Fertility Fest: Why do one in six couples feel alone?
A very good question is going to be asked in Birmingham on Saturday, 28 May 2016. If one in six couples experience some form of infertility, why do they feel so alone? Birmingham Rep will be the venue...
View ArticleCruising for introverts
Casinos, karaoke, making the deck of the ship throb with the lights and sounds of Ibiza…this was some of the “fun” promised to guests setting out on a Caribbean cruise by Carnival Cruise Director...
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Tony Iommi inspires me to make art
For the first time in my adult life I look out to the world and don’t know what to do. The problems of Brexit Britain seem overwhelming. The world-at-large with Trump in charge is terrifying and yet I...
View ArticlePersonal power: We can make people feel good all day
Something happened on Kings Heath High Street that made me feel good all day. Whenever I remembered it, I smiled. If I felt a bit low, I just had to recall that thing and I felt happy again. And...
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Loneliness and younger people
It’s a little known fact that the younger adults are, the more likely they are to feel lonely. Those in the 18 to 24-year-old age group are more vulnerable to loneliness than those in any other age...
View ArticleParenting raises deep questions about who we really are
Many of the conversations I have at the school gates, on football touchlines or in cricket pavilions are really conversations about identity. We think we’re talking about the 11+ or goalies or whether...
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School run
Sometimes it really was a run – down School Road once the morning bell had gone, up School Road as you raced back with your friends. Other times it was a walk, a scoot, a dwardle and a climb. In the...
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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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