For this month’s Deeper Sleeper challenge, Sealy asked me to try offline activities rather than using my phone before bed to see if its absence improved my sleep. They sent me a colouring book for adults, a pack of colouring pencils and a £20 book voucher. It was going to be a tough challenge for …
We took Amelie to be weighed today. Big news, I know. Thanks to the sad demise of our local Sure Start Centre, we have to take her to the library which is otherwise closed on Wednesdays. Admittedly, it’s a good way of stopping the Tories closing down that too, but it’s a strange experience going into …
“Look at those funny lines on your forehead, Daddy. You look like Mr. Worry.” That was the innocently uttered but brutal home truth that Dylan hit me with the other day. He’s right. I’ve been really stressed over the last year and it’s probably become evident on my face. Back to the chap he compared …
I was tagged in a meme on Facebook recently by one of my good mates from university and, as I’ve hardly read any books since those days – which were more years ago than I care to remember now – thought I ought to write a post about it. Especially as my degree was in English Literature. I feel I …
When Willem van Eekelen was diagnosed with stress-related heartburn that required him to relax, he duly obliged. Or at least tried to. The problem was that he only seemed to suffer the symptoms while he was at home. One day, while trying to spin two proverbial plates, he challenged his children to come up with games that required him …
She waits alone in a darkened corner of the room, almost hidden to the naked eye. Silent and vulnerable. She knows I am there, but we must wait for our opportunity to present itself. Outwardly, I appear relaxed as I sip ruby-red wine, its lingering taste on my lips reminding me of past conquests. But there is something burning deep within …
My parents made a shocking admission to me recently: when I was but a child, they duped me into eating some meat I didn’t like the look of by telling me it was ‘Sussex ham’. Shocking behaviour, I know. But by all accounts I readily believed this rather lame fib and wolfed it down. Here we …
This is going to be a brief post and possibly my shortest yet. I’ve committed myself to an exciting project with a rather tight deadline. Time, as they say, is of the essence. To cut a long story short, I had an idea for a book ages and ages ago. I promptly forgot about it until …