Addiction
When I was growing up addicts did drugs.
They were the 1980s posters of heroin before it was fashionably chic, sunken, grey, skeletal with dead eyes and pin marks in their arms.
It wasn’t until later I saw that addicts also drank and smoked. I had been confused as these two drugs were so easily … Read more
Health app
‘Do you know of a good health app?’ asks a client.
‘Yes, yes I do’, I say.
It’s called nature.
It teaches you to wake up as it gets light and sleep as it goes dark.
It makes you want to be more active when the days are long and quieter and more restful in … Read more
Daring to be vulnerable
We have had a long morning, we are hungry and think that we will treat ourselves to a proper meal, in a posh hotel.
We arrive, all looks well.
My irritation starts to rise as the customer in front of me at the bar dithers and fusses about what to chose from the menu, when … Read more
If you could be happier
If you could be happier with how you looked
you would spend less on products which didn’t do what they promised,
animals wouldn’t be tested on,
you wouldn’t poison your face like a rat,
the industry would collapse.
What might grow instead?
If you could be happier with moving slowly,
you wouldn’t need … Read more
Creative writing
I have written books. A couple I self-published and there are still gremlins in my head sneering ‘That’s not real publishing, it’s vanity, who cares, you’re not good enough’. That was the same voice asking me who I thought I was as I walked to corridor to meet my PhD supervisor for the first … Read more
Opening doors
Sharon Green and I went to Sunderland Poly to do English at the tail end of the 80s and then for a large part of our adult life lost touch with each other, not out of malice, just life. Facebook reconnected us and so we followed each other from afar, then Sharon announced she was … Read more