DorkyDog, five years on

August 8, 2026 By in Family Leave a comment


We have had our wee DorkyDog now for over five years, but I realised recently that I haven’t written about her since we were going through all the drama and stress of her total hip replacement – all the way back in 2022.

Ironically, I’m now making time to write about her just as we are staring down the barrel at another potential surgery. Poor girl has been in clear discomfort every evening for the last month or so, and after some x-rays and conversations with the vet it looks likely she’ll need the other hip replacing too – but there may also be a knee issue we need to sort out first.

I’m very grateful that we ignored all the folk who told us not to bother getting pet insurance. Even if we didn’t make any more claims for the next ten years, I reckon we would still come out ahead.

But needless to say, DorkyDog – or Luna Bear, as we know her – is far more than the sum of her sore and stiff joints. Although that overwhelming first year of puppydom, surgery included, was a real shock to our quiet household, I don’t think any of us were prepared for quite how deeply she would embed herself in the family, and how fiercely we would come to love her.

(I have paused my writing at this point to walk into the room off my office, where she is stretched out napping in a sunny spot on the bed. Just to give her a little kiss on the head.) Continue reading →

The unbearable sadness of rice cakes

July 17, 2026 By in Nostalgia 2 Comments

A loaf of bread on a wooden cutting board

 

Oh bread.

Lovely, lovely bread. How I miss you.

Hot, buttery toast, with a slick layer of Marmite floating on the surface. Crusty hunks of sourdough, topped with curls of unsalted French butter. Pulled pork with ‘slaw and barbecue sauce in a big soft bap. Floaty white boats in a bowl of tomato soup. Chip butty with ketchup as a dirty treat when DorkyDad is away on a work trip. Wholemeal pitta, stuffed with cream cheese and avocado, and if I’m feeling fancy then some chopped up pepperoncini or za’atar sprinkled in among it. Continue reading →

Soundtrack to an uncool life

July 15, 2026 By in Nostalgia 3 Comments

I realised the other night, as I was waiting for Nagi Maehashi’s Vietnamese pork dish to caramelise and singing a London Grammar song into my spatula, that both of my last two blog posts have mentioned music.

It felt like a sign. Time for my music and snobbery piece to break free of the drafts folder, expand beyond its initial brief, and become a celebration of music in all its forms.

Because there has always been a hierarchy in music – a sense that some bands are cool and others deeply uncool. I have spent most of my life cheerfully on the wrong side of that divide.

And honestly? I think I’ve had more fun because of it.

Continue reading →

Blog posts I don’t have time to write

June 28, 2026 By in Blogging 1 Comment

I’m proud of myself for building a successful writing business from scratch. I’m also grateful to all the clients who have chosen to stick with a living, breathing human writer instead of switching over to AI. My work is varied, rewarding and – importantly – helps pay the bills.

But I’ll confess there is a tiny part of me that misses writing purely for fun.

It’s not just about finding the time; it’s as much a question of finding the headspace. I’m in awe of people who spend all day doing comms work and still write creatively after hours. That’s not me. I can only manage four or five hours of solid writing a day before my brain shuts down and I have to shift to reading or admin tasks.

The ideas are still there. But the capacity to execute them isn’t.

If none of these ideas will ever escape my drafts folder and make it into fully formed posts, I may as well give them a brief airing in listicle format. This listicle is, like me, a mixture of silly and serious. Here are some of the many, many blog posts I don’t have time to write, right now.

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Autumn 2026: (A few more than) 10 good things

May 31, 2026 By in Family, Tasmania 4 Comments

view of kunanyi in autumn

I’ve been having an internal debate about whether to give myself a few days grace before writing this end-of-autumn blog post. Last week was a really frustrating one on multiple levels – we were all ready for it to be over before we’d even made it to Tuesday lunchtime – and I worried my grumpiness might be too tricky to hide.

But the whole reason for starting these quarterly posts was to focus on the positives and put the daily frustrations in perspective. And so, on we go, with a celebration of what John Keats called the ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’.

We have certainly had a season of mists here, with a Bridgewater Jerry thundering down the River Derwent on a good number of mornings. We’ve also had beautifully warm and bright t-shirt days, howling gales, torrential rain, snow on kunanyi, and that sweet, soft, perfect light that defines autumn in Lutruwita/Tasmania.

I’m looking at the notes app on my phone, where I jot down things that have sparked joy, and I have quite a few more than 10 this time round. I’ll include them all, because only a very silly goose would rank their joys and drop the bottom ones off the list.

But I will also try and keep my descriptions shorter, so we’re not here all day. You’re generous readers, but I know that I push my luck with the 2000 word posts that pop up every so often.

Enough preamble.

Continue reading →