Blog Archives

For autumn half term 2021, we’ve planned an adventure and I’m blogging the trip here. Our starting point is to visit the UK city with the most highly rated escape rooms, which happens to be Nottingham. After that, we’ll spin our TripRandomiser. Day 1: Beckenham to Nottingham The first leg of our train journey took us…

OK, I’m finally getting around to the 2nd instalment of my blog series – how can I get my children off their screens? You may have read part 1 in which I talk you through the holiday spidergram. In this – part 2 – I’m adding an element of jeopardy to the picture with another…

Since April, I’ve been an Olio Food Waste Hero. This means I collect surplus food (in my case from Tesco). I can keep 10% for my family and I list the rest on the Olio app. People can then request the food from me and I try to share it out fairly. The aim is…

This is an update to my original post on school uniform and road safety. After hearing from a parent in another part of the country who had found my page useful and is complaining to her local school, I’ve decided that it’s time to restart my campaign which I had begun before COVID. I am…

So, how do your holidays go? Do you start with lots of ideas about going on outings to museums and organising art and craft activities around the kitchen table? And then you get to the end and you realise your children have spent most of the time lounging in their pyjamas in the darkest room…

This is an update to my original article about my plants database. Since I first created a database of the plants in my garden and house, I’ve been experimenting with different ways of using it and have added some new features. As my database template is available for others to use, I’m providing this update…

Are you applying for a policy-related job? Feeling anxious about whether you’ll have the right answers to the interview questions? Worried your mind will go blank at a crucial moment? In my pre-motherhood years, I attended lots of interviews for policy roles. I always worried that I wouldn’t be able to think of the right…

Given my maternity-related roles, I’m often asked by friends and neighbours about where new mothers can get support locally. I tell them about two places where mothers can not only turn for support, but also find community and opportunity. I know there are many support options available but these are two that I know about…

On checking a small plant that had started growing amongst some gravel in our garden, I discovered that it is cotoneaster horizontalis. I also discovered that we have an overgrown horizontalis in front of our kitchen window. Reading up on this plant let me to realise that it’s considered to be a non-native invasive species…

We’ve recently bought a house with a beautiful but slightly neglected garden. Having never really been much of a gardener, I’m embarking on a steep learning curve. I’m determined to do the garden justice even though I don’t know much right now. In the last few weeks since moving in, I’ve been using Plantnet to…