advice

Coronavirus: What are we going to talk about today?

April 2, 2020 By Ellen Leave a Comment

“Mum, you’ve said that four times already today.” “I have?” “Yes. You telling people that the quality of the chat is going to get pretty skinny pretty quickly.” That was back at the start of the Time We Couldn’t Believe Was Happening when even our astonishment was worth commenting on. How quickly we’ve got used […]

Coronavirus: We’re all in the same boat

March 29, 2020 By Ellen Leave a Comment

Once I was a sailor. Or, at least, I spent a couple of years messing about on boats. It left me with fond memories and a vague hankering to put the oilskins back on and untie the lines, but mostly I don’t think of it. Until now, that is… It started way back the last […]

My Hotter Fit – a step closer to comfortable feet

March 9, 2020 By Ellen Leave a Comment

Apparently more than 75% of us haven’t had our feet measured in the past 10 years – this is according to the people at Hotter. Frankly, I’m a bit surprised it’s even as many as that. After all, your feet are pretty constant, aren’t they? Hanging about in your shoes, the same side they were […]

Grateful for another self-help book…

January 6, 2020 By Ellen Leave a Comment

The thing about self-help books is the optimism. Not so much that of the author, thought it helps. How To Win People Who Vaguely Remember Your Face or Feel The Unease And Decide Not To Bother wouldn’t sell very well, would they? No. It’s my optimism. My hope that this one will be the one […]

Inadvertent wisdom – the same difference again

November 24, 2019 By Ellen 2 Comments

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 […]