Audrey Birt, Director for Scotland of Breakthrough Breast Cancer, was herself recently diagnosed with breast cancer. She has written this piece to join in the mental heath carnival. In my own blog, I discuss how I was diagnosed with early breast cancer twice in my life and how breast cancer treatment helped me overcome […]
Guest post: It was the summer of 2011 and the city streets were burning.
Michelle White has sent this piece in to join in the mental health carnival.It was the summer of 2011 and the city streets were burning. People called it a perfect storm, recession, poverty, racial tensions and balmy nights. I watched in horror as places of my childhood were destroyed. It felt as though England was […]
Be adventurous with your child’s name – it’ll make all the difference
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buW66mgTXTY?rel=0] Do you imagine great things for your children? Of course you do. Your little darling is going to make history, be famous and probably save the planet. How about if they were brave and heroic adventurers? Marvellous. But unless you have given them the right name, you’ve blown it already. You see, this […]
Scotland: My creeping unease in the country I call home
Earlier this week I read a post at Is There A Plan B. it was called this time it’s personal and talked about her feelings about the independence referendum. Written by another Englishwoman living in Scotland, she is wondering if she’s entitled have a say and if the nub of the issue isn’t a blanket […]
How Hairy McLary came to the rescue in a bad case of transitionitis
Each time my big boys come back from seeing their dad there is tension, in fact that’s something of an understatement – there is shouty, grumpy, tearful out-of-sortsy tension.It’s not that anyone does anything wrong or that there is any animosity. In fact it all goes fairly well, as far as these things go.But the […]
Colour blind: What’s a black man, mummy?
The other day, after overhearing a news report, my older kids, nine and twelve, asked who Stephen Lawrence was.So, I explained. I’d like to think I’m reasonably good at explaining news stories in simple terms – I worked on tabloid newspapers for a few years after all. But my nine year old started to look […]
Frugal fun: who would want to live in a house like this?
So we are all a little bit skint these days. Being broke is becoming trendy, a but like having a decking fired or starting a blog. Every news report drones on and on with more miserable measurements of how fast the hand cart is hurling towards hell, but I have my own economic indicator. Whenever […]
Come to my mental health carnival for blog posts
Later this month I’m hosting a blog carnival and the subject is mental heath. This is not as one wag suggested “where we all mentally get dressed in feathers and visualise with calming mood music dancing down a street”. Although I wouldn’t rule that out if it works. What I’m talking about is mental heath or the […]