lordy — let me count the ways… Most of the significant crises I’ve created for myself have...

The task for Day 9 of my 21 Daring Days is to 'tell a story about something that leaves a mark. It might be a scar, a water ring on a coffee table, a dent in a car, a tattoo, bleach, permanent marker — anything that leaves a mark'. I’m writing this sat at my Dad’s...

The challenge for Day 8 of my 21 Daring Days is to ‘write something about a time you held back from doing something, for better or worse’.    The fact of the matter is that I should never have married my first husband. I was 26, and therefore plenty old enough to...

On to Day 7 and this time I’m tasked with writing ‘something about a time you missed something — good or bad. Maybe it was a deadline, a family occasion, a plane, a test… Maybe the outcome was disastrous or fortuitous’.   I don’t have to work hard to transport...

We’re at Day 6 and the prompt is ‘where I end and you begin. Write about whatever that phrase conjures up for you. It might be about a person, a thing, an activity — whatever comes to mind for you’. I played around with this one for fully three days because it opens...

Day 5 of the 21 Daring Days challenge, and this is tough: ‘Write about a time you screwed something up because you weren’t bold enough to risk getting hurt’. This one stopped me in my tracks, because I have become increasingly aware that there has been a clear divide...

For today’s 21 Daring Days writing task — the fourth — I’m to share with you ‘a story about a smell that means something to you (from your past or present’. Calamine. Just forming the word in my head unleashes a cascade of memories, a tapestry of emotions, all of them...

For my third 21 Daring Days writing challenge I’m to ‘tell the story of the thing(s) you were never given and what that taught you or how it shaped you’… My parents had a strange take on what makes for normal family life. They each came from dysfunctional families of...

The second task in my 21 Daring Days writing challenge is to ‘tell a story about a book you’ve read at some point in your life that brought you to some kind of revelation or moment of insight’. A revelation, a moment of insight. Not just a cracking good yarn, then. A...

This writing challenge is the brainchild of Megan Macedo, founder of Be Yourself Marketing and no mean writer herself… I’m one of a group of people — from across the world and from an eclectic mix of backgrounds — who are taking part, and each day Megan is giving us a...

Something unexpected happened at the weekend: I won a race! Yup. First over the line in only my fourth stand-up paddleboarding event and only the second time in my life I’ve topped the podium as first woman overall. Now I could easily disappear into a story here:...

I’m fairly regularly asked ‘why do you DO all that stuff?’, and I have to say there were several moments — indeed, a whole collection of moments — during my latest stand-up paddleboarding experience when I had absolutely no idea… I’ve been SUPing for a while now and...

For my first post, I'm on the road and there's no specific theme here — just thoughts I wanted to share... The first things that get packed when I’m on the move are my running gear and my swimming things. Once they’re all safely in the bag, everything else can go in....