So. That stone you need to lose. The thighs you think aren’t slim enough. The jeans you want to fit into. The wrinkles you are going to get botox for… so you can be sexy and attractive enough. Can I promise you, I mean seriously, hand on heart, urgent face, promise you. None of that… Read More >

  We spend a lot of our time working hard to try to get away with stuff… To stay out of the Headmaster’s Office of life. Newton’s Third Law is: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The definition of Karma: For every action, there will always be a reaction. (also Wiccan… Read More >

  It’s sad. We asked people in our group about the names they have been called. The names they have heard other people called. We asked them the names they call themselves. Then we made a list of what they said. The really sad part was we knew what they were going to say before… Read More >

  Someone said to me the other day: You have the mum thing down, You are my parenting guru! Umm. That took a while, to be fair. The truth of that is that actually, I am on my third attempt at getting the ‘mum’ thing right nearly in my third decade of having offspring (eldest… Read More >

(stay with me – I’ll try not to butcher this…) THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE from Plato’s Republic, written 380 B.C. (keeping it fresh and up to the minute) It goes like this: Some prisoners are spending their lives in a cave, chained up, facing the wall and they can’t turn around. They get all… Read More >

I’ve realised today that there are a lot of things I used to do… that I don’t do anymore that probably/definitely weren’t the best thing for me. Just thought that about binge-watching telly, but there are way worse ones… But there was never a day that I decided: I shall never do those things again… Read More >

Disgustingly early the other morning, I was about 10 metres into a planned 15 km walk to Winchester along the Itchen Navigation. I thought “I’m aching, my knee hurts, I didn’t get quite enough sleep so my eyes are really puffy… and I’ve got the wrong bra on.” I had literally all the reasons to… Read More >

BRRRRR. As a sun-worshipping, swim-up bar, salsa on the beach loving, type of holidaymaker left to my own devices, in the wild… I always used to think I didn’t really like the cold weather. I would metaphorically put my fingers in my ears and screw my eyes tight shut until the daffodils came out again – singing: “LALALALALA”…. Read More >

Happiness Stock Take I’m going to start with the assumption that people want to be happy (except maybe goths and Mrs Doyle from Father Ted), and we’ve been thinking hard about what that actually means The problem is – if you’re not FEELING happy – then actually a lot of the rhetoric about happiness, is… Read More >

Getting Away… Most of us look forward to time ‘off’. Holidays, breaks, spa days. Instinctively, we know this stuff is good for us. We  relax, recharge, indulge in a little escapism But why is it,  when you think about it, that we arrange 50 weeks of the year full of things we have to do, that our ultimate dream… Read More >

I have pretty much given up on the news. When I was younger, I was an avid BBC/SKY/Al Jazeera flittery viewer – it seemed really important to keep up with what’s happening, and try to get a balanced view. These days I find myself avoiding it as much as possible (which is probably not very grown up of… Read More >

Today we went to a Sea Life Centre – full of families oohing and aahing over tiny ‘Nemos’ and massive turtles and even sharks (although to be fair they weren’t the Jaws kind and seemed well-fed enough) Pig-tailed toddlers and babies strapped to Dads pressing their noses up against the giant Piranha tank… perfectly safe… Read More >

How are you feeling? I swearily dropped my phone down the toilet earlier (shock, surprise) on top of a wee, then fished it out (disgust,repulsion), then realised this is the third time I have done this (regret, remorse, embarrassment, frustration) and then found it still worked (anticipation, joy, excitement, amusement)… and finally the realisation that I had a reasonably relevant anecdote… Read More >

I think I snored at Yoga last night To be fair I’d had an antihistamine as the pollen count is insane, so I’ll put it down to that. It was during Claire’s relaxation / meditation at the end, and I deduct 100 points from myself as you are not really supposed to fall asleep (I… Read More >

School Holidays.. Do they fill you with dread? Or were you counting down the days? Children get a break from learning – but what about you? Maybe you’ve been in the same job for a few years and can do it in your sleep.. Perhaps your routine has got a bit comfortable and you slip into the… Read More >

Well I did… I was logging into PayPal to buy something yesterday (some clear mascara for a 13 year old.. it’s a long story)  and I saw that my most likely time to make a purchase in 2017- was between 5:30am and 6am. Now, given I generally didn’t get up until 6:30… this presented me with some useful… Read More >

“Well that’s it – I’m definitely not going on Love Island now” It’s a fair cop. We seem to be two of the very few people who haven’t actually been watching Love Island. But the public interest/commentary hadn’t missed us, so we fired up the YouTube to get a feel for it. Seems like a Big… Read More >

Endless scrolling.. We’ve all lost hours looking at Social Media posts when we KNEW we should be doing something else. We used to think that procrastination was about laziness – but actually it has been proven to be due the stress response. Professor Timothy Pychyl (I checked – it’s his real name) of Carlton Uni. found that procrastination is… Read More >

  (if you haven’t seen it yet we’ll assume you’ve just got back from a long space flight – so here it is:) It drove me mad Like lots of things have driven me mad. Why are UKIP even a thing? How is Trump is president. Why is the NHS having the life squeezed from… Read More >

I got an email from an on-line ‘guru’ yesterday (it wasn’t personal.. it went to lots of people) but it got my back up. Then he sent another this morning which was equally irritating, It’s pretty hard to annoy me these days, but I caught sight of my resting b^tch face in the mirror, so I knew I need… Read More >