Witterings about lots of things.
When we got our cat, he was small and neat, still and silent. He was motionless to the point of invisibility. I was surprised to find him in amongst laundry I’d been folding, or on a chair I was about to sit down on. He only ever moved after cautious consideration. Then he would pad... Continue Reading →
Obviously, this will be silly. None of that tasteful Insta Christmas here; no table-scaping ideas, no notions about wrapping gifts in brown paper and raffia. In December I go all out, with tatty sequinned jumpers, forgetfulness, caffeine and ramshackle gift-buying, hitting up the charity shops at the last minute, and festooning the place in vibrantly artificial decorations... Continue Reading →
When I had been sober for three years, I wrote about the process of leaving alcohol behind, the drudgery of my final years of drinking, and the white-knuckle ride of early sobriety (you can read it here). This was how I felt, three years in: "I have grown up more in these years than I... Continue Reading →
‘do you ever cycle through the same 4 apps on your phone over and over again and feel like a tiger pacing its cage at the zoo' (tweet from whitegirlblog, Dec 26, 2018) The Spring of 2025 marks my slightly off-kilter anniversary in the world of blogging: 13 years! 13 years of tortuous puns and... Continue Reading →
It began with the rambunctious, big-hearted Disney adaptation of Jilly Cooper's Rivals. What an opening, as the archetypal rake, Rupert Campbell-Black, and his companion, join the mile high club on Concorde while fellow passengers smoke, read Vogue magazine and pop champagne. Tres amusant! As soon as it was over I ordered the books. Wintertime... Continue Reading →
Elizabeth Jane Howard portrait by J S Lewinski I was only a couple of pages in to 'The Light Years,' volume one of Elizabeth Jane Howard's series of novels about the Cazalet family, when I thought, 'it's going to suck so much when this is over.' You know you've found a truly great book when you feel... Continue Reading →
Nobody asked for this. And yet, here it is: my festive list of happy things for Christmas 2020! It’s been an age since I’ve written a blog post, but can promise I’ve a good reason: 2020 was the year we welcomed our baby son into the world. And promptly apologised to him and tried... Continue Reading →
Somehow a few weeks went by, and then it was a year since I last updated this blog. How remiss of me. Despite this apparent wilting of creativity, the writing side of life has been trundling along nicely, with articles of mine appearing in the Scottish Review (if you haven’t had a look, the SR... Continue Reading →
January. The long morning-after. A time of mad diets, tentative declarations of sobriety, and a communal wish to be anywhere but here and now. January does something evil to those of us in a cold climate: it's so bad, so unrelentingly bleak, that it begins to feel like a judgement from on high. We regret... Continue Reading →
So this is Christmas. We are divided, between those who are easily swayed by the mob mentality (Chrrriiiistmas they scream, eggnog drunk), and those who deem this season a massive waste of time and money. I would fall in to the latter (because I hate spending money and group projects are the worst) except this... Continue Reading →
Amy Jardine 