All posts tagged: writing

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 …

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 …