The more we talk about our experiences, the better. But it’s not always straightforward. My unease about writing freely about the menopause isn’t just that people will now focus on the woman who was once a person but is now just a sweaty bag of past-it symptoms. What bothers me is that the narrative about […]
A fresh look at autism with Chris Packham
Did you see it? Chris Packham’s documentary Autism and Me. I think you should. You can catch it on iPlayer before it’s too late. He made it because he wants every autistic person to know that they aren’t alone. But I think it’s more important than that. It’s about everyone else learning that autism is […]
Why #MeToo matters so much
Have you seen all the #MeToo posts? They are by women who are putting up their virtual hands to say that they’ve been sexually assaulted or harassed too, in response to the Weinstein scandal. Women like you and I. It’s important to show how wide-spread this is and how, until now, so many women dealt with […]
This has been a week for a little nasal gazing
Every flipping year. It’s the same. Just when I think I’ve avoided getting the back-to-school lurgy, I succumb. Wouldn’t it be good if the frequency of snot-storms reduced as you got older? A tiny bit of compensation maybe. This year’s version has been particularly horrible – snotty and bad-tempered. And far worse, of course, than […]
Right ho, it’s the slackers’ guide again.
In the continued interests of avoiding actually writing anything of my own, I thought it was high time I bothered the internet with some of my thoughts on what other people wrote. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez Lovely language and fantastical ideas. The mythical town of Macondo is a means of telling […]