The Motherhood Diaries : Living with Chronic Fatigue

You know he’s tired when your husband confuses you with your daughter… of eight months. Last week, I plopped down onto the sofa, baby in arms ready for a feed, and asked my husband to pass me a bib. Ever obliging, he brought it over and proceeded absentmindedly to tie the thing around my neck. […]

Make it easy on yourself

Acquiring just a few good organisational habits will help your day go with a swing rather than a bang – because life doesn’t have to be so hard. It’s a commonly held misconception that life is hard. That it’s a struggle, a war, and that, even in the comfort of relatively peaceful first-world countries, we […]

Bloom where you’re planted

Faced with difficult circumstances, you can choose to struggle and wilt or make the most of where you find yourself and bloom, right there where you’re planted. I recently found myself at a party making small talk with a woman who had just moved to Germany. Following her husband who’d found a job there, she’d […]

The forgotten commandment: Thou Shalt Not Whine

In the long grey winter months, it’s easy to be negative and hard to act cheery, but just as you are what you eat, so too you feel what you focus on. Choose to change your focus. You can’t really argue with the Ten Commandments. I mean, as rules for happy and harmonious living go, […]

The Motherhood Diaries : Facing Unwanted Advice or Worse, Scolding

When I was pregnant, my mother offered me a single piece of priceless wisdom about raising a child: “Everyone will have an opinion on everything. Don’t feel obliged to listen to anyone.” I heard her advice while huge and happy on pregnancy hormones. Now, with an active 16-month-old, I heed that advice on a daily basis […]

Tales of the unexpected

If life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans, it’s wise to keep a few gaps in your diary… I am definitely one of life’s planners. I like making a list, checking it twice, then typing it up and keeping it on file. I enjoy feeling organised and like things are under control, […]

Reasons to be cheerful, 1, 2, 3…

Get happy: give thanks now to shore up your soul for days when reasons to be cheerful seem few and far between. My beloved, who’s a lofty and well-built 6ft1, often ribs me about my somewhat more dinky stature – I’m a whole foot shorter than him (if you’re reading this on the continent, 1m84 […]

The lesson of the leaves

As the trees let go of what they no longer need this autumn, carpeting the ground in their golden foliage, take a look at what you’d be better off without… I love the autumn. I always have. It’s a time when I’ve always felt hopeful, optimistic and energetic. I have always enjoyed that “back to […]

Days of our Lives

It’s easy to let the days go by, unchecked, unnoticed. But the days become years, and the years become your life. Take a moment to consider what you want to look back on in a week, a year, a decade and start living that life today. For one month during the autumn of 1995, the […]

Activity monogamy or, the joys of doing one thing at a time

When multi-tasking leads to half-hearting, it’s time to remember the old adage – less is more. I have a confession to make: I am a cheater. A while back, I was spending some time with Robert Ludlum and – I don’t know what I was doing – I played around behind his back with… Charles […]