Thoughts
On 10th December 2024 everything stopped - I was diagnosed with breast cancer aged 44. Here we are, and at the time of writing, I'm 2/3 of the way through chemo (to shrink the cancer before surgery) and getting appointments in place for the next phase. I&
Work
The last post I wrote here was called 'hiatus'... and that was a long time ago. I think the twenty months without the promised return to blogging can themselves testify to just how intense this period has been. I wrote that blog while in France waiting for the
Work
Things are changing in 2020. At this very moment, I'm trying to change my work and career, and the results of that are a few weeks away yet. But whatever happens, I'm on a new path from here. I stopped writing and blogging publicly online a
Thoughts
Mike was a colleague I used to know a little when I worked at the library service in North Yorkshire, and I wrote this after his very untimely death. If people truly can outlive their physical lives through their writing then thank goodness for Mike's writing. It'
Thoughts
Some of the most annoyingly cliched advice that people prone to depressive thinking receive is to "think positively"; "just be positive"; "look on the bright side". As if optimism could be artifically made; as if you could somehow fake or whitewash your experiences and
My poems
The poem, distanced, courses through the blood My struggling language clamouring for air. These empty windows mock the stammering Of hitching speech, and words broken and bare. I'm wincing at the glowing laptop screen The wasted words that crowding weight my brow Flood, blackly voiding sense. The threatened
Reviews
The ensemble cast of three open and close The Boy Who Cried Wolf with the ‘clickety click’ of their knitting needles, and the story gradually weaves itself into being, framed by these little poetic and visual moments. Taking this small rural family of mother, son and grandfather as a starting
Reviews
“There’s one thing you must tell him – let him explore.” Josephine Peach’s advice to me for my 7 year old son, about to start his first piano lessons. What was joyful about Peach’s recital at Ripon Cathedral, the first in the new season of the cathedral’s
Thoughts
This was written when I moved my personal blog onto yorkshirewords.com. Attentive followers will have seen that I previously had two websites, a personal blog using my name, and a professional blog talking about my freelancing. I also had two distinct Twitter accounts, one personal and one professional. I
Thoughts
An open letter to James Rhodes, pianist (in reply to his article). James, on the off-chance you do read this (since I'm going to tweet you a link to it!) I don't know you at all, of course, and please forgive my direct way of addressing
Thoughts
The more I talk and think about actually, concretely starting to write creatively, the more it feels that I'm being dragged over a precipice. The more I feel the need to write, the more preoccupied by it I become and the more difficult it becomes not to start.
Thoughts
I'm going to stop being afraid of writing. Neil Gaiman, Rainer Maria Rilke and Gustav Holst are the specific heavyweight inspirations for this burst of courage. But explaining the initial reticence which has silenced me for more than a few months is a complicated one and comes down