Category: Life

Queen Elizabeth II 1926-2022

The first time I really met the Queen, she was in her bedroom. I must have been around 8, perhaps, and totally engrossed in The BFG, the scene where the BFG drops Sophie into the Queen’s bedroom so she can help them stop the evil giants eating all the children. Up until then, the Queen […]

The things I learned from my GCSE study leave

Before we go too far, a warning. In the words of Baz Luhrmann, ‘[nostalgia] is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth’ (‘Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)’, 1999). This post is pure nostalgia and therefore may be […]

One foot in front of the other

I’m huffing up the stairs, socks straggling and escaping from the jumble in my arms. Every two steps one piece of clean laundry falls and I stop and pick it up and three more fall instead. It takes five minutes to go upstairs, which would be nothing in a mansion but an irritatingly long time […]

Losing my weight

Today was a landmark day. Today, I finally returned to the lowest weight that I have recorded, the weight I was in January 2011, which I haven’t come close to in ten years (the lowest before that was around 9lb higher, in 2017). Today, I also became clinically overweight – this is better when you […]

Changes

Almost eleven years ago I wrote a post called “Letter to my children”. My daughter was a month old and my son three years old, and I was struggling with adjusting to life with a child at nursery and a newborn – and perhaps even more with the idea that that struggle was normal. It […]

The year I turn forty

Ten years ago, I wrote a post about turning thirty. Ten years?! It seems like no time at all… in some ways. In others, I was a very different person then. 2020, of course, is the year I turn forty. That feels— very grown up. It feels like I should definitely be an adult. Which […]

What makes a good father?

Reflections on fatherhood for Father’s Day 2017 What makes a good father? I’m sure almost everyone asks themselves this question at some point, whether it’s in curiosity, or panic, or even self-congratulation. Since Beloved Husband first became a father almost ten years ago, I have had the privilege of seeing what makes a good father and […]

Profits vs people

I remember being in my early teens, and seeing a tv show about car seatbelts, and how the manufacturers of the car decided not to put extra seatbelts in the pop-up seats in the boot because it was too expensive. Yes, there was a risk of a passenger in these seats being seriously hurt or […]