Small Wonders

If This Isn’t ADHD

I’ve been out with the girls today at a birthday party. It was lovely. One of those days where you get to catch up with the home-ed mums and dads while the children disappear off and do whatever children do at birthday parties. But I left absolutely exhausted. I didn’t get much sleep last night, and by the time we got home I could feel that particular kind of tiredness where your whole body seems to be asking you to please stop doing things. Naturally, this was the moment I... Read more...

The Naked Dream

When I was in high school, there was a teen disco in my hometown called Pure. It was called Pure because there was supposedly no alcohol or drugs. Which is... Read more...

Eamon the Shaman and Angel Wings

In 2014, I went away to train as a Sexological Bodyworker. It was six months of solid practical work with volunteers and then seven days of intensive, hands-on training all... Read more...

The Songs I’ve Assigned to People

I was driving along when I decided to put Ben Howard on. Almost immediately, I wasn’t in the car anymore. I was in Plymouth. I was travelling to meet Karen. At that point, Karen was essentially a brand-new friend. We had met on a training course where we had spent ten days learning to become Sexological Bodyworkers together, but even saying we’d spent ten days together makes us sound closer than we actually were. We weren’t roommates. We didn’t lodge together. We hadn’t spent evenings staying up late talking or... Read more...

Handwritten friendship date invitation with a red tick beside “Yes please” and the reply “yes, a thousand times yes!” written in red ink.

Date Your Friends

I think you should date your friends. Not romantically, obviously. I mean actually date them. Ask them out. Make a plan. Choose somewhere to go. Put a day in the... Read more...

You Knew, You Witch

I wouldn’t say I’m psychic. I don’t see things before they happen. I don’t speak to spirits. I’ve never had a vision of the future. But sometimes I know things.... Read more...

The Little Hat

Today Halle turned nine. We packed the day the way nine-year-old birthdays demand — rock climbing, her favourite shops, presents, food, excitement — and then, because birthdays apparently don’t cancel... Read more...

Bob Knows a Sheep When He Smells One

Bob is a sensitive dog. Not sensitive in the delicate, easily offended sense. Sensitive in the something has been here and I need to know exactly what sense. If a... Read more...

The Chopping Board

I was cleaning the kitchen today. Nothing remarkable — just wiping things down, trying to bring the room back to order after another day of people actually living in it.... Read more...

The Fireflies That Weren’t There

This morning I was driving the girls to their grandparents' house. They go there one day a week while I catch up on work, look into home ed projects, make... Read more...

Not Shiny Enough

I was talking to my friend P recently about friendship. More specifically, about those friendships where you never quite feel secure in your place. I’ve had a few of them.... Read more...

The Quilt From Someone I Don't Know

Before my first daughter was born, a parcel arrived from Australia. Inside was a quilt. Not one we'd ordered, not something off a baby list, not something bought from a... Read more...

The Only Quilt I've Ever Made

I've made one quilt in my entire life. It was terrible — not because I didn't try, I tried incredibly hard, but because I have absolutely no skill set for... Read more...

The Fly in the Car

Me and the girls were out picking blackberries with friends this week. We’d found a lovely park, had a picnic, and then wandered off into the bushes to fill our... Read more...

The Lovely Thing About Being Noticed

There are compliments I have forgotten completely. And then there are the ones that have somehow stayed with me for years. Not always because they were grand. Often because they... Read more...

The First Kiss

My first kiss was truly magical. We were both quite obviously terrified. His name was John Kelly. We were in the same form at high school. He was tall, ginger-haired,... Read more...

The Mixtape

I’ve only ever made one mixtape. I thought this person was pretty special. So I sat upstairs in my brother’s bedroom, on his multi-disc CD player — the one with... Read more...

Nothing in My Head at All

It's 10.52pm, and I'm lying in the hammock in the back garden. A towel's still hanging above me on the washing line, forgotten. It's quiet. Really quiet. The sky is... Read more...

Pearly Gates

My friend Pauline helped make the flowers for my wedding. She’s hilarious, and she’s got a way of looking at the world that manages to be both ridiculous and completely... Read more...

Regulated

This morning began slowly. I was in the hammock. My youngest daughter climbed in beside me for a while before wandering off to play. One of the dogs decided there... Read more...

The Soundtrack Home

Roadworks forced me onto a different route — three unexpected miles. Sometimes a detour is a gift disguised as an inconvenience. Amazon Music had quietly been choosing the soundtrack. One... Read more...

The Firepit

A friend I've known for more than twenty years is about to turn fifty. We met in our twenties, working with teenagers in social care, and since then we've shared... Read more...

The Things We Keep

I remember my Auntie Mary saying the same thing over and over. Buy cheap, buy twice. As a child, I thought she meant money. It took me years to realise... Read more...

Tell My Brother He Got an A

I got to forty before I realised I was allowed to call myself an artist. For most of my life the evidence pointed the other way. I did art at... Read more...

Faith in Facebook and Sarah

My daughter's scooter went missing last night. Sixty pounds, bought with her own money, from her own little business — the kind of purchase that means something because she actually... Read more...

Ski Slope

I was eighteen, maybe nineteen, on an 18-30s holiday in Kardamena with my friends Donna and Naomi. One afternoon, sat by the pool, a girl a few years older than... Read more...

Every Garvey in the Phone Book

I got a random phone call in high school. Michael Bailey, ringing to ask me out. Somewhere in the conversation, he told me how he'd actually got my number. He'd... Read more...

Ask Me Out Abroad

I've had some genuinely terrible dates in my life. Men who forgot to mention the girlfriend. The baby. The girlfriend with the baby. I've kissed a truly unfortunate number of... Read more...

The Black Duffle Bag

My friend’s mum had packed me a bag. Not a small one. A ginormous black fabric duffle, so heavy I genuinely couldn’t lift it (and so I dragged it) stuffed... Read more...

Traffic Control

Every hour, on the hour, a chime would sound through the building. And everyone — wherever they were, whatever they were doing — would simply stop. One minute. That's all... Read more...

On Chontay

At the Brahma Kumaris retreat, everyone greets each other with "Om Shanti." It roughly means: I am a being of light, and so are you, and I recognise we're made... Read more...

Thank You for Borning Me

Some of the best things my daughters have said weren't mix-ups at all. They meant exactly what they said — which was somehow even funnier. I once told the girls... Read more...

He Opened the Car Door

Years ago I lived in Salford, on the edge of Greater Manchester, in a beautiful flat in a predominantly Jewish part of the city. Every day, on my way to... Read more...

Kaput

I'd been flipping between phone and laptop for weeks. Apps, plug-ins, projects, tasks. One thing leading to another thing leading to another. The kind of merry-go-round where you know you're... Read more...

The Scent in the Car

Sometimes, out of nowhere, the strongest scent of hospital cleaning products fills my car. There's nothing around that would cause it. No cleaning products, no reason for it. It just... Read more...

The Push

My husband came home and I was upset. Not dramatically. Nothing had happened, exactly — it had just been building. I didn't feel like I was getting enough attention. I'm... Read more...

Windows Down

Lately, I've been driving and listening to music as loud as I can possibly stand it. I'd recommend it to anyone. When you're living a life where you feel like... Read more...

The Selfish Driver

This morning I encountered a really selfish driver. At least, that's what I decided he was. I needed to turn right. He'd stopped miles back from the zebra crossing —... Read more...

The Kindness That Kept Travelling

More than a decade after giving a phone to a man I barely knew, I discovered the kindness hadn’t ended with him. It had been quietly travelling through other people’s... Read more...

The Empty Box

Halle was about five when a boy gave her an empty box for her birthday. His name was Oliver. He was around seven, and he'd turn up whenever my girls... Read more...

The Towel

Standard Sunday evening. My husband’s in the bedroom ironing his clothes for the week ahead — always organised, always ready before Monday’s even arrived. Meanwhile I’m in the shower, and... Read more...

I Thought It Was Cocaine

When I was seventeen, I went to Creamfields with my first proper long-term boyfriend. He was twenty-two. Five years isn’t particularly enormous when you’re older, but at seventeen, five years... Read more...

The Crickets

I don’t think I’ve ever heard crickets the way I heard them as a child. I remember being in Devon with my mum and dad, my brother, cousins, grandparents and... Read more...

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