‘I just want to be NORMAL!’ Alula yells at me as I’m driving her to school. ‘What’s so good about normal?’ I ask. ‘And anyway, what do you mean by ‘normal’? What is normal?’ ‘I don’t want to be the kid who has lived in London and then Bali and then here and then somewhere …
The BBC Breakfast studio is really small and really dark and they seat you a good three feet away from the presenters so you feel as if you are talking to them across a chasm. Also that backdrop is painted on the wall. Who knew!? I had spent the previous thirty minutes before appearing on …
Very excited to show off the cover for the CAN WE LIVE HERE? book, which is out in August, published by the lovely people at Blink Publishing! PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY NOW! Amazon http://amzn.to/1LGk0h0 Waterstones http://bit.ly/1FOeWa9 WhSmiths http://bit.ly/1HvGQ7V Also, I’m doing a Q&A and signing at Stanfords in London on August 6th. BOOK YOUR TICKET …
The UK reached a high of 16 degrees today, which necessitated half the population stripping down to shorts and T-shirts in the gloriously mistaken belief that summer had arrived. I sighed at the way the British* so wholeheartedly leap into action the moment the thermostat edges into double figures but conceded that it was perhaps …
Clutching my phone and hyperventilating, I call John. ‘Help,’ I whisper under my breath, ‘I need help.’ ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘There’s too much gravy.’ ‘OK. What do you mean?’ I take a step back, banging into a trolley, and take in the full, eye-blistering, mind melting array of gravy options. I’m powerless, my brain pulling …
Alula started school last week in the UK. For the last four years she’s gone to school in the jungle at a school made entirely of bamboo with no walls, a farm, a giant crystal, a mud pit and where the school song is basically a prayer to mother earth. She has also been barefoot most …
The psychic says yes, go. One of my best friends says no, stay. The other has a baby. My dad says come home. John says, do what you need to do. I don’t want you to be unhappy. Alula says, yes but not if I have to go to school in England. My gut says …
My heart is hurting. It’s aching in my chest. I feel a state of panic. Adrenaline coming in fits and starts. How can I leave this? How is it possible? What am I thinking? The days are like this at the moment. I make a decision to go. The next day I change my mind. …
John left Bali yesterday. For good. Kadek cried all day. I stood, looking at all the junk he’d left for me to clear up, and scowled. When I first heard that John had been offered a job in London my first thought was, well at least there’s Skype. It was funny though because about three months before …
I’m a Londoner. I will always be a Londoner. My grandfather grew up on the Old Kent road. My mum was born on the Peabody estate in Pimlico. I spent a lot of time as a kid staring out the window of my grandmother’s flat over at Battersea Power Station never understanding the optical illusion …
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