April to June 2023
This piece gathers a few short posts from spring 2023. Work had taken over. Health had improved. Money was still tight. Then, somehow, we made it across the Channel and gave Karta a few days in Germany.
January to March 2023
This piece gathers two updates from early 2023. After the health scare, the HGV licence, and the move into practical work, life began to settle into a different rhythm. Not easy. Not perfect. But steadier.
2022
This piece gathers posts from 2022. It was the year health, work, and money stopped being abstract problems. The year began with village life, writing plans and another attempt to build a simple rhythm. By spring, an HGV medical exposed the truth. By winter, I was driving grain lorries across the south-east of England.
January to December 2021
This piece gathers a run of posts from 2021. The year began with lockdown, furlough, doubt and another attempt to find focus. It ended with a new home, a new job, night shifts, and a quieter attempt to make family life work.
Published 31 December 2020
Thank fuck for that.
I managed to get through 2020 reasonably unscathed. As far as I know, I did not get Covid, which feels like an achievement in itself.
Karta completed his first year of home education. I think he is where he needs to be, and he is progressing nicely. It has not always been easy, but then nothing about 2020 was easy.
We also got our first full year in our new home under our belts.
Village living suits me. I think it always will. After years of noise, pressure and feeling boxed in, having a garden, a garage, and a quieter rhythm to life has made a real difference.
Published 19 October 2020
We moved to the countryside a year ago.
We escaped from Planet Thanet. The overcrowding. The constant noise of cars, buses and pubs. We gained a garden, a garage, and the smells of rural living.
We were gearing up for a year of adventures, near and far.
Then a pandemic swept across the world and screwed up everyoneβs plans.
Our neighbours, although noisy at times, have been kind and generous. They made us feel welcome. I slept better than I had in years. Karta had space to play and got his first full-sized trampoline.
When lockdown came, we were glad to be in a house rather than trapped in a top-floor flat. We had space. A garden. A place for projects. A place to breathe. For a while, we were able to lock away the outside world.
The move to Wingham was a challenge financially. Without help from generous family members, we would not have been able to break away from the situation we were in.
But I do not want to dwell on that.
March into June 2020
This piece gathers a small group of posts from the first months of lockdown. Home education had already begun. Then the world changed, and the fresh start we thought we were building became something else entirely.
January into February 2020
This piece gathers a small group of posts from early 2020. At the time, it felt like a fresh start: home education, slower days, more time together, and a chance to build something around Karta rather than forcing him to keep fitting into systems that no longer felt right.
Published 21 October 2019
After years of turmoil and uncertainty, we are finally on the move.
When we first moved to Thanet in 2007, the area felt like an outpost to me.
It was far enough from my former life, both in distance and atmosphere, that it felt like another world. For a while, that was exactly what we needed.
Over time, though, things changed.
Published 5 June 2019
Being in a financial hole is hard.
There is no point pretending otherwise.
The pressure to provide for your family sits with you every day. It follows you into the kitchen. It follows you into bed. It sits beside you when you open the banking app and try to make numbers behave.
One way to stay sane when everything feels stacked against you is to look carefully at what is still working.
Not in a fake, positive-thinking way.
Just honestly.