A couple of days after Christmas, I came down with flu. I wasn’t sure it actually was flu at first, but several negative covid tests and an illness that just wouldn’t shift convinced me this was the case. I thought I was on the mend until last Tuesday evening when I began to cough up…
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Glennis Toole was the coolest person I’d ever met. As I was seven years old at the time, I hadn’t really considered other people ‘cool’ or ‘uncool’, but I was instantly smitten with her. She and her family had moved into a house on our street and as there weren’t many kids in our neighbourhood…
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I vividly remember ringing in 2016 with my first view of the Northern Lights. I’d been chasing them for years and was beyond excited to finally see them. I just knew it was a good omen and that there were great things in store for us all. Then beloved celebrities started dying, the UK voted…
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Good riddance to 2022. It was hard on just about everyone, and it was cruel to us until the very end with the death of a much-loved pet and more than one horrible diagnosis for a family member. But it’s nearly over and I won’t dwell. Instead I’ll look back on the things I accomplished.…
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It’s not until you get away from dysfunction that you realise how bad it was. I wouldn’t say I was addicted to Twitter, but I used it a lot. In the beginning, it was a bit of fun, marvelling at how amusing some people could be with just a few words. Then came the commiserations.…
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The signs were there from the beginning; repetitive behaviours, preferring my own company, trouble making friends, and doing well in school despite hating the rigidity of it all. Later came my bafflement at the social ease of my peers, my struggling to follow arbitrary rules, and my generally feeling like an alien who’d been dropped…
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Over the past few years, I’ve been disentangling myself from capitalism’s insidious grip. It’s not an easy process, and it’s not something I’ll complete within my lifetime, but I still find it’s worth doing. I will preface by saying that I’m approaching this from a place of immense privilege. I’m self-employed and I have no…
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I am tired of wilful ignorance. For a long time it was on the periphery, hanging about the margins at a distance I could tolerate. A little cutesy sexism where a man pretends to love the woman he disrespects for a laugh, or the fool on Fox News trying to convince me that Nelson Mandela…
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It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly a decade since I lost interest in photography, but I can remember the exact day it happened. My husband and I had gone to a Christmas market in Glasgow, and I was taking pictures of the various items the vendors were selling. I should mention here that I…
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I’ve lost my integrity. It’s been a gradual process, a slow chipping away over the last few years, but today I’m feeling the damage. I’m functioning as well as can be expected, but I’m not sure how much longer I can carry on. My moral compass is as strong as ever, reinforced by my determination…
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My No Resolutions Policy continues, and I’m sad to report there weren’t many accomplishments, either. 2021 was a year of Mondays and I’m not sad to see the back of it. The best I can say is that I’m still here. My immediate family is healthy. My business is still alive. And I managed to…
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I’ve come to the conclusion that grief is a state of being rather than an emotion. This is based on the fact that I’ve always been quite good at controlling my emotions, but for the past couple of months I’ve been unpredictable and unsteady. I forget important daily tasks. I burst into tears without provocation.…
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I won’t waste time telling you that the deal the UK has negotiated with the EU is awful. There are plenty of experts about to do that, and if there is one thing I’ve learned in the 4.5 years since the referendum, it’s that no one cares what I think. My fifteen years experience as…
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It’s been exactly a month since I rang my warehouse manager at 7am to tell her I didn’t think we could continue safely working as a team. We took the decision to keep staff at home and advised everyone to stay put. I ran payroll early, paid everyone through the end of the month, and…
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I’ve sat down to write so many times since the lockdown began, but nothing materialises. Even though the universe has grabbed the small, settled snow globe of my life and given it a good shake, I can see quite clearly that my position is one of privilege. The steps my family took to prepare for…
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Fig and Pen 