It is Sunday, May the second, and it is my birthday. Everything is very calm at the moment; James and the children are still sleeping, and the dog and I have walked round the garden. I have noticed the blossom on the apple and plum trees, the new spears in
I’m not as unhappy as I should be at the cancellation of the vigil for Sarah Everard. I’m exhausted with the same arguments going round and round and round. How many times have women Reclaimed the Night? How many stories have we shared around #MeToo? How many times, in how
Decompression Day I flew in from Uganda late on Saturday morning. It was a long journey (eighteen hours of boda, light plane, car, car, big plane, transfer, big plane, car) with a sleepless night before it, accompanied by a ceaseless circulation of thoughts. Life in Uganda was a minute by
We landed in Entebbe at eight o’clock this morning, having left Heathrow at five o’clock yesterday afternoon. We had hair raising transfers at Paris and Nairobi – first we had to get from one end of Charles de Gaulle airport to the other in twenty minutes, including a shuttle transfer.
In a few short hours, I will be flying off to Uganda. No one is more surprised about this than I am. I don’t just go to Uganda, or anywhere else (except maybe the supermarket when we’ve run out of milk). And yet here I am. ‘I can’t help with
Once upon a time, I had a lovely novel rejected (in fact I’ve had multiple novels rejected more than once at several times, but that’s not important right now). This novel had got me an agent. It had got me a lunch with an editor (Pizza Express, no less, and
Andy Murray is not dead. I think it’s very important that we understand that Andy Murray is not dead. Across the media, his imminent retirement from tennis is being announced with sweeping statements in the past tense. ‘He was the greatest British sportsman of his era,’ tweets Patrick Collins,
Today was meant to be peaceful. I went to bed very late last night, but it means that everything is ready. The in laws are on their way; the fridge has been emptied, cleaned and refilled with all the ingredients filed in meal order. I’ve done enough in advance that
There’s a rather salty shepherd’s pie ready for lunch. There’s a pheasant casserole for dinner, and a birthday cake whose decoration is the sole preserve of child 2. The pigs are in their blankets, the red cabbage and apple is ready, there is home made ice cream and home made
So. London. We got the cheese, and we had hot chocolate and croissants in the café opposite the cheese shop and watched whole pigs being delivered to the butcher next door. We went to the Tate Modern and found a whole wall covered in deep pile orange carpet, in which