Author: thethingsnotsaid

The Red Step

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I’m starting to write creatively, currently focusing on short stories. Occasionally, I’ll share them here, and I welcome any feedback as I’m new to this and want to improve. My brother sent me a photo of a random red step, and this is where it led me. Tina could tell her son was ready to leave. He was stepping slowly through the boxes sat on the living room floor, lifting flaps and peering inside, pulling his hand away quickly as if scared he may disturb the contents. ‘Darling, thank you for all your help today. I can take it from here.’ she steps over to stand beside Marcus and puts her hand on his back moving it up and down in between his shoulders. A gesture of motherly affection familiar to all her sons. Her youngest, looks down from his lofty six-foot four height, ‘Are you sure Mum? I don’t mind staying and helping to unpack heavy things.’ “No, I insist’, she insists, ‘I think I am just going to leave most things unpacked for …

This Woman’s Worth

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I am the daughter of a working-class housewife and a middle-class small business owner. I was born in the 70s and grew up to believe that hard work for fair pay was as much a woman’s right as it was a man’s. I worked hard at school and didn’t question progressing to university. My first job was, at age 11, delivering newspapers to half the village before school five days a week, for which I was paid £5. I progressed to waitressing at the village pub and revelled in spending my hard-earned cash at the Metro Centre twice a year. I think I was one of the last cohorts who enjoyed a free higher education and graduated with a small overdraft that I bounced in and out of as I stepped into a career. I didn’t go home after I was 18, so I always had a job, or two, to pay the bills. In fact, since I was a papergirl there has only been one year when I haven’t earned money. That was the …

Destined to be friends

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I heard someone quote CS Lewis yesterday. It was on the subject of friendship. “In friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting–any of these chances might have kept us apart.” He goes on to say that he believes God brings our friends into our lives. Much like people often say they where ‘meant for each other’ when they talk about a lover, he’s saying God orchestrates our lives so we will become friends with people, he goes on to say: “The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.” I don’t know the context of this quote, and whilst I do think God (you can switch God out for whatever higher …

A Quiet Mind, Who Can Find?

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One of the things I struggled with the most when we lived in New Zealand—and this is going to sound crazy—is life being so easy. I know, what a ridiculous thing to say. It’s true though. I don’t mean that we spent our days sipping cocktails, staring at beautiful views without a care in the world. Actually that last bit does come close to what I mean. You are so far away from the rest of the world on this beautiful, hardly populated island, safe and secure, that you don’t have to worry about the rest of the world. Yes, the bills are high, you still have to do maintenance on your house, teenagers are hard to live with wherever you are, but the things you have to care about are only in your world. Other people’s worlds rarely interrupt your day. Right now, I wonder how I thought that was such a bad thing as I feel like I am drowning in cares and woes. Our dog has developed some kind of cyclical diarrhoea …

Choosing the way to go

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There are many ways to leave life, starving myself to death is not the way I want to go and I decided that when I was 19. When I was 15, I began losing weight. It was easy. I was already really into sport, playing hockey and netball, running, cycling and anything else that was competitive. Gradually, and without a plan, I started cutting out food that had fat in it. I began saying I didn’t like chocolate and only eating sweets that were full of sugar but has the all important ‘Trace’ next to fat on the nutrition label. I whittled my breakfast down to one slice of toast which would be tossed aside as I ran for the bus. I spent my lunch money on sweets and magazines, and avoided the lunch hall by running around the sports field for half an hour. I am not sure how long it took, I think maybe a year but certainly by the time I was in my A’level years, I was in the habit of …

Coming along for the ride

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The first time we emigrated to New Zealand, we were a family with a nine-month-old and two-year-old. Those babies were an extension of us and apart from the 36-hour flight, which was either sleeping or non-stop Peppa Pig, nothing really changed for them because their whole world was us. It was easy; we move and they come with us. Even when we moved them at five and seven and then again at seven and eight (my maths is fine here, they are 18 months apart so depending on what month it is, they are one or two years apart), it was relatively simple. Yes they had to say goodbye to friends, family and familiar things, but at those ages, as long as you have Mum and Dad behind you, you’re brave enough for anything. The biggest challenge I remember were when we came back to the UK in 2017 was being introduced to the school zoning system and having to literally argue our case to the local authority so both children could go to the …

When it’s not your job

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Having a job is a big part of emigrating. In fact, it’s necessary if you want to stay. Our motivation to move to New Zealand in the first place was to bring our children up somewhere beautiful and wholesome and we wanted an adventure. Thankfully, Gareth worked for a global engineering company that could facilitate that. Due to a natural disaster, the job became much more than a way to get a visa. It was an opportunity to pursue his career, using his skills (and gaining lots more) whilst working within a team of highly motivated and inspiring colleagues to literally rebuild a city after devastating earthquakes had flattened it. A job that makes a difference, how satisfying is that. Five years later, we moved back to the UK because Gareth’s dad was sick and at the same time he found that out, his company offered him an opportunity to work on a big, ambitious project. The third emigration was because we didn’t feel like we were done with New Zealand and wanted to go …

New start

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This is not what you think it’s going to be. There will be no new year resolutions. No declarations or goals to be shared. No new me. Last year had all the new things; all the change. We left our life in New Zealand (again) to start life back up in the UK (again). We moved to a place we have never lived before. New job for my husband, new school for my children. New house. New sport teams. New friends. It might well have been the most stressful year of my life. January 2024, we began to move. A year on, we are moved. Changes everywhere. Postcode has letters in. Our bodies, belongings and dog are under a different roof. All our bills are in pounds. It’s winter not summer. We shop at Sainsbury’s not New World. Chocolate is not Whittaker’s. We are 13 hours behind not ahead. All these changes required my full attention. My family needed my full support. Day-to-day life took all day, every day. Six months into our new start, …

I will always love you

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Dear Child of Mine I want you to know that I will always love you. I loved you when you were the size of a grain of rice and your heart beat was undetectable. When you made me sick and took away my ability to tie my own shoe laces. The strongest motivator to go through two days of the most pain I have ever felt was you. We hadn’t even met but I would have endured that pain for as long as it took to bring you into this world. When you screamed at me for hours and refused to give me sleep, I loved you in every sob and exhausted scrap left of my being. When your head was adorned with delicate, golden curls or when you scowled with the flick of one eyebrow, I swooned at your beauty. You could be covered in snot and vomit and I still think you are the most lovely thing I have ever seen. When you pulled my trousers down in the middle of a busy …

In the mirror

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I started working for a charity last year that is focussed on seeing homelessness eradicated. Whilst I have always been aware of homelessness and have been involved with charities that work with homeless or deeply impoverished people, I have lived a life that has come nowhere near what people suffer when their choices and resources are so diminished that they have to live on the street. I walk past someone who is sleeping on the street, see them in the news or depicted in films, hear stories about the injustices and abuse that have led people to the lowest of lows, and think that I am so far away from them that we have nothing in common. It creates a sense of distance and separateness that means I don’t stop on the street when I see someone begging or just clearly in need, because my mind has these thoughts: They’re asking for money and I don’t think that’s what I should give them, or more often than not I don’t have cash anyway I don’t …