Greetings, gorgeous ones. How has your week been? I’ve been visited by the Lady Covidia; throat scarred with razor blades, mind numbing fatigue and muscle aches that have left me winded. After a long weekend in bed, I was feeling if not better then less ill, but then my sense of taste disappeared, I felt…
Bore da, my lovelies. Did I mention I was writing a book? Funny, it must have slipped my mind... Well, the day is finally here, and I can reveal the cover and title of my new book. I am so excited to share it with you guys first. I can’t tell you how much I…
Today is M.E Awareness Day I’ve forgotten that I am sick. Well, I say I’ve forgotten, but that’s not entirely true. I know it’s there. I can feel it in the shaking of my limbs, in the burning of my bones, the stumbling on the stairs. So no, it’s not that I’ve forgotten. It’s more…
I’ve lost my reading classes, so if this post has more than the usual number of spilling mistakes you’ll know why. The last time I remember having them, I was squinting through one lens attempting to dye my eyebrows, the other half of the glasses balanced on my head, all skew-whiff. I’d look where I’d…
I am a sick and disabled woman and I am dependent on disability benefits. I will not justify why I receive PIP. I will not explain to you the expenditure that I incur as a direct result of my chronic ill health. I will not list the things I have to spend more money on…
The dog and I are wintering. Well, I am, the dog is being a dick but more on that another day. I am embracing the season and have slipped from the winter festivities into the warming embrace of hibernation. My health, always declining in the darker days like some Victorian invalid, requires this time of…
Brightest blessings for the season. Mid-winter is, for me, the perfect pause, a chance to rest and recharge. This year, struggling with my health, I’ve rested for the whole of December, getting writing work squared away so I can make time for nourishment, - a little yoga, a little knitting, - readying myself for…
The end of summer came down with the heavens, washing out the beaten path across the fields, sliding me and my wheelchair out of the mud and onto the tarmac. Normally, with a few good frosts, I can eek out the last few weeks of freedom until mid-October, but this year the kids had barely…
I was busy on the frontline of parenting back in 1997 when Labour last got in after nearly two decades under the Tories. It is no exaggeration to say that life under the Tories back then was brutal. It has been brutal under this last lot, but back then the demonisation of single parents was…
So, Rishi Sunak wants sick and disabled people back to work with the age-old diatribe of how benefits have become a ‘lifestyle choice’ for some people. If the Conservatives win the next election they plan to strip benefits from some sick and disabled people if they have failed to get work after a year. I’ll…
No go I wanted to travel to London. I live in Mid-Wales, not the most connected of places but this is the 21st Century so how hard could it be? The Welsh National Legend, Micheal Sheen was giving a talk about underrepresented writers at the London Book Fair and he was going to mention my…
In a recent magazine article a woman was explaining that she'd been struggling with life. A difficult pregnancy while already having a toddler, she'd been working freelance from home, when the little one slept. Then new baby came along and feeding was hard and she had to go back to work early because they were…
I was lucky enough to be chosen to be part of the first A Writing Chance Award and it changed how I felt about being a working class writer. It made me feel like a proper writer. Aplications are now open for A Writing Chance 2024/25. If you are from a working class or low…
*This is a work of fiction- any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental! The puppy has grown. No longer a puppy, he is a hulking teenager, trying to throw his weight around and then when tired wanting to curl up on my lap for a nap. He is now way too…
Spring is here, despite the inclement weather. With it comes the endless dance – do I need a coat or sunblock or a balaclava? Is it too hot/ too cold to put the delicate seedling out in the garden, a sigh of relief as the dining table-come-potting bench is free of clutter if only for…
I don’t know when I lost my voice. Loud and brash in my twenties, I would stand my own with all comers. Was it a life running after kids that quietened me? Certainly, four kept me busy. Then my mother-in-law died and, leaving two adopted kids with profound multiple disabilities, her two joined ours to…
I often think about death. Well not often, but I do think about it. Not so much my impending mortality, the brevity of our short lives, nothing quite so highbrow. More along the lines of embarrassing deaths and how to avoid them. Is that weird? There are the obvious ones – dying on the toilet,…
Imposter syndrome is alive and kicking. Sat there in the crook of my arm, right next to the dog. It sneers as I sit here on the sofa, trying to type. ‘A real writer would have a desk,’ it whispers, ‘or a shed, or a table. A real writer would have a room of one’s…
Seasonal Illness Stickers by Michele Bruttomesso is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 I came home from London with covid. It has not been the one where people say it was just like a bad cold and didn’t stop them doing much – a weird combination of bragging about the strength of their immune system, combined with…
I am writing this in bed today, not well enough to get up and like everyone else I am watching the news showing the horror of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. My heart breaks for the people of Ukraine, who are now living through a reality many of us can’t imagine. Last weekend, they were…
Remember me going on about winning A Writing Chance Award with New Writing North and the very lovely Michael Sheen ? No? Well you cant have been listening! Back in the summer I won a place on a writing program for underrepresented writers and this weekend we are all heading off to the BBC in…
Bordering Grey 