Against the Dark

Stairs have been my arch nemesis for several years. Not going down them, that was as easy to me as it is to you (assuming you are someone who finds it easy). But going up. I still stand at the bottom, looking with fear, and brace myself for the pain that will be involved. But…

I’ve been reading a lot about writing recently, as well as trying to increase my reading of great literature. I need to write every day. See where it takes me. Maybe I’ll come up with some gems if only a sentence or a character. I think this is pretty much how I write already, I…

  This morning is hard and I feel quite empty. On Friday we received a date for the inquest of my late brother-in-laws’ death. In the back of my head, I knew this was coming, in the horrendous, blurry weeks after he died the coroner told us the inquest might take months. Dan died in…

I’ve just come back from my first run in SUCH a long time. I ran. And I could. Walking stick to running in 3 months. Most pleasing! I’ve been thinking a lot over the last few weeks about our perception of others lives in contrast to how one sees one’s own life. It’s easy to see how…

Wondering if, without a new life-changing trauma, I actually have a blog in me, but working on the philosophy that I’ve come an awful long way this year, and it wasn’t all trauma, I’ve decided to try! I am sat on a train going south down the east coast of Scotland. You know the route?…

      It was during Euro 96 that I first met my new boyfriend’s family. We were 23 and his little brother was just turning 13. We bought him a looney tunes Euro 96 t-shirt for his birthday. He was a bookworm, I mean a serious bookworm. I suppose there was no mobile phones…

    So here I am pretty much ready to close the curtains on this chapter of my life. High, high time. It’s over 2 weeks since we left home and travelled up to Manchester. It was easier this time. The ‘dress rehearsal’ paid off. I knew the hotel. I’d met the people. I knew…

  I left you last when my long-awaited surgery had been cancelled, back in July. Much water has passed under the bridge since then, and now seems to be the day to catch you back up on it. It took me a while to recover from the shock of the cancellation. I was in bed…

    It’s been an emotional day for me today. I was diagnosed with severe and deep-seated Endometriosis in 2017, and in November of that year, I was told I urgently needed surgery.  I was put on what are essentially chemotherapy drugs for prostate cancer, to stop further damage while I waited for said surgery. …

Funny isn’t it, how easily blasé one can become? I wrote most of this is in NY, in December (2017!). Now I think “Grand Central Station. Wow!”, I long for the thrill of being there. Such an iconic place. Yet I appear to have written this like I’d just popped down to the corner shop?…