August 8, 2021
“Remind me of your arguments in support of a boiled egg?” I ask my daughter. She raises her eyebrows in exasperation rather than surprise. I had suggested to her that poached eggs negate the need for a boiled egg because they taste pretty similar and you have no shell to deal with once you’ve cooked […]
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August 1, 2021
I had a wall built this week, an experience that was more stressful than it needed to be. After missed phone calls, the bricklayer failing to turn up when he said he was coming due to rain that never materialised, and confusion over a gate I was wishing I’d left the old wall up until […]
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July 25, 2021
One of the jobs I do is write answers to random questions posed by people who are struggling with some aspect of their mental health. Mostly they write asking for advice about their anxiety, how to overcome imposter syndrome, or why they might have an inability to focus on their work. Sometimes they ask about […]
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July 18, 2021
“I can’t understand why anyone who has had their dog since it was a puppy would ever have another puppy,” I say to my daughter while I try to get a piece of stair carpet from between the jaws of our second puppy. “I suppose we forget what’s it’s like,” she says with the air […]
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July 11, 2021
The jasmine that I grew some years ago across a huge piece of trellis appeared to have died. Thin strands of sorry-looking wood stretching up in disparate directions from the ground it was hard to see anything much on it that looked like green shoots. It was hard to hide my disappointment in what has […]
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