Photos from home

I'm in a retrospective mood. December is a month for sorting through our photos and thinking about the year that has passed. It's no surprise the events of 2020 will stand out in my memory. A few years ago it was a road-trip through California that dominated; this year our holidays were equally unusual but somewhat closer to home (literally).

Holidays in the garden

Scrolling through our archive, the photos reveal a few other themes too: fun in the garden during lockdown-lite (summer), new crazes for paddle boarding and home-decorating, as well as an obsession with food (homegrown veg, homemade sourdough, celebratory cakes). Towards the latter end of the year, it was the new kitten who stole the show - romping with the dog, curled up in my son's hat, or perched nonchalantly on the roof of our house (three storeys up 😩).

Euphoric Recall

Someone sent me a polite message via Twitter earlier in the summer. He introduced himself as Aidan Martin and said he wanted to flag up a book he had written - Euphoric Recall, a memoir of his childhood and journey through addiction. Because of my recent work on childhood trauma, he piqued my interest.

Aidan's book fulfils his dream of becoming a writer; a dream he nearly gave up on when he was an addict. It took two decades to conquer his addictions to hard pornography, alcohol and drugs. His book, which publishes tomorrow (1 October), refers to a higher power that helped him overcome his demons. "I am not an airy-fairy guy in the slightest nor am I religious," he tells me. "But I do believe I am on a journey and am being guided and protected on it." 

My own book about the toxic impact of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) was published in May by Public Health Wales and is freely available. The book consists of interviews with practitioners - who help others to overcome adverse experiences - as well as people with lived experiences of trauma, like Aidan.

Kindness - the new superpower

Throughout the coronavirus lockdown, there will be children stuck at home who have suffered emotional or physical abuse; kids who've witnessed the painful breakdown of their parents' relationship, or watched a mother/father spiral downwards into depression. 

The book: how we can help people 
who have suffered childhood trauma

These experiences are not uncommon and sadly it has become clear that they can have a long-term impact, affecting not only children's mental health into adulthood, but also their physical health. For example, people who have suffered trauma in their early lives are more vulnerable to strokes and heart disease.

Splendid isolation?

So it's Day One of social isolation. I feel like I can hear the Big Brother voiceover ringing in my ears, giving a running commentary of life in the 'house' so far. On the plus side, online school seems to be going well for the kids this morning, barring a few technical wrinkles. And the dog has enjoyed more walks than usual as we take turns to sample the sunny freedom in the fields behind our house.

Coronavirus haircuts in the kitchen

My God, was it only a week ago that we had friends round for Sunday lunch? The last eight days have felt more like a month as we've watched our freedoms fall by the wayside, felled by an unremitting virus. It is incredible how the apparatus of our society - the education system, our economy, basic human rights - can be dismantled so quickly. And in the end, all it comes down to is life itself, the battle to preserve our little flickers of being.

Brave new world

What strange times we live in. I walked into a petrol station yesterday to fill up my car and got terribly excited when I noticed multiple packs of loo roll in the aisle. A rare sight these days. In our household, a shortage had been looming after several visits to my local supermarket last week proved fruitless. I had to resist the urge to buy up more than my fair share.

Even the dog's worried about food shortages 
- he raided a food bin this morning 

Our days are weighted with an underlying sense of dread as we wait for the coronavirus to unleash its full force on our shores. Yesterday's restrictions on social contact - recommended by the prime minister and his advisors - will change our lives in immeasurable ways. For me, the consequences of these restrictions are only just sinking in. Can I still meet a friend for coffee? No, not really. Will book club get cancelled? Yes. And what about Pilates? 

Vive l'indépendence!

This time last week I dropped off my 15-year old daughter at school for her French exchange trip. In the dark, lamp-lit morning (4:30am), seeing her onto the school coach felt like a surreal experience. In a haze of orange street-light, I was sending off  into the unknown, to stay with a family I'd never met before. Instinctively, I didn't want to let her go, even though my head was telling me this was a good opportunity for her.

My daughter at ease with her new independence!

On the quiet drive home, I gave myself a stern pep talk. As a good parent, I needed to allow my daughter her independence and the freedom to try out new experiences.

The power of friendship

Chiselling away... page one!

Just when you thought An Author's Notebook might have died and gone to blog heaven... here I am! The reason for my absence has been book-related: I've spent January finishing my third novel. I'm nearly there (New Year's resolution - tick!) although I'm still tinkering around the edges.

I actually finished writing the book over a year ago, but have spent all this time chiselling away at it, refining sentences and teasing out themes. Most usefully, I've been addressing feedback from a small group of readers - most of them writers themselves. I've been so lucky with the people I have met through my CBC creative writing course, as well as a few supporters closer to home.

Birthday lifecycle

Something struck me the other day. I could be halfway through my life (assuming there are no unforeseen accidents). Not so long ago, I celebrated my 45th birthday and judging by my grandmother's longevity, I could have nearly half a century left. I've reached a tipping point. All of a sudden, the next 45 years feel rather precious. 

A bit of a milestone!

Usually, I wake up on my birthday and think, oh bugger, another year older! How did that happen? This time, I lay in bed feeling a little overcome. It's like I've reached the top of the hill and now I'm about to free-cycle down the other side. 

Moving on

Closing the door on the past

It's finally happening. After three years of viewing properties and hoarding house particulars, we are on the move. Let's not get carried away, it's only five minutes down the road, but this is a BIG deal for us! Most people would be super-excited (and we are) but we're also feeling a little bit funny inside... It's us after all. Our family is not known for its gung-ho, fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants approach to life. There's just too much fretting to fit in.

School's out

Over the past days I've danced to Rita Ora, cheered on the English football team, watched a class of eleven-year olds sing their hearts out and cried too many tears. It has been an exhausting, emotional rollercoaster of a week. By Sunday afternoon, I was quite done in.

The last day at primary school

Two decadent nights at our glorious Henley Festival on the banks of the Thames, an English defeat and my son leaving primary school were evidently too much to cope with. While the festival was brilliant in its own way, the big event for me was the end of primary school (yes, it was all about me).

Midsummer madness

Fan-tastic for staying cool on the sit!

Hot, hot, hot... This is summer,  someone told me the other day, so let's stop calling it a heatwave! But blazing sunshine, sleepless nights and sunburn - can this really be England? I'm even running out of clothes to wear. My lightweight summer wardrobe is too 'capsule' to cover so many consecutive days of heat. The washing machine is on full pelt while my slacks and summer cardis haven't made it off the hanger.

We're all in the same boat

There is something about navigating through water in a small vessel that has come to symbolise our struggle as human beings. The concept of a voyage, with people pitched against the elements, has enjoyed mythical status throughout time, from the Aeneid and Moby Dick to J.K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat. On Sunday my family went canoeing with our cousins, adding - I felt - our small contribution to the boating canon.

Paddling down Hennerton Backwater
Credit: William Lam

In a flotilla of three canoes - our inflatable and two hired Canadian canoes - we paddled down an idyllic stretch of the River Thames from Henley to Wargrave. We may have been unlikely literary heroes in our shorts and hoodies, but the way in which each crew tackled the challenge of reaching the George & Dragon pub in Wargrave spoke volumes about our attitudes to life.

The little things

My 10-year old son and I are playing a game at the moment: the 30-day Happiness Challenge*. I bought it after he finished his entrance exams for secondary school. A bit of light relief. So each day he plucks a 'happiness challenge' from a little box covered in smiley faces. Two weeks in, he's been smiling at strangers, looking back on old photos and walking barefoot in some rather soggy grass.

My main objective is to keep him on a positive track after the stress of all the exams. Like many of us, he can get lost in the more negative aspects of his day. Apparently, this is a common human trait. "Our view of the world has a fundamental tendency to tilt to the negative," says social psychologist Alison Ledgerwood in a TEDx talk. 

Dream on...

Dream, believe, achieve is emblazoned on my teenager's sweatshirt when she surfaces late morning. Not that there is any rule about squeezing achievements into the early part of the day - the placement of dirty cereal bowls in the dishwasher is generally good enough for me. "That's a nice thought for the new year," I tell her in my cheery voice (she can be a little temperamental before her first slice of toast so I have to tread gently). If only it was that easy, I think quietly to myself.

Maxims for the new year

Life is about striving in one way or another, no more so than at the start of a new year. The slate has been wiped clean, the days are growing longer and we are buoyed up by the belief that a few new numbers on the calendar will make all the difference. If Theresa May can feel chipper about making progress with her Brexit deal (assuming she believes her own rhetoric), then my own small-scale goals should be relatively achievable.

A quick guide to happiness (sort of)

Whenever I succumb to a bit of navel-gazing, the subject is always the same. How to be happy. You'd have thought I'd got it sussed by now, but there is a wildcard element in all of this that makes 'being content' a slippery fish to pin down. Only now, with the experience of middle age, am I beginning to understand what makes my chemistry hum.

Time is elastic: re-schedule the chores!

My own compass of wellbeing swings between different points - family life in the north, perhaps, and working achievements in the south. I have long given up on my BIG career, preferring these days to plug the gap with novel-writing, blogging and freelance work. In effect, I have traded ambition for freedom and being at home with the kids.

Chemo stories

Three years ago writer Ali S was due a mammogram. "I almost didn't go," she says. "At the time, I thought I really haven't got time for this."

Ali: 'Talking and sharing makes people feel better'

Fortunately a friend talked her into going. It turned out she had a tumour in her breast and a potentially aggressive form of cancer. Six treatments of chemotherapy followed, three weeks apart, in the autumn of 2014. 

"I was unlucky to be diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 46 and unlucky that I had to go through the gruelling process of chemotherapy," she says. "I was lucky that my cancer was discovered very early, I had access to the medical treatment I needed, and I had love and support coming at me from all corners of my world."

School reunion

Nothing quite prepares you for a journey into your own past. Last weekend I caught the 08:42 train to Cheltenham and travelled back in time to an all-girls boarding school that was my home from the age of 11 to 18. It was my first visit back in 25 years - a great deal had changed and yet so much remained the same.

Shauna and I outside our old boarding house in 2017...

After leaving school in 1992, I spent most of my early twenties feeling a vague sense of emancipation, having escaped the rules and regulations of institutional life. Ever since, I have cast my school days in a slightly negative light, partly to entertain new friends but also because boarding took its emotional toll. So when a school reunion was mooted earlier this year, my eagerness to go back took me by surprise. 

Time for pain

Christmas with all its excesses becomes the last stop on the route to self-improvement. This seasonal splurge seems designed to usher in a period of self-disgust, exacerbated by too many puddings / presents / cheese / glasses of Irish cream. As the decorations come down, you long to emerge like a butterfly from the Christmas-chrysalis with a cleaner body and a purer purpose. January inevitably becomes the anointed month to slough off the extra pounds, change your ways and build a brighter, better future.

Emerging from the excesses of Christmas...

As human beings, it seems we need structure, if only to keep the messy amorality of life in check. With the start of a new year, resolutions provide a roadmap to a new, improved self. Often such resolutions require discipline and self-denial, but all of us know a little bit of pain is the price you pay for a higher pleasure. Structure equals control over laziness, small addictions (in my case, chocolate) and other character defects.

Don't stop believing...

Self-belief is a powerful but fragile gift. One of my personal heroes has always been Amelia Earhart, a pioneering pilot and a woman of incredible courage and vision. This week I was reading about about how she may have ended her days as an injured castaway on a remote Pacific island. New research indicates that she made a series of distress calls from the island after her Lockheed Electra crashed in the summer of 1937 during the final stages of her attempt to fly around the globe. 

Amelia Earhart: an inspiration to modern women
© Yuri Yukhimchuk | Dreamstime.com 

A celebrity in depression-era America, Earhart earned her stripes after she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932. Five years later, on the cusp of turning 40, she sought one more challenge: to become the first woman to fly around the world. "I have this feeling that there is just about one more good flight left in my system," she declared rather ominously.

A loss of innocence

What a week it has been. The appalling murder of MP Jo Cox has shocked us all and left many feeling bewildered and resentful about the whole Brexit mess. Two young children and a husband are bereft, while a community in Yorkshire has lost an elected representative who was universally applauded for her determination to make the world a better place. Following on the heels of the Orlando nightclub shooting, these events start to shake your faith in humanity.

Spectacular Giffords Circus: a source of talent and wonder

It always baffles me that there are people at large who are so committed to inflicting terror on the rest of us. The only comfort I take at times like these is the outpouring of empathy and generosity from the general public. All those candlelit vigils and charitable donations raised in Jo Cox's name are a reminder that most of us are indeed well-meaning, rational and broad-minded.