Cars, renovations and impractical mini-breaks After a bank-holiday hiatus I am back and worse than ever. Welcome. I spent the weekend itself eating and drinking far too much and making every attempt possible not to catch hypothermia. …

Underpants and books — He passed! Twenty-four questions about viking invasions and he bloody well passed it. I bought him some hilarious union jack underpants as a reward but apparently they ‘don’t fit’. [If you have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s all here] We celebrated by going to Nam, a Vietnamese restaurant…

Suburban life gets wild Only four days in and I’ve missed my deadline. I am sorry, but I do have a good reason: I overslept. If you were wondering why I’m no longer traditionally employed, you can stop now. Anyway, I took my shiny lip-balmed eyebrows to Sainsbury’s and bought…

Breaking news — my life is over — I’ll begin today with an update on yesterday’s story about the dog-poo lady. Honestly, I am mortified. I’m going to have to go into hiding. OK, here we go. So my mum walked Nora down to the postbox in the rain. Standard stuff. It’s a busy road, and she’s trying…

Eyebrows, dog-walkers and thrills — On Saturday, I went to my best friend Zara’s house for a barbecue. Can you believe that? A friend’s house. For a barbecue. She gave us loads of food and wine and blew my mind with a beauty hack so genius, I’m almost scared to commit it to paper. First…

I’m back, on a different platform, with dramatically-increased ennui — In March last year, during that time of our lives, I began writing my Lockdown Diary. I thought the world was ending, and employed my go-to coping strategy of writing sarcastically about the whole thing in order to survive it. …

Where to begin when you can’t even say ‘hello’ — Six years ago, I did a volunteering placement in Sri Lanka. The trip had its ups and downs, but my overwhelming feeling at the time — and now, looking back — was one of longing. …

Aligning my passion with my finances was harder than I imagined — I began writing the first time I picked up a pen. Outside of school hours I would scribble in diaries and notebooks, creating stories and spilling my feelings, imagining other worlds and documenting my own on pink paper gifted to me by family members every Christmas. When I grew up…

Quitting my day job was the easy part — In the middle of June 2020, I left my steady, dependable day job and took a punt on freelance writing as my sole source of income. …