Day 5 Unlike writing, presenting a book show on community radio means occasionally leaving the house. Learning the ropes means meeting people I don’t know, and inevitably, they ask what I do. The only time I was ever able to answer this question without reservation was when I was
Advent Day 4 For reasons too complicated to explain, my husband’s current contribution to family life is the restoration of a vast Lego Millennium Falcon. The sitting room is covered in the kind of carnage that once indicated the eldest’s bedroom and the pieces are migrating through the house
Day 3 And so, it seems, despite only just having lit the Advent candle, we’ve already left it too late to buy the tree. The Buying of the Tree has been a solemn ceremony for several years. Ever since child 2 was two years old, she and James have
Advent Day 2 Here is a story for the first Sunday of Advent that could not have happened on a Sunday, because it happened at a time when the shops did not open on Sunday (and usually closed on Wednesday afternoons, too). I was standing behind an elderly lady
Day 1 When I last wrote a series of Advent posts, I was driven by a concern that everyone seemed to be dying. Prince. George Michael. Carrie Fisher. Alan Rickman. David Bowie. The news became something to be feared; every day seemed to bring another premature death of someone
I did a short but telling experiment last week. I forced myself to concentrate on the number of times I apologise during the course of a day. I lost count before I’d even finished the school run. I was sorry that I’d put out black tights, not navy ones; that
I did my first Booktime Brunch show on Chiltern Radio yesterday. This morning I listened back to it and oh my dears. The skin-crawling horror of hearing your own recorded voice. Your lack of technical know-how writ large in dead air. Your beautifully-laid plans, wrecked by an unpressed button. The
Pink Himalayan salt. Sometimes, when things are not going the Way We Would Like, changing something humdrum and boring for a magical pink version can be surprisingly uplifting. At some point during half term, I was rushing between depositing some of my children in one place and picking up some
It’s half term this week. The 10yo has been on a choir tour, and the 13 and 11 yos were at a debating workshop, which left me with a day in London with the loquacious and determined 8yo. She had ten carefully saved pounds to spend, which meant a ceremonial
If you put flour and water in a jar and leave them for anywhere between a week and ten days, the natural yeasts in the flour will begin to grow. And if, for a few days after that, you discard half of what’s in the jar and feed the rest