I’m well into my first morning back at work after a relaxing week off, making headway through the mountain of emails. So, naturally, foremost on my mind right now is this thought: let’s all just move to Turkey and set up a bed and breakfast in the hills. Ah, but alas, I foresee another decade …
When I think about it, there really was no reason to take up lodgings in Ealing for the sake of a job in Maidenhead. It would have been much more sensible to rent a place in Slough or Wycombe. The truth is, I was placed in that locality for no other reason than that I …
What I must always remind myself about those imperfect heroines I wrote of for so many years: they were always entirely fictional, a figment of my imagination alone. If they came alive for me as I finessed each draft of a novel I once thought I would one day publish, I must acknowledge that those …
Remember the ocean of tears cried when we didn’t have children. Context for the tears now that we do. All of this will pass.
What circuitous routes we take in our lives. Driving through Aylesbury after visiting friends today, gazing up at that grey concrete tower at its centre, I recalled the summer of 2000 spent looking for jobs at the central library. I ended up there because my grandmother lived a couple of train stops away, and I …
Life is extraordinary. Consciousness is strange, beyond comprehension. Collectively we’re bound in ways impossible to explain. Consider those moments we think of someone, and suddenly they call. Consider those instances we’re just about to say something and our beloved blurts exactly the same words out instead. Consider how often our thoughts seem to collide. And …
“Could you redo the patio?” Well, I could, but that’s not to say it would be any good. I think that’s a job for the professionals. But it will be very expensive. That’s an understatement. The quotes we got for our little courtyard at the bottom of the garden were eye watering. That’s why I …
There is an erroneous assumption I encounter amongst Muslims — even amongst apparently learned Muslims in teaching positions in the community. It manifests in them using the term gora interchangeably with non-Muslim, or more precisely with people presumed to have degenerative ethics. Their assumption seems to be that many of us were raised in the …
Have I come a long way since my almighty meltdown over a pile of logs in October 2021? By now, of course, I recognise that it wasn’t really about the logs: that unexpected delivery was just the final straw. The anxiety and blues that characterised that period should probably be attributed to my writing fiction …
The trouble with a migratory lifestyle — internal or external — is that there’s little respite while raising children. Whereas we might have had grandparents, extended family or community to rely on had we stayed close to our roots, for those of us who moved far away for work or relationships, there is little relief. …
I don’t claim that my view of the world is the right one. I don’t pretend I am correct and everyone else is wrong. I just write about how I have viewed things during my lifetime, the experiences I have had and how they shaped me. I would be the first to admit I have …
While out walking yesterday, I was reminded once more that I was born two weeks late. It nearly presented an opportunity to broach the subject. Perhaps I would have done had our lad not been at my side. Were we alone, I might have said, “Yes, well, we now know why that was.” Babies with …
Note to self: before going all gung-ho, recall that you have weak bones. Every night: such a horrible nausea-inducing pain in my joints and limbs. Yes, I really overdid it this weekend. I never learn.
