A few years back our local playground was in a complete state. This is a playground that had been run-down to the point of falling apart - the kind of place where you say a prayer before tentatively putting your precious child on the swing, because no amount of parental
I'd been asked by my sibling (travelling and with no internet or phone access) to do something described as "the most important thing in [their] life." You might anticipate this to be a life or death kind of task, a job so important that everything else
I think I’ve figured out what makes my blood boil above all other things (barring anything annoying my kids do on an hourly basis). It’s when I try to carry out a simple task and it ends up being so frustratingly difficult or troublesome for a reason no
Summer is here, as I can confirm by the uncomfortable dampness in my office chair. When temperatures start to rise it’s time for one thing: big fans. But it’s also the season of summer fairs. If there’s a large, open bit of green space within reasonable distance
I had the weirdest dream this week. It was a funeral. A funeral for a friend I hope to stay in touch with forever, despite the fact that we haven’t actually seen each other in ages - we’ve got a shared history, and that counts for something. Obviously, dreams
We'd been walking in the mid-day sun for almost an hour. Six of us, including three kids, all near the point of giving up. Except there's no giving up in a maze - we’d just be stuck there. Sure, given that this particular puzzle has
I’ve had to be more careful about spending money since I lost my job, limiting my purchases of branded baked beans to special occasions only, buying porridge from Lidl, going ad-supported on a number of streaming services, and cutting my coffee intake to just six double espresso lattes
Have you seen The Long Walk, or read the book? It’s a rather harrowing tale of young men competing on television for riches, with the goal to be the last person walking. Miles and miles of walking. Slow down or stop for too long, get a handful of warnings,
The soundtrack of my childhood wouldn’t be nearly as cool as the one in Mix Tape, the latest release to come under fire from angry man babies that seem hellbent on trying to gatekeep video games from everyone but people exactly like them. A coming-of-age adventure set
This past Bank Holiday weekend in the UK was supposed to be about celebrating being married to my wife for 14 years. We don’t buy into gifting and putting on a big song and dance, but a couple of nice meals out in Brighton, a bit of wandering the
A beam of light hits me like a dart through the blind that doesn’t quite shut properly any more. I’ve been too scared to fix it or even try, catastrophising over how much worse it could be, but at this moment I regret my subpar DIY skills. It’
We all tell them, don’t we? Hopefully, like me, they are more the innocent kind, the type that give ourselves permission to indulge in things that aren’t bettering our lives or simply to make other people’s lives more tolerable. I’m not one to go around telling