*First published during the more ‘severe’ lockdown conditions of the pandemic on the online forum for mental health stories: The OC87 Recovery Diaries. ‘There are no little things. Little things are the hinges of the universe.’ Fanny Fern In my first stay at a mental health institution, in 2013, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder […]
I sit here in my lounge, cats preening themselves before me, on a wonderfully melancholic rainy day, feeling at once utterly contented and confuddled by it, if only a smidge. It is a nice feeling to make my acquaintance. I feared I had lost it for a spell. But it has returned to me, quite […]
To write a fitting tribute for our Papa, John Henry Richardson, proved no small feat. Not when there are so many beautiful memories and so many attributes to be so very admired. So I thought long and hard about my dearly beloved grandfather, John to some, Dad to his five blessed children and Papa to […]
My grandparents are selling their house and it feels like the end of an era. Theirs is a home in a circle of heritage houses, all double storeys with lattice work on their balconies overlooking the square’s grassy park, once glorious, with a fountain that has long since been left in disrepair and an overgrown […]
Jelly has always meant love to me. Whenever someone close to me has been sick, I respond almost instinctively with a bowl of jelly. Raspberry jelly is my favourite. So it is invariably raspberry. My friend’s little boy is sick and so today I will make him some raspberry jelly to soothe the throat and […]