This is not the piece I had anticipated writing, when I woke up early one July morning, knowing that I was pregnant with our second child. In that sunlit moment, it felt almost identical to how it had been with Ella, and I assumed a similar journey was about to unfold. The pandemic ensured that…

When I stand, my left ankle joint collapses inwards slightly, tugging at the delicate structure of my knee joint, a referred tension that travels up to my sacrum and causes the occasional dull ache in my hip. I’m not sure that this happened before. It feels new. I don’t think about it much, until I…

These days, at the weekend I wake up to an Instagram feed full of lockdown rave culture. Secret forest raves, boat raves, people weaving their slalom six-am way through fields in the countryside surrounding London, private party lock-ups in unused clubs, above-board socially-distant outdoor club nights that descend into socially-un-distant after parties. Visually, atmospherically, this…

I have a five-month-old baby girl, and winter is setting in. The dark November evenings are long. The sun is always low. I am indoors a lot. I am that strange kind of alone-but-with-a-tiny-baby a lot. Few things are quite so intensely ‘up and down’ as motherhood has the capacity to be. There is no…

Before I became a mother, I was able to use my body for specific and delineated periods of time. I would get it out for my morning yoga practice and my walk to work, before sliding it into the background for the next few hours, putting my mind in the driving seat as I answered…