“Is this one a good plant or a weed?” I say doubtfully, pointing out one specimen to my husband. Really, I don’t need to be gardening today. We are moving in a few weeks, and then the garden will be a new tenant’s responsibility, and they can do battle with the snails themselves. But there’s…
I am not a very good neighbour. We’ve lived in this rented house for nearly 18 months, and I know the names of just two of our neighbours. I know the old man who lives next door, who mumbles so badly I understand only about 20% of what he says. Most of our relationship is him…
Over two weeks ago now, I left my children – both in tears as they watched me walk away towards the station from the living room window – and got on a plane to Vancouver to meet a room full of women, most of whom I had never met in my life. It was incredible…
We live in a terraced house that backs onto a railway line. Trains come by every 5-10 minutes depending on the time of day, a fact that my young son adores. The tracks are the same height as our bedroom windows, and the embankment up to the tracks is covered in thick overgrown shrubbery and…
It’s been eighteen months already since we moved from Luxembourg to the UK. When we moved here, it had been eight years since I left as a fresh-faced graduate, and I came home with a foreign husband, a toddler, and a baby quickly expanding inside me. There were a lot of things to adjust to,…
It’s one of my favourite questions to ask, ever since I read Barbara Brown Taylor’s amazing book An Altar in the World, which is one that I reach for at least once a month. She writes how, when invited as a guest preacher once, she asked what she should speak on and was told, Come tell us what is saving…
