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I have a project that will forever remain on my to-do list. There’s just no way I’ll ever have time. The priority level will never increase from a nice-to-achieve to a really-needs-to-be-done. Instead it will always be classified as unnecessary-perfection-because-who’s-got-time. So the problem is two-fold: I have too many books (can that ever be a…
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I seem to have acquired a collection of feminist books. From Mary Wollstonecraft to Simone de Beauvoir, from Maya Angelou to Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche; from Mary Beard to the wonderful Caitlin Moran; from Naomi Wolf to Kat Banyard. And I realised that all these fabulous ground-breaking feminist women were in fact constantly breaking the same…
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I’ll be half a century old later this year. I’m very much middle aged, and honestly, I’m ok with that. I’m not planning on having a mid-life crisis. Having said that, I have found myself thinking about my aging choices. Namely: gracefully, or not. For me, graceful aging would mean accepting that things will start…
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When you unwittingly receive the gift of a second language, you kinda take it for granted. Or at least I did. It turns out I had no clue how hard my parents worked to make that happen. I was brought up in London by two French parents. We spoke French at home. When I started…
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This one’s about childcare. Yup, it’s a biggie. Nope, I won’t be solving it. And yes, I’ll be complaining. Even though no, I can’t even complain that much, because I did have choices (albeit limited). Nine months after the birth of Firstborn-son, after a decent spell of maternity leave (some of it paid, how lucky are…
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Ok, this is a tough one, and controversial too. Full disclosure: I’m unashamedly pro-vax. I became a covid vaccinator for (which I had to study the immune system and vaccines in general) because I was jumping for joy when we got those pandemic-defeating vaccines. I’m stating this up front because, while I know I’m going to…
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It’s Only Daughter’s fault. She started it! This summer, she decided to download a certain language learning app and started to learn Japanese. She likes sushi, you see. And Japanese art, the manga and the anime. Kudos to her. She’s been sticking to it and practising almost daily. By all accounts, it’s a difficult language…
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Not gonna lie, I’d have liked to write this a week ago, but Christmas got in the way. Not Christmas itself, obviously, but the run up to the big day. I even dropped down a league in my Duolingo. My rational self knows it’s not a big deal, but my more irrational self was having…
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I am not a perfectionist. Never have been. That doesn’t mean I don’t have standards, or that I won’t do things to the best of my ability. It just means that I’ve long recognised that there are only 24 hours in a day. And I like to sleep for a third of those. There are…
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I’m a tiger mother, believe it or not. That is to say: I was born in the year of the tiger, and I have children. But Amy Chua (the original self-styled tiger mum) would not be impressed by my credentials. But that’s ok because I’ve never aspired to be that kind of parent, mostly cos…
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Midwife, Mother, Me 