ADVERSITY HAS A PECULIAR WAY OF INTRODUCING PEOPLE
On difficult seasons, unexpected disappointments, and discovering who people are when life becomes inconvenient. I have always found it fascinating how people behave differently depending on the weather. On a beautiful sunny afternoon, almost everyone seems agreeable. Neighbours exchange greetings, strangers smile, and friends enthusiastically announce plans they may or may not remember when the…
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Twelve Hours in TheraWear
About My Honest Review of Their Compression Socks After Long Hospital Shifts There is a particular point in every twelve-hour shift when your feet stop being passive participants and start developing opinions. Mine usually begin politely enough. By mid-shift, they are still cooperative. By the final few hours, after enough standing, walking, doubling back through…
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THE ARCHIVE BROKE OUT OF TUMBLR
I should probably apologise before somebody assumes WordPress has developed a technical problem. If you follow this blog and have recently opened your Reader only to discover another post from me, followed by another, followed by another one apparently arriving from a completely different decade, please know that the website is functioning perfectly well. The…
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I am so sorry, but your phone has just betrayed you spectacularly.
It happened during handover, beneath fluorescent lights that had no business witnessing something so beautiful. The room smelled faintly of hand sanitiser, paper, and coffee that had surrendered several hours earlier. Pens clicked against clipboards, pages turned, shoes squeaked somewhere along the corridor, and our voices moved through the familiar rhythm of patients, plans, results…
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Against the Clock
The room had begun to develop its own weather. The curtains held back a pale October light, the duvet had become both shelter and prison, and the air carried that faint mixture of coffee, medicine, cat fur and being indoors for far too long. Somewhere on the wall, the clock kept counting seconds with insulting…
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The Distance Between Two Branches
Time is a gardener with no respect for symmetry. It lets people grow beside one another for years, then quietly teaches each branch to reach for its own patch of light. There were nine of us once, standing much closer together than life would eventually allow. We had suitcases packed with the usual migrant optimism,…
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A Fifty-Pence Love Affair
About Surcotto 0.5 mm Quick-Drying Gel Pen At some point in every nurse’s career, a pen ceases to be stationery and is quietly promoted to colleague, confidant, emergency equipment and, on particularly savage shifts, emotional support item. It is there when the phone rings before you have finished the previous call, when three people ask…
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Why I Love The Comfort Book
The Comfort Book: My Favourite Book for the Days Life Feels Too Much There are days when the last thing I need is another instruction on how to become a better version of myself. Wake up earlier. Drink more water. Exercise. Meditate. Journal. Practise gratitude. Fix your sleep schedule. Stop overthinking. Find your purpose. Declutter…
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When Nurses Crash
The washing machine sounds as though it has finally had enough. I am sitting here listening to it enter what can only be described as the spin cycle from hell, the drum throwing itself from side to side while the whole machine shudders against the floor with the fury of something that has spent too…
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That is lovely, but can someone please just employ me first?
Facebook has a peculiar talent for returning versions of ourselves we did not specifically request. You open the app because someone has tagged you in something, or because you have five idle minutes, and there it is: You have memories to look back on. Sometimes Facebook brings back a photograph with a filter that should…
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Too Many Tabs Open
My brain lately feels like a browser with far too many tabs open, and what bothers me most is that I used to be much better at closing them. For the last few years, I was the sort of person who actually enjoyed a to-do list. I would write things down, work through them one…
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THE PIE CHART LIED.
By the end of this week, I felt as though ED had introduced me to an entire cast of characters. There was The Golden Referral, the rare and almost mythical person who calls with the patient assessed, bloods done, cannula in, imaging arranged, medications checked and a history so clear that I briefly wonder whether…
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I THOUGHT I’D KNOW BY NOW.
At three-something in the morning, hospitals develop a peculiar atmosphere. The corridors are still functioning, of course, because illness has never shown much respect for office hours, but the night feels different by then. The fluorescent lights seem brighter than necessary, the air has that unmistakable mixture of warmth, disinfectant and stale coffee, and every…
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8 Dramas Worth Your Time
Lately, one of my favourite ways to spend a quiet day has been opening Viki and disappearing into another world for a few hours. Sometimes that world is filled with immortals, demons and impossible love; sometimes it is a courtyard where a woman’s entire future can depend on how intelligently she reads the people around…
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God in the Future
One evening, I was sitting at the table with my phone beside me doing several things that would probably have looked like witchcraft to someone born a few centuries ago. I checked the weather without looking outside, replied to someone thousands of miles away, searched for something I had forgotten, and asked artificial intelligence a…
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WE’VE ALWAYS DONE IT THIS WAY… HAVEN’T WE?
There is an old story about a family who lived beside a river. Every rainy season, the river would rise, creep towards the house and eventually find its way underneath the door. The family had a system for this. Towels went on the floor. Important things went onto higher shelves. Chairs were moved. Shoes were…
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THE MUG FELT WARMER THIS TIME.
This morning, I found myself staring at the tree outside my window for far longer than was necessary. September has only just begun, so most of its leaves are still stubbornly green, apparently refusing to acknowledge that summer has already started packing its bags. Every now and then, though, the wind catches one leaf that…
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August’s final joke
August was already packing its bags when I finally stopped to look at it properly. The evenings had begun losing light a little earlier, the air outside had started developing that faint coolness Britain likes to slip into late summer without formally announcing it, and somewhere in my wardrobe the jackets were beginning to sense…
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Same Ground
This morning began with the slightly unpleasant awareness that this is my last rest day. The final day off always feels different from the others because tomorrow has already started standing somewhere in the background, quietly reminding me that alarms, routines and responsibilities are preparing to reclaim me. The earlier rest days still feel completely…
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IT WAS JUST THE CORRIDOR… WASN’T IT?
I was sitting inside the WMI Building, just outside the room where my BLS training was about to begin, with my iPad balanced on my lap and the sort of sleepiness that makes blinking feel dangerously close to a commitment. The corridor had that familiar training-day stillness: closed doors, muted footsteps, the occasional voice drifting…
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Borrowed Magic
It is my day off today, and I have spent an unreasonable amount of time looking at the things I am supposed to do without actually doing any of them. The house needs cleaning, there are household chores patiently waiting for my attention, and I have already had that familiar conversation with myself where I…
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I’D STILL TAKE THE BARGAIN.
I sometimes wonder what the receipt would look like if time allowed returns. ITEM: one ordinary day. CONDITION: already lived. REFUND: impossible. EXCHANGE: twenty-four hours only. No extensions, no changes, no keeping anyone when the day is over. Tonight, with rain tracing thin lines down the window and my laptop open in front of me,…
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Things Nursing School Never Put in the Syllabus
I used to think nursing school came with one syllabus. It did not. There was the official version—the respectable one with anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, clinical practice and carefully arranged learning outcomes—and then there was the syllabus nobody printed because it would probably have frightened applicants away. That version included How to Function on Very Little…
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Ordinary was the Gift I almost Failed to Notice.
There is something about lighting a candle in church that makes faith look simpler than it feels. The flame is small, steady and almost certain of itself. It does not argue. It does not ask for proof. It does not demand to know what happens next. It simply burns while the person standing before it…
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Norway, You Became More Than a Place
I have a problem when I travel: I do not know when I have already taken enough photographs of the same mountain. Apparently, one photograph is documentation, five are appreciation, and somewhere around the fifteenth I am simply hoping the mountain will reveal a new personality. This became particularly obvious in Lofoten, where I would…
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I HAD THE DIRECTIONS. THAT WASN’T THE PROBLEM.
There is a particular humiliation in watching the little blue dot on Google Maps realise you are lost before you do. You are still walking with impressive confidence, shoulders squared, phone held casually enough to suggest complete geographical competence, while the map has already rotated itself three times and is quietly reconsidering every decision that…
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FANGIRLING HAD OFFICIALLY LEFT THE GROUP CHAT
At the end of my third consecutive night shift, the hospital was beginning to brighten while I was becoming progressively less human. Day staff arrived with the polished faces of people who had slept at socially acceptable hours, while I was operating somewhere between caffeine, muscle memory and whatever reserve tank the body opens when…
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THE PASTA WAS GETTING COLD.
Life Lately | May 27, 2026 (A Late Post) I have always been suspicious of afternoons that seem to be doing absolutely nothing. They rarely announce themselves properly. No one sends flowers. Nobody raises a glass. There is no email beginning with “Congratulations,” no suitcase waiting by the door, no reason to think the date…
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APPARENTLY, HEAVEN HAS NO TIMER.
I was standing in front of the microwave watching thirty seconds behave as though it had been allocated an entire afternoon. There is something deeply unreasonable about how slowly time moves when you are staring directly at it. Thirty seconds while doing anything else disappears unnoticed. Thirty seconds while waiting for food becomes a philosophical…
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But perhaps “unfinished” was no longer the insult I once thought it was.
At some point, my calendar began looking like two different women were sharing it. One of them worked long days and night shifts, calculated sleep in suspiciously small numbers, remembered things at inconvenient hours and occasionally treated coffee like a colleague. The other one had Scotland written in June and Norway written in July, searched…
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Why Visit Bridgnorth?
I Blame Bridgnorth The plan was simple: go to Bridgnorth, walk around, take some photographs, eat something nice and come home. At no point did I schedule an existential discussion with a nineteenth-century railway, a leaning castle wall or the River Severn. Yet this is what happens when I travel. Give me an old building,…
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THE MANUAL WASN’T IN THE DRAWER.
The kettle clicked off in the kitchen just as something small and plastic dropped onto the floor behind me. I turned around slowly, partly because I had no idea what it was and partly because houses become strangely suspicious when they start shedding pieces. The thing was about the size of a thumbnail, beige, slightly…
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Unfiltered truth
Deception has excellent manners. I think that is why we do not always recognise it when it enters the room. We expect deception to look suspicious—to avoid eye contact, stumble over its own story, perhaps wear a badly fitted trench coat and behave as though it has something to hide. But most of the time,…
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THERE WAS ONE SCREW LEFT.
The Wayfair boxes had barely settled on the floor before I decided patience was no longer necessary. My partner had already told me he would build the dresser for me. It was a perfectly sensible arrangement. He knew what he was doing, I could leave the screws in peace, and eventually I would have the…
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What to See in the Cotswolds in One Day
Can you see the Cotswolds in one day? Technically, yes. Can you see all of it properly, understand several centuries of English history, admire every honey-coloured cottage, investigate every old church, photograph every charming doorway, visit some penguins and still return home at a respectable hour? Absolutely not. But that did not stop us from…
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Seasons of Becoming
“Put down roots where you are planted.” I did not understand that line when I first arrived in the UK. It sounded lovely, of course. Most sayings about growth do when you are reading them somewhere warm and comfortable. Roots, apparently, are expected to behave themselves: find the soil, settle in, grow. Nobody mentions that…
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Life, Unposted
April in England has started behaving like April in England: confused, hopeful and completely unwilling to commit. One morning the sun comes through the window strongly enough to convince me that spring has finally sorted itself out, and by afternoon I am looking at grey clouds wondering why I trusted it. The evenings are noticeably…
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THE ROOSTER NEVER SAW THIS COMING.
The morning light in Cebu used to arrive warm and gold, slipping through curtains already carrying the promise of heat. Outside, somebody would be sweeping the pavement, a motorbike would cough itself awake, pots would begin clattering in a nearby kitchen, and then the rooster would make his entrance. Not politely. Not once. He approached…
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My Recent Amazon Haul
It had been around six years since I had properly bought anything new for my kitchen, which sounds slightly alarming when written down. Six years is long enough for a child to start school. Apparently, it is also how long I can look at perfectly functional kitchen appliances and think, Well, it still works, before…
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The Weight of Small Things
I didn’t plan on picking this book up again. It just happened in that quiet, in-between moment—the kind where you’re not exactly tired, not exactly okay, just… full. Full of small things. Thoughts that stayed longer than they should. Little frustrations that somehow felt bigger by the end of the day. And there it was,…
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I WAS THERE. JUST NOT IN THE ROOM.
At the next table, four people were sitting together and nobody was looking at anybody. One was scrolling. One was typing. Another was photographing the food with the concentration of someone documenting a crime scene, and the fourth appeared to be watching a video important enough to require headphones and complete emotional withdrawal from the…
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KEEP IT FOR THE NEXT PERSON.
The pound coin was technically mine for about forty seconds. I was walking towards the trolley bay outside the supermarket with one already pinched between my fingers when a woman pushed her trolley towards me and said, “You can have this one.” I reached automatically for the coin still locked into the handle, but she…
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BREAK GLASS IN EMERGENCY.
The fire alarm went off before anything was actually on fire. That, I realised afterwards, was rather the point. Nobody stood in the corridor debating whether the smoke had become severe enough to qualify. Nobody suggested waiting another six months to see whether the flames developed further. Doors opened, people moved, procedures existed, and an…
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From Barangay Gossip to Viral Posts
When I was a child, there was one name that could make an ordinary evening suddenly feel unsafe: Maria Labo. I cannot remember exactly who first told me about her, which is probably appropriate because nobody in our barangay seemed to know where the story had actually started either. I only remember that, for a…
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I WAS ONLY LOOKING FOR BREAKFAST.
I opened the fridge looking for breakfast and found yesterday instead. The cold air hit my face first, then the smell from a container pushed somewhere behind the milk and whatever else had been forgotten in there. Filipino food has a way of refusing to remain merely food. One second you are standing barefoot in…
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ON TIME WAS NEVER PROMISED.
The departure board changed again before I had finished reading it. Platform 3 became Platform 5. “On time” became “delayed.” Someone beside me sighed with the deep personal offence British commuters reserve for public transport, while an announcement crackled overhead and apologised for something nobody in the station appeared capable of fixing. The air smelled…
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THE THREE DOTS DISAPPEARED.
Three dots appeared on the screen and disappeared before they became a sentence. Then they came back. Then vanished again. I watched them with the concentration normally reserved for medical monitors and exam results, as though staring hard enough might persuade somebody else’s thoughts to arrange themselves into the words I needed. The phone stayed…
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Apparently, We All Needed Maintenance
If my camera roll had to write the clinical summary of this week, it would probably say: multiple subjects requiring observation, supportive care and snacks. There was me, still attending physiotherapy. There was Miyu, recovering from her spay and behaving as though we had personally betrayed generations of her ancestors. There was work doing what…
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On Letting Go of Control
Sundays carry a different kind of stillness. Not the silence that follows chaos when everything has finally exhausted itself, but something softer, almost deliberate, like the air after rain. I am sitting by the window now, watching the light fall unevenly across the room and noticing how the day seems to move without urgency. There…
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