22 Apr

Posted at 18:19h in Uncategorised
0 Likes

This weekend a few things really slapped me in the face spoke to me. They were all about being busy. This time last year, Matt and I, with the kids, were endeavouring to change our life. Our life had been about achievement, work, and success. But, eventually, that focus became our undoing. Matt was stressed and not very well, and I ended up diagnosed with post-natal depression (I actually now think that the pregnancy hormone craziness was just the straw that broke the camel's back - post-natal depression is rarely just about the babies in my experience). We were strung out, exhausted, on...

17 Apr

Posted at 20:28h in Uncategorised
0 Likes

The other week, at the end of a long day I found myself asking Matt; "Am i a rubbish parent?" (Classic Monday night) As the day drew to a close I had become increasingly aware of the thought processes I had experienced during the day. How I wanted the kids to go away and leave me alone. How i 'didn't have time' to sit and chat with my eldest. How I was basically ignoring couldn't summon up the capacity to deal with my  girls' emotional needs. How bedtime couldn't come quick enough. Later, after an hour or so of child-free bliss, I became aware of...

06 Apr

Posted at 19:00h in Uncategorised
0 Likes

I have lots of things nearly written, and half written, and in need of a few edits, waiting in my drafts to post… and i will get to them sooner or later. But today I wanted to write about stopping and being in the present. The play I have spent the last few months working on came to an end last night. I watched it for the final time on Thursday and, as it is when you know something is going to finish and not be repeated, I was watching my favourite moments with great attention. Trying to imprint them on...

26 Mar

Posted at 11:19h in Uncategorised
0 Likes

First watch this. Seriously, it's three minutes long. Watch it. "I asked 5 questions in genetics class today, and all of them began with the word 'sorry'". It's me. Always apologising, 'til I don't even know I am doing it. It had become a habit, to start sentences with "I'm sorry but…." concluding with "Do you know what I mean?" Asking you… please, understand me, don't be offended by me'. I don't wish to upset, or disagree. I don't wish to appear like a know-it-all, even when I know more than you. "I have been taught to absorb". I have never been a shrinking violet, but...

13 Mar

Posted at 20:26h in Uncategorised
0 Likes

I am reading a book at the moment which I am really enjoying. (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller) The main premise of the book (a memoir of sorts) is that the things that make a great story are the same things that make a great life. Chapter 9 is entitled, 'How Jason Saved His Family'. It tells the story of a middle aged Father whose 13 year old daughter is dating an unsavoury young man, and of the marjuana that is discovered in her bedroom. Of how she was becoming increasingly distant and uncommunicative. Jason doesn't know what...

17 Feb

Posted at 23:28h in Uncategorised
0 Likes

There are some places, some locations, that are just good for you. Plain and simple. Today I am grateful for a weekend in one of my favourite places. Anglesey. A shot of beauty. I first went to Anglesey when I was 17. Now 17 years later I am taking my children, and, with the exception of the pub having been renovated… it is pretty much the same. Being perched on the edge - of the corner - of the North West Welsh coast, tourism has to travel a long way to reach the miles and miles of beautiful coast. Consequently we often have...

05 Feb

Posted at 20:37h in Uncategorised
0 Likes

This is a post about letting myself off the hook. I nearly wrote it last weekend, but didn't feel I had enough present life experience to call upon. Yes, I hadn't seen enough of my kids and felt guilty. Yes, the house was a tip with piles of papers and books and half read articles cluttering every available surface. Yes I was tired and hadn't spoken to my husband for days. And we knew it would be like this - me back at work full time for the first time in years. I had prepared myself for all these eventualities. For forgetting actors names...

05 Feb

Posted at 09:19h in Uncategorised
0 Likes

I have had the privilege of being in a rehearsal room this week. Thinking about language. Reading Shakespeare's words and allowing them to dwell in me, to fully exhaust the possibilities of their meaning. To decant the language and let it steep for a while. For five days, sitting round the table with fifteen brilliant minds, just looking at words. What one person says to another person, how that affects them, how they respond. What that reveals. I have been thinking a lot about the power of words, their power to harm and their power to do good. It has left me thinking...

25 Jan

Posted at 15:56h in Uncategorised
0 Likes

Four and a half years ago my youngest son, Ed, was born. I have worked since then, but not much. Seven weeks after he was born I had him with me in the rehearsal room, simultaneously breastfeeding and giving notes. Feeling like superwoman one minute and like a fool that was about to collapse the next. The work-in-progress storytelling with live music and illustration we created (less up its own backside than it sounds) was good ...

17 Jan

Posted at 19:32h in Uncategorised
0 Likes

A few weeks back I was listening to a podcast from Radio 4. Comedian and actor Robert Webb read extracts from his, very entertaining, teenage diary. During the interview that accompanied these readings he revealed that his diary was not a place where he freely wrote his uncensored thoughts, but that more often than not, he would do a number of re-writes before he wrote it out in his diary… in 'best' i suppose. As a teenager I thought about being the kind of person who kept a diary. But I didn't. When I went to start writing I became embarrassed,...