Contemplations...

Three months later than planned, my third book, Approaching Difference Differently, is in the layout process. This is a momentous staging post – for the first time I have a sense of it as a book, rather than a Word document. In general, I’m not good with...

I started to write this post in March! I was inspired by a friend’s grandson who was applying for a place on a teacher training programme in Scotland. It’s a competitive field, and he’d recently had a ‘no’ from his preferred university. He was, of course,...

It’s been a while since I’ve written a post – I’ve been bringing together a working draft of my next book. This has been harder than I’d imagined… and I was also rudely interrupted by a nasty bout of flu. The draft is now with some readers for comment...

Last Saturday night, I lay on my sofa, weeping. I was watching the Strictly final, and comedian Chris McCausland and his partner Dianne Buswell were dancing a waltz to ‘You’ll never walk alone’. I’d shed a tear when they first did the routine, but this...

For someone who’s written a book about pausing and breathing – albeit principally in the context of conversations – I recently realised that I wasn’t doing much of either! Without noticing, I’d become preoccupied with routine tasks and some self-imposed...

In the autumn of 2019, I was ‘reckoning’ with myself as I approached the threshold of my 60th birthday. It seemed to be a significant time, calling for new rhythms in the later stages of a working life. This led me to reappraise my identity and work,...