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The urban green of Birmingham
I’ve recently discovered where I live – in the countryside in the heart of Birmingham. For around the past thirty years, I’ve been aware that I live in a city, the second largest metropolis in the UK...
View ArticleDoes motherhood make you happy? (And other questions I’ve not had time to ask)
One of the hardest things about being a mother, for me, is that there’s no time to think about it. It’s arguably the most important job you’re ever going to do and – apart from the twenty-seventh...
View ArticleReview: 21 Miles, Swimming in search of the meaning of motherhood
Warning: Don’t read this post if you’re interested in fertility and haven’t yet read 21 Miles, Swimming in Search of the Meaning of Motherhood by Jessica Hepburn. I wouldn’t want to ruin what could be...
View ArticleDo IVF mothers love their children differently?
The love of a mother is fierce as a lion, strong as an ox and tender as a dove. It’s the love that makes the world go round, an archetypal force that brings forth the generations and connects women of...
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Place
Written in lockdown from the spring equinox (79 deaths) to the summer solstice (128 deaths) Lime trees in Highbury Park, Birmingham, like a nave in nature’s cathedral. HOME AS PLACE The summer house...
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With gratitude to the Covid-19 vaccination programme at Millennium Point
I found it strangely moving having my Covid-19 vaccination at Birmingham’s Millennium Point this morning. The conference centre, familiar to me through schmoozy celebrations with Birmingham’s film and...
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Highbury Park: all we need to know is here
I started taking photos of Highbury Park during the 2020 lockdown, as, like many, walking became my exercise, my social life and my prayer. This image is of what I now call Cathedral Avenue – a row of...
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Why I stopped writing books
It took an artist creating a paper model of Balsall Heath Park, a world-renown Imam explaining Ramadan to non-Muslims and the gifting of trees in an inner-city neighbourhood, for me to understand why...
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Review: Starting Up & Scaling Up A Human-First Business
It’s a sign of the success of a charity, community group or small business when it can outlive its founder members. An organisation has reached its coming-of-age, when the vision of the people who set...
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UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK – what it meant to me
To me, that is far more exciting than commissioning arts as arts. I saw UNBOXED as articulating something about the creativity in all of life – if there is creativity in STEM, there is surely...
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