Where are we going?
Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it.
Matthew 11:29 (The Message)
The Quaker writer and retreat leader Parker Palmer writes that a calling is ‘something you can’t not do’. This is how writing this book has felt. It has taken me more than seven years to get our story down on paper. In that time, there have been many occasions when… Read More »
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Our Dementia Journey Begins
Why is it that so often we give places names or titles that are the very antithesis of the function that the place in question is known for or provides? Take the name ‘health centre’, for example. Was there ever a less apt name? Surely the main reason for going to a health centre is because at the very least you feel less than healthy and at the very most you feel the exact opposite of it. Perhaps it is a classic example of how, as a society, we always tend to accentuate the positive at the expense of being honest about the reality… Read More »
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Before the Flood
Imagine you live in a village and you stroll along the riverbank where you used to play as a child. Imagine each morning you walk outside, feeling the coolness of the dew-filled grass beneath your bare feet, and look at a cloudless blue sky where the sun always shines. Imagine your three boys have grown up and left your homestead to live with their wives. Imagine your husband telling you one evening in front of the fire that God has spoken to him about a flood… Read More »
It’s ‘impossible to read without encountering hope’.
I was so thrilled by these words! They were written by one of the very first people to read my novel – a dear, retired pastor friend who I had nervously approached to endorse the book. His words now appear inside The Healing, and on its back cover, and I was thrilled because they highlighted the message I wanted the book to convey… Read More »
‘I consider it to be one of the greats.’ (Wendy H Jones, Author and International Public Speaker)
There is a famous quote from Dostoevsky, that ‘to live without hope is to cease to live’. Many of us can relate to this after the winter lockdown, and it is something the protagonist in Joy Margetts’ tender historical novel has to confront and overcome.
Driven to despair by heart-breaking betrayal, thirteenth-century nobleman Philip de Braose has lost faith in God and humanity… Read More »
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Awakening
Winter, early 1231
France
Philip became aware of a shuffling sound. It was pitch dark, and eerily quiet. Except for the shuffling. A mouse, or a rat maybe? He strained his ears, trying to hear the tell-tale sounds of claws scratching… Read More »
Last Monday, it was International Women’s Day where we celebrated half of the world’s population. Today is Mothering Sunday and/or Mother’s Day, whichever you prefer. As an actual woman, it felt pretty good having two days devoted to me in a seven-day period. As a freelance writer, pre-Covid, I used to spend a fair chunk … Read more …
Instagram influencers and lifestyle bloggers were in the news recently for all the wrong reasons when many sought to escape the UK lockdown by heading to Dubai for ‘work’. Presenting a minutely manicured perfection, they sell us a dream that surely even their reality can never truly live up to. This is the gap that new author Ruth Leigh explores to hilarious and poignant effect in The Diary of Isabella M. Smugge… Read More »
September
This morning, I woke up at 6 am, got up, did my stretches and forty lengths of the pool then said to myself, ‘Isabella, you’re a lucky girl. No cellulite to speak of, all your own teeth, a handsome husband, three beautiful children and a lovely house.’
I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that… Read More »
Last week, my three-year-old grand-daughter was turned away at the nursery school gate because someone had tested positive for coronavirus. The situation was explained carefully and kindly to her, and she said, ‘OK.’ But on the way home she commented dolefully to my son, ‘Daddy, I like school.’ She was missing learning and meeting friends, … Read more …
