Beloved Ones – A Poem

I see the ocean within the breeze that blows,The sun behind the rain that flows,And seasons falling gently;Never holding hands, simply grazing pastTo let their sibling take centre stage:Spring of birth and summer haze.I saw the rose bud plucked and thrownAnd trees so proud in rain or snowBecome cut and torn; I heard them cry,My…

Lavender – A Short Story

The first perfume has no bottle, no receipt or shopping basket. The very first perfume is made from crushed Lavender leaves, pulled from a neighbour’s front garden on a Saturday morning before the word ‘Lavender’ has even entered our vocabulary. We pull the leaves and the tiny, dusky-purple buds and hold them both in our…

A Golden Afternoon at Portobello Market

I bought a gold watch that doesn’t tell the time. ‘Fifteen pounds’ a tiny lady with kind eyes beamed from behind her stall of treasure and trash combined. She wrapped the golden band around my wrist. ‘But for you, today, just ten pounds’. The little watch face seemed to look up at me. How could…

Chasing Away the Sunday Blues

The Sunday blues are very real. As if the 5:2 weekday to weekend ratio wasn’t insulting enough, a large proportion of Sunday is spent in this blue state. Not sky fluffy-cloud blue, but a darker blue like the colour of the Microsoft Teams icon on a Monday morning. In an attempt to not succumb to…

Writing Letters, Writing Joy

Written words on paper feel special. A handwritten letter is a sequence of steps involving the two things that we crave most from those dear to us: time and thought. The writer has taken the time to fold into an armchair or rest their elbows upon a desk and to wrap fingers and thumb around…

The Other Side – Things I Don’t Miss in a Pandemic

When something is taken away from you, snatched out of your hands without warning, we tend to miss it. Normality (whatever that means) was stolen from us ten months ago and has since made teasing guest appearances, enticing us with outdoor eating and socialising with five chosen companions, before finally getting the axe for a…

Down Eight and Up Nine – An Ode to Strength

We are told that if we are knocked down eight times, we must get up nine times. This is strength in its most quantitative form and it is easy enough to visualise: strength is having one more try, another shot in the dark, simply carrying on once again. And again. And again. The idea of…

Changing Perspective: Finding Comfort in the Now

In perfect dramatic irony, as the clocks went backwards, we too seem to have gone back in time in entering a second national lockdown. Inevitable? Perhaps. But this still does not make the concept any easier to comprehend. The somewhat novelty that the first lockdown held has instead been replaced by an overpowering sleepiness, a…

Learning to Love Your Skin – An Acne Journey

‘Do you have chickenpox?’ Four words, three stunned seconds, two fast heartbeats and one realisation. I realised in the school playground that there was something on my face that may not be instantly registered as normal or expected. I was eleven years old and primary school children are never the most tactful, yet the memory…

Girl Talk – The Fuel of Female Friendships

‘Girl talk’ is defined in the dictionary (who knew) as ‘conversation between women or girls, typically about subjects considered to be uninteresting to or inappropriate for men’. This is understandable – pre-drinks on a pre-lockdown girls night out would often include a rundown of the latest Bumble dates, work dramas too elaborate for a lunch…