It was week two of facing one of my greatest obstacles, a task so seamless to others, as simple as blinking or...

It was week two of facing one of my greatest obstacles, a task so seamless to others, as simple as blinking or...
It isn't called a sinking feeling for nothing. It feels like you're in a lift, plummeting down the outside of a...
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” I was taught to say this at school if called a...
Flicking idly through a glossy, fashion magazine a headline grabs my attention: “A band-aid for bullet wounds: is the self-care craze doing more harm than good?” I am intrigued, partly because I am facing my own conundrums in a work context about whose responsibility...
I can't leave the garden this evening. It's not a large garden – the size of some people’s kitchens, where they cook in front of friends and serve “supper” at the table, a happy, chaotic mess, wine bottles strewn around, pans in the sink, kids paintings on the...
My husband is 53 today; I will soon join him in the same age. We have been married for 21 years. It is a hot day so we decided against a day out in the country and are lounging around the house and garden, looking forward to dinner a deux tonight as our grown up but...
I’m on count down. Annual leave minus 10 days. If all goes to plan (no local lockdown!) I’ll be going away; an escape to the country, to the coast; a relatively unpopulated area that I’ve spent a couple of weeks exploring most summers for the last few years. A...
David was my GP trainer, my course organiser, my mentor and my partner. I met him in 1998, was trained by him, and then became a Registrar in his practice. It seemed logical and part of life’s natural order that I should become his GP Partner and for ten years we...
They were talking. I knew that because I could see their mouths moving. Their heads, their faces animated. My eyes told me information that my ears and my brain were not able to take in. How could they talk, continue to communicate, carry on as if the world had not...
The last straw. What was your last straw? What made you finally snap after years of tolerating abuse, manipulation and deceit? I knew I was being unfairly treated, managed, and used, but I told myself time and again that I could cope with it, that it wasn’t all bad,...
That Autumn had been the wettest since forever. Not that we knew that then, the statistics come out months after the lived experience, but I remember every day resulted in a drenching. Having to hang up the raincoat and the pram cover over the bath and dry the wheels...
“There’s the door. Be my guest!” He had been winding me up all day, muttering and glowering and asking pointless questions. But when he put his course folder on his head and announced that the activity he and his colleagues had been asked to do was straight out of...