I resolved over a month ago that I was not going to enter the Fish One Page Story Prize this year. I entered it last year, with this in fact, and got both a complimentary critique and my name on the short list. I then got tempted into entering the Microfiction competition over the summer, and two of my efforts were runners up. So now I have a bit of a compulsion to keep entering Fish Competitions in the hope that one day I might do just that little bit better and win some money. (more…)

Right now I would happily commit murder.

For the past THREE weekends in a row Network Rail have seen fit to carry out engineering works on the line between Birmingham and Leicester. Now I appreciate that engineering works occasionally have to be done, but this is at least the third or fourth time they have cancelled a couple of week’s worth of trains in the last six months.

They do, of course, provide rail replacement buses instead. And don’t we all love a good rail replacement bus! (more…)

I realised last night that I have not worn a skirt for nearly eight years The last time my legs had the misfortune to see daylight was probably the end of June 2008, when I sat my last GCSE examination and was finally released from the tyranny of wearing school uniform. In Sixth Form and obviously at university, I was able to wear my own clothes, and since I’ve started work I have been determinedly living in a trouser suit. (more…)

My GCSE in Catholic RE was divided into two modules. The first module consisted of a detailed study of Mark’s Gospel, and the second was titled more ominously, Catholic Social Teaching. This mostly involved a valiant attempt on behalf of the religious staff to initiate us into “understanding” why we were not permitted to do pretty much anything fun we could think of. Our most infamous essay title ever involved explaining why contraception was a form of abortion. Prolife as I am, I nevertheless find that a virtually impossible argument to make, bearing in mind that this was ten years ago when the Morning After Pill was not really a concept which anyone was familiar with. But one of the things we covered in this course was Catholic feast days, and this obviously entailed a fair bit of time spent studying the feast of Easter; the most important festival in the whole calendar of the Church. One worksheet we were given really stood out for me; it listed alternative theories to the hypothesis that Jesus had risen from the dead. (more…)

Sometimes I think I must be the most anti social person on the planet, because being in close proximity to other people makes me soooo wound up I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but if I’m forced to spend a day entirely in the company of other people and with absolutely no time to myself, then I not only get incredibly grumpy but want to start screaming and hitting people (more…)

Last week, I made myself a to-do list. It was a truly magnificent to-do list, which encompassed all of the things which I need to accomplish in all of the different parts of my life. I often make myself to-do lists, but they tend to focus on one specific area only. This one included work and holidays and my private life… literally, everything! I was terribly proud of it, confident that I had achieved an utterly completed list, which when totally ticked off would bring me 100% up to date with everything, and I had a nice relaxing weekend, happily secure in the knowledge that there was no need to worry, everything I needed to do the following week was safely laid down in black and white.

I got to work on Monday morning, opened by bag to extract my list… and, after a prolonged period of frenzied searching, discovered that I had accidentally put it in the shredding bin (more…)

Last night I did something I haven’t done for a very long time, and went to Confession. It was less due to a devout urge to confess, and more due to an intense desire not to upset my sister by not attending. I could see that my mother was considerably surprised by my presence which she clearly hadn’t expected, but part of me actually welcomed the opportunity to attend, because it gets me out of an increasingly difficult dilemma with which I have been wrestling; whether or not to go to communion on Sundays. (more…)

Over the last five or six years I have accumulated a ridiculous amount of book tokens from various sources. Some have been birthday presents from colleagues, some were prizes from school awards evenings, others are so old that I have simply no idea how I acquired them. The problem is, much as I read, I never ever buy books for myself. Well, I buy German language books when I am abroad out of the sheer excitement of being able to obtain them, but as a rule for English books I rely either on presents or the local library. I enter bookshops chiefly to buy presents for other people, or to use the travel section as a reference library, and so for ages these vouchers have lurked in the bottom of my sock drawer and gathered dust. (more…)

I read this book simultaneously with the Odessa File and was intending to review it here before virus problems got in the way. ‘The House at Riverton’ by Kate Morton is without doubt the best novel I have read this year (in fact, the best modern novel I have read for a very long time), and cheered me up considerably after a month spent struggling to find the motivation to wade through mediocre Christmas presents. (more…)

I officially now have the best boyfriend ever I arranged to see him for Easter today, because various other things mean I’m not sure when I’ll next get to see him before and after that, and was admittedly hoping to get an Easter present. I had hinted strongly that he ought to buy me an egg this year and was prepared to be quite impressed if this hinting had paid off. Last Easter my boyfriend managed to have his phone switched off for about 48 hours whilst at a party and thus didn’t respond to my text wishing him a happy Easter until about Easter Tuesday, so this year I was hoping for a better experience, but all the same nothing could have prepared me for what actually took place today! (more…)