One tries one’s very best to look on the bright side and unearth the silver lining, however deeply it is buried and however malodourous the thing that is burying it. Lately, however, I encountered a couple of moments for which the opportunity was not immediately obvious. You know? The kind of thing that rocks you […]
The Boxing Day words
It’s the limbo of it. Christmas Day was full of traditions and purpose. Even the anarchy of consumption and indulgence is ambitious: A systematic approach to emptying fridge and filling belly. Boxing Day, though. That’s a different story. The plan never rolls this far. Shiftless drifting from chocolate box to small screen, pottering, with a […]
Inadvertent wisdom – the same difference again
It was one of those half-hearted attempts to encourage wholesome activity in Boy Three. A pathetic plea to do something that doesn’t involve doing battle in cartoonish worlds, listening to shouty American YouTubers, or both. “Draw me a picture. Just, you know, how you feel, or something… “ and off he went. I’d forgotten the […]
Things we learned from a brief trip to Aviemore
The weekend before last saw Boy Three and I off on a micro adventure and it was educational. Time is not a fixed thing. Once you start thinking about time as a linear, measurable thing, that’s when the trouble starts. You think it’s all neatly split up into seconds, days and minutes. Then, suddenly, you […]
Women’s football: balls to the sexists
A late submission to football chat… I first decided football wasn’t for me sometime in the late 1980s when, with a Dons-supporting boyfriend at Pittodre, the opposition substituted a black player. The racism shocked and sickened me. That these ordinary folk in the stand beside me had brought a banana with them to express their […]




