What ever happened to Adrian Mole?

Do any of you remember the ‘Secret Diary of Adrian Mole’? It first appeared in 1982 in the U.K- it’s the story of a young, relatively gentle, curious adolescent boy and his struggles with his loving but painfully English  parents, a beautiful girl called Pandora Braithwaite and Adrian’s slightly odd experiment with a tube of superglue. […]

Diary of a mid-life crisis

Friday My penis and I had a long chat in the shower this morning. It grabbed my attention by pointing out a startling white pubic hair. “Oh my God”, it said with shock and a hint of waspish judgement “Look who’s moved into the neighbourhood” I gasped and then groaned, another portent of seasons shifting. […]

Got me a new computer…watch this space

The inconvenience of wings.

I’m awake in the thin hours again. I dreamt that I was flying through a furious storm with a choir of wounded Angels. So I lie here, thoughts drifting through my mind like falling feathers, some dark and threatening, others mere wisps, barely formed. The dark ones cast a pall over me- leaving tight, anxious […]

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

And now? Now that the crushing tide of work has abated briefly, just long enough to take small sips of life again. Now friend, what do you find? Being still floods me with a gentle anxiety, a deep sense of being alone in a vast universe, yet intricately, inexplicably connected to others through gossamer threads […]

Striving towards Life

Today’s selection — from When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. In May 2013, at 36, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV metastatic lung cancer. At first, Paul prepared for death, then, he and his wife Lucy decided to have a child. ” Flush in the face of mortality, many decisions became compressed, urgent […]

Who Rescues the Rescuer?

Being a rescuer of others in emotional distress is a popular gig. As children, many of us learnt that fulfilling this role afforded us a modicum of immunity within our often volatile family ecosystems. Being the emotional support of a sick, depressed mother, or alcoholic personality disordered father may have brought a degree of proximity […]