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Should it stay, or should it go?
This column first appeared in the Western Mail in March 2021 As I write, it’s twenty degrees in Cardiff, the clocks have sprung forward, and the evenings are lighter for longer. Granted, by the time you read this, it will most likely be raining old ladies and sticks again (my favourite Welsh idiom that. Works…
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On the soothing power of radio
This column first appeared in the Western Mail in March 2021 A few weeks ago, we set off on “yet another bloody walk” (TM – me), forgot to stop walking and ended up at Lavernock Point in the Vale of Glamorgan, looking out to the island of Flatholm. Spotting a stone tower and a plaque…
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On pandemic parenting
This column first appeared in the Western Mail in February 2021 Just IMAGINE if, at the age of 13, you were ordered to spend your first full year as a teenager locked up with just your mam and/or dad for company. Imagine if the same order mandated no hanging about in town/parks/youth club/outside Tammy Girl…
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Ditching the dreaded hangxiety
This column first appeared in the Western Mail in November 2020 From Dylan Thomas to Richard Burton, us Welsh have a long, time-honoured tradition of boozing our faces off. A few years ago, I took a residential course at the former Shropshire estate of playwright John Osborne. The receptionist told me that when the charity…
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On the US election and explaining geopolitics to our children
This column first appeared in the Western Mail in November 2020 Now, I’m not saying that it’s ever been appropriate to look to political leaders to reinforce the way we raise our children. I mean, can you imagine? Parenting with Pinochet! Fatherhood with Farage! Mama knows best with Imelda Marcos! But, jeez, 2020. Throw me…
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Why we could all be a bit more Mary and Baden Powell
This column first appeared in the Western Mail in September 2020 Vox Pops. Latin for “voice of the people”, favoured format of TV newsmakers everywhere and enough to make me want to smoke crack. Lynne from Merthyr sound biting her face off, spliced with a clip of Keith explaining his half-baked but firmly-held convictions about…
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On turning 39
They say that the best years of a woman’s life are the ten years between 39 and 40. The implication being that women feel compelled to claim we’re 39 for a lot longer than our birth certificate would permit if it could talk. Very amusing, huh? Whatever. Who even are “they”, anyway? I spit in…
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Making up is hard to do
Lockdown has changed all of us in different ways, big and small. Many of us will be shopping locally, adjusting our travel habits and feeling a renewed gratitude for things we previously took for granted. One fundamental way lockdown has changed me is that I will be spending far more time “maked” – barefaced and…
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Remember – A note from Spring 2020
Dear Sara, Remember Easter Sunday, alone on a hilltop overlooking the city. Birdsong drowning out the sound of the very occasional car. A city that is sun-drenched and cloudless. Eerily quiet, but far from at peace. The famous white cocktail sticks of the Millennium Stadium now mark a field hospital. Remember thinking of the people…