There was an awkward young yeti called Yancey Who had a peculiar fancy He liked to sniff cheese And lick mushy peas And then shove ’em down his girlfriend’s panties

X is a nightmare letter. Last year I cheated and did X is for the Kissable Letter to get myself out of a hole (my ignorance of words beginning with X) and this year I am going to cheat again by doing X is for Xmas which means effectively I write about whatever I want. Hurrah! Three cheers for ingenuity! So X is for the Xmas Sunday Driver. As someone who does a lot of driving, I deplore Sunday drivers because they are always, always, always, getting in my way and slowing me down. I am one of those people who drive to the speed limit so if I get stuck behind an elderly couple driving at 40 mph in a 60 mph zone because they are admiring the pansies on the roadside I instantly turn into a road-raging monster. I know it’s hard to believe that a sweet, English

I am sick to death of reading articles by whinging, whining depressed writers or writers pretending to be depressed. It’s so depressing I’m actually thinking about killing myself. Okay, maybe not: I like living too much. Living is interesting. You know – wine, sex, that kind of stuff. However, I am seriously beginning to wonder if some of these whinging authors are faking their depressions because they are everywhere. I mean everywhere. For example, I am minding my own business, humming and happily “researching” and I click on what looks like a jolly looking writer’s website which might have lots of useful tips and I find… I was depressed for years. My writing suffered: I couldn’t find my pen, my computer crashed and even my printer cartridges imploded. I became an alcoholic and addicted to chewing the ends of biros, smoking pot and watching Friends. I read Martin Amis. Finally, when I trapped my head in my desk

With the prospect of long summer evenings and some pleasant weather ahead I won’t be the only housewife fantasizing about lying on a beach, nibbling grapes, sipping Coladas and being waited upon by a handsome young manservant. Unfortunately, when I’m in the middle of these and other exotic fantasies a whining voice asking an annoying question often brings me back down to reality. A recent example of this was when I had my hands immersed in the washing up bowl whilst dreaming about surfing with Damien Lewis when suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by the question every mother dreads; “When can we go camping?” Now imagine the onset of acute postnatal depression combined with the news that Daniel Craig has quit as James Bond and you will have an idea how such a question cuts me to the quick. What I’d really like to do in such circumstances is to

It’s a cheat night. I am still racing around with my Fitbit on and I’ve thrown in an hour of swimming today as well today so I’m taking the easy way out tonight with a song that hits the spot with me from U2 and Mary J Blige. I reckon it’s a good way to end a long day. Any suggestions for the remaining letters are very welcome. Otherwise, there could yet be more dubious poetry!

A couple of years ago, when I was preparing The Changing Room for publication it finally dawned on me why most writers are mad. Of course, I’d heard stories about writers who imagine aliens and psychotic wide-eyed rabbits peering out of bushes at them but I’ve never considered myself one of them because, as anyone who knows me is aware, I am completely normal. However, what I have discovered whilst proofing The Changing Room is that these crazed writers are not just authors of science fiction, fantasy and obscure meaningless poetry as I imagined. They are not even affected by booze, drugs and mental illness. (Well, not all of them.) They are just poor unfortunate writers, such as myself, who have been cruelly afflicted by a terrible disease called Typofuckitupitus. Now you may not have heard of Typofuckituptis before but let me assure you it is very real and very dangerous.

I’m fifty years old. It’s an abominable age for a woman and not just because some mornings there’s so much hair on your chin you resemble a yeti. You see, fifty is an age where a woman is likely to be part of the sandwich club: jammed between her career and caring for her children and parents like a piece of overly ripe cheese and rather drab lettuce. With no relish. Some women would rather not sign up to the sandwich club as it frequently arrives at the age when the effects of the dreaded menopause take hold. Insomnia, tiredness and hot flushes are common grievances but some women, like me, suffer from more unusual symptoms like road rage, the desire to skewer politicians with a meat fork, and lusting after David Tennant. Sadly, as the sandwich club age is the one most likely to be filled with responsibilities, there’s

Gasp. Yet another post I’ve left too close the deadline. Let’s face it, I am rubbish at planning and self-discipline. However, I do have a treat for you tomorrow as I have an actual “S” post for you that I have actually spent more than five minutes thinking about! In fact, it was commissioned by one of the UK’s national papers but, sadly, they didn’t run with it which in writing terms would have been a bit of a breakthrough for me. Humph. I haven’t figured why they didn’t run with it (but apparently the offending newspaper has a practice of commissioning more articles than it needs) so I have decided that my article was one of the following:  a) Too good (Well obviously I’d think that.)   b) Too bad  c) Not sleazy enough. (Hard to believe given the general standard of writing on this blog.)  d) Too humorous  Anyway

A peculiar characteristic of being British is being very patient and stoic even in the most difficult of times. This sort of resilience can be seen in all aspects of the British life: from our ability to hold the Germans at bay with some old rickety boats and a few squadrons of  Spitfires to our ability to stand in an orderly queue for hours on end without a fight breaking out.  We are a nation of stoics – any other country would have ejected Piers Morgan permanently. So today I thought I’d list my Top Ten Example Scenarios of British Stoicism… No 1. It goes without saying that at the top of the examples list is the British habit of waiting patiently in a queue. Sometimes people wait in queues for whole days outside Harrods at sale-time or sleep on the pavements outside Buckingham Palace for a glimpse of Her Majesty. In fact, there

I am cheating tonight as I am tired and want to skive off to bed after a long day incorporating several long walks. (I’m trying to shift some weight and counting my steps on my Fitbit.) So here’s my short story Pork Chops and Promiscuity which is from my story collection A Modern Life. You can pick up the entire collection free on Amazon Kindle between 21st- 25th April US Eastern time. If you enjoy the stories please consider leaving a review. Just a few words will do – nothing fancy is required! And so to bed! Pork Chops and Promiscuity. Judith was a lesbian. Only she didn’t have short hair and she didn’t wear wooden beads. Neither did she have a girlfriend with a moustache and legs like a Russian shot-putter. In fact, Judith didn’t have a girlfriend at all; she preferred the anonymity of one-night stands with girls picked up

Yes, it’s time for one of my departures into appallingly bad poetry. This is because as usual I had no idea what I was going to write about today so I looked up a list of words beginning with “O” and found I didn’t know most of them. Well, I knew a few words such as… “on”, “one”, “once”, “oh” and “oven.” I did toy with the idea of writing about my oven (*spits*) but I thought that would probably spiral into one of my celebrity chef rants which I had been thinking of doing for “C” and then forgot at the last moment and so ended up doing the Christmas Male Dancer. However, I did recognise the word “ode” in the list which was closely followed by “Oedipus”. ( I knew O level English would come in handy someday.) So I thought why not throw them together and see what

“No” can be a difficult word to say for many people. But I think it is an especially hard word for women to say. Historically and culturally woman have been moulded into saying “yes” in a world which, despite progress towards female emancipation, is still male dominated. Even in England, which has been at the forefront of female emancipation, women still only received the vote in 1918 and even that was only for women over thirty. It was not until 1928 when The Equal Franchise Act lowered the voting age for women to 21 did women’s voting rights finally become on a par with men’s rights. So less than a 100 years ago women in the UK were still considered unequal to men. And that still holds true today in many areas of our lives in the UK despite our legal rights. Across the world women are even more marginalised. Women