April has been a month of two halves. The Easter holidays couldn’t have arrived quickly enough after an intense fortnight of complete and utter chaos in the lead up to them. Work and school were overwhelmingly busy for each of us and there was some kind of event (sporting-, acting- or house-related) happening on almost…
Two weeks ago, on 19th March 2019, my Grannie left this earth. She was just six weeks short of her 99th birthday. She was an incredible character in so many different ways. She out-lived two of her four children and leaves behind her a legacy of eight grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren. Family was everything to…
March has been an interesting month. It has felt pretty full-on, intense, and, if I’m honest, rather stressful at times. I’m going to be quite glad to see the back of it. We still have no kitchen following the fire we had last month, although thankfully things are starting to move forwards now and we…
February is over, we’re almost halfway through March and I feel like I can breathe again. I hadn’t realised I was holding my breath. But I must have been because suddenly there’s a little bit less of a squeezing feeling in my chest. Last month marked four years since my Dad died, suddenly and unexpectedly,…
February has been weird. It’s usually my least favourite month as it’s the time of year I associate most with my Dad – his birthday plus the anniversaries of his death and his funeral all take place in February. I usually find it incredibly difficult. This year has been better though: I’ve been consciously choosing…
I have always said with absolute certainty that the first thing I would grab in a fire is my photos. As it turns out, I was wrong. You think you know how you’ll react. You think you know what it will feel like if the unimaginable happens. You think you know the steps you’ll take…
Over time I’ve come to realise that it always takes me a little while to get going at the beginning of a new year. I’m not one of those people who launches into January all fired up and ready to achieve – I prefer a slower, more gentle start. I tend to spend January reflecting…
The paradox of time is already in evidence for 2019 as January feels like it’s simultaneously zoomed by and lasted 186 days already. The girls went back to school quite late this year and so we had a whole week of the Christmas holidays still to go at the start of the month, which we…
The new year always begins in the most positive of ways for us as we celebrate our youngest girl’s birthday at the start of January. I can’t think of a better way to bring colour and joy to the greyest of months. This year, she turned nine years old. Nine years of my little ray…
We begin January 1st every year with an empty glass jar and a stack of brightly coloured scraps of paper. They’re placed on the kitchen side together, easily accessible for all, and throughout the weeks and months that follow, whenever someone thinks of something that they’ve felt happy about (or proud of, or excited about)…