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Winter has come to the mythical kingdom of Lockdownia, coating the shadow side of the valley in glittering fairy dust. Surely some subtle magic is afoot. As crimson light gilds the high peaks to the North and the moon rises, the Queen grows weary. It has been a week of ups and downs in the... Continue Reading →
I'm happy to report that I'm feeling much better than I did when I sat down to write the previous diary entry. PMDD has left the building, and so has my mother-in-law, though I must say that the symptoms of the former eased considerably the moment that the latter left. I still struggled with the... Continue Reading →
I must admit, this week has been something of a car crash for me. My first piece of advice to you in this 'How-not-to' of lockdown parenting would be 'Don't have PMDD;' the second 'don't invite your mother-in-law if you do.' Trials, tribulations and triggers We talk a lot about triggers these days when it... Continue Reading →
My eldest son's school have now confirmed that lessons will be taking place from home next week. In other words, I'm to be the teacher. This will present several unique challenges, namely: My son needs help with Slovenian in order to complete the lessons. I can help, but I'll be teaching myself at the same... Continue Reading →
It's the First of November and all over Europe, countries are returning to varying degrees of lockdown. I have decided to return to my 'Quarantine Diaries' as a means of staying sane during Lockdown Round 2. I started out by re-reading my post 'Lessons Learned in Lockdown' to see what I thought I'd learned back... Continue Reading →
I went viral this weekend. Not in the oft-sought-after Twitter sense, but in the not-feeling-very-well sense. Given the current climate, I thought I might be coming down with Covid-19. Thankfully, I'm feeling better now. But the diarist in me had to record the experience, despite how bad I felt. Here's the result: 19/06/20 Woke up... Continue Reading →
This was definitely the hardest part of the journey for me; we set off from Nice at 4am so the kids would be able to sleep for the first few hours. Exhaustion was already beginning to set in for me by then and I didn't do much driving because I just didn't feel safe. Although... Continue Reading →
So much has changed since I wrote the last entry, I'm feeling a bit numb as I write this one. If I think back to this time last week, and the distance travelled both physically and emotionally since then, it's mind-blowing. It puts me in mind of the Ancient Mariner's homecoming journey when the spirit... Continue Reading →
3 days. 4 countries. 2,500km. Of all the road trips I have taken with my family, this was the craziest yet. It was also the most unusual, given that we were crossing a Europe emerging from an unprecedented lockdown brought about by the Covid-19 crisis. It was by turns exhilarating, exhausting and fascinating. Today I... Continue Reading →
Like a long lonely streamI keep runnin' towards a dreamMovin' on, movin' onLike a branch on a treeI keep reachin' to be freeMovin' on, movin' on Not a poem of the day today, then, but a song. This was always a favourite of mine and my husband's, especially when we lived in the U.K., where... Continue Reading →
Experiments in Fiction 