Reading Time: 4 minutes Recently, I co-wrote an article about climate change that led to a spirited exchange on Twitter with a stranger who disagreed with the position I had taken with my co-writer. In the course of this online debate it hit me: the discussion was unlikely to ever go anywhere regardless of
Reading Time: 2 minutes I was getting dressed for school one morning. It was cold out, wintertime, but I can’t remember quite when. Another row had taken place, I don’t know what about, the subject doesn’t matter. Rows were common in my childhood home; but then they are in most houses with teenagers. But
Reading Time: 2 minutes I grew up in mid Wales, part of a low income, but sort of culturally aware hippyish family. Our family didn’t really have any connections with anyone from a different social class and I lived until I was 18 in a very small community in the depths of rural Wales.
Reading Time: < 1 minute Context: I normally get to visit people in their homes as part of my job, so when we locked down during the pandemic I felt lonesome. Got lucky and started doing deliveries for my neighbourhood food bank. It got me out of the house, doing something I feel good about,
Reading Time: 4 minutes One of the characteristics of meaningful relationships, be they romantic or platonic, is that you put a lot of yourself into them as well as energy and time. All of that combines to potentially leaving you heartbroken when that person through their actions gives the impression you no longer matter
Reading Time: < 1 minute Africans are overexposed to second hand clothing, we are submerged in it. The Slum Studio documents the many ways through which second hand clothing passes before it reaches the Ghanaian consumer. The business which employs thousands of people into the local economy is made up traders, thrifters and tailors who
Reading Time: 4 minutes It was around 1978. I was about 16 years old when I went with my friend Sophie to stay on a hippy commune near Castle Douglas in Scotland. Her big sister, an artist, had moved there a few years before. I was living in leafy suburban London with my two
Reading Time: 6 minutes Something live-changing happened to me a few years ago. Life changing in very small and delightful way. A friend was moving and looking to re-home her four hens. I had no interest in hens at the time but a colleague of mine thought it would be perfect for me and
Reading Time: 3 minutes It was Summer 1972. I was 18 years old and found myself teaching Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath to a class in rural Swaziland (now known as eSwatini). If you don’t know the book – do read it! – it’s the story of a poor White rural family in 1930s Oklahoma
Reading Time: 2 minutes All this happened 20 years ago but I still regret my role in it. I worked with Maria and Frances. Maria was charming but also a bully – I guess a she was a narcissist. Everyone knew I was closer to Frances. Frances was lovely but not perfect (as none
