Max and the girls had a model kit out at the weekend. It’s been in the garage, half made, for I don’t know how long, wrapped in newspaper, congealing paints, glue that has had long enough to go off and not stick properly. A relic of a different time. I couldn’t have told you when […]
See the little angels.
I love Night Watch by Terry Pratchett. I love the story, the bittersweet twists of a man watching his own history unfold all over again. I love the world wearied character Sam Vimes has become. I love his rough morality, his honest, gritty, reluctant love for family and honour and his street ethics. I love […]
Oh, lovely girl.
Oh… Peaches. You were off my radar when you were a wild child. I didn’t know that bit of you. But recently, after your spirited defence of attachment parenting, I found you on IG. We exchanged a word or two. I smiled at your pictures, of the love and fierce joy that shined out of […]
The Angry.
Wednesday was a really tough day. Every so often, a grief day emerges, out of nowhere except a combination of events and hormones and co-incidences and moments of unexpected thoughtlessness. And Wednesday started, as it so often does, with a dream. I never dream about Freddie; I have barely dreamed of him at all; I […]
This bit of me.
I think I once knew these as ‘Preacher in the Pulpit’, a long time ago, when people told me the names of flowers. I think, confused, I mixed up pulpit with spit and believed they grew from the untouchable, improbable, highly suspicious cuckoo spit that foamed and flawed the weeds of our walks. Spit. Pulpit. […]
Monkey Do
He was playing on the floor at work this week, engrossed in two plastic cars off the stock shelves and a box of shredded paper. Perfect play fodder for a little boy. Cars and mess. We were both smiling at him and watching him play. Distracted, he looked up and reached for a different toy. […]
Right Where I Am: Three Years, Two Months
The yearly check in with grief via Still Life with Circles has become fundamental to me. I have waited for it to come around again yet now I wonder what thoughts to write. If I say “Life is good”, I feel the eyes of the boy who isn’t on my back. Imagining myself walking on, […]
Sometimes… Always.
It's very hard to believe that three years ago I was watching my son struggle through his last night. Truth be told, it's very hard to believe at times that I had a first son, the Bene's Internet abbreviation is DS2 not DS1. That Freddie came first, even though now sometimes I look at his […]
Hard won happy.
It was not possible to overcome the wanting. The wanting brought a foolish mistake and a serious error of judgement. The error of judgement brought our world crashing down. That crashed ended in a room and £30 a week and arguments and learning to talk, learning to forgive, learning to be grown ups. Learning to […]
Unrecognisable to myself
I don’t know how old I was when I saw the film Philadelphia; I saw it at the cinema, with my friend who had a close family friend dying of AIDS at the time, contracted while working in Africa before anyone knew to be wary. We were teenagers. I don’t think I’ve seen the film […]
