this week

A favourite corner of my living room, especially around 4:30pm this time of year, when the light is fading, necessitating candles and fairy lights.

Didn’t I just do one of these?! Does anyone else feel like the weeks are flying by at the moment?

Let’s get to it!

Favourite experience/s of the week

A pre-paper selfie I took for my friend in Melbourne sending supportive “go get ‘em!” texts - I don’t look nervous but I was!

Despite all of the nervousness leading up to it, I actually loved giving a paper to my UTAS colleagues and fellow HDRs at lunchtime today. It’s so funny, I know that I know my material and I always feel such a buzz afterwards. I even enjoy it while I’m doing it, dry mouth, racing heart and all. But the lead up to giving a paper is always excruciating for me. What am I so afraid of, that I’ll go completely blank and be rendered speechless? Or that there will be a technical malfunction that my peers will use as an excuse to tease and humiliate me? In my brain’s defence, that has happened to me before, but only once and I was 13 years old at the time which was the best part of 30 years ago now (what?! That can’t be right). It was a very scarring experience, but perhaps it’s time I stopped giving those memories so much power. I find giving a paper regularly is the best remedy for getting over my stage fright. I also discovered an excellent podcast this week that really helped (see the Listening section).

My darling husband also bought me some flowers because he was proud of me, which was so sweet. I love having flowers in our home.

I also loved seeing my family on Sunday for a belated birthday gathering - which felt very strange, because my birthday was at the end of May (while we were in the UK) and now it’s the middle of July! But whatever, it’s been a weird year. Mum made my favourite dip (hummus) as the centrepiece for her usual amazing spread and a delicious cake, and my nephew and niece helped me blow out the candles. It was lovely!

Reading

Bedtime reading is The Bloomsbury Cookbook which I’m finding fascinating. If time travel were possible, one of my choices would be to attend a pre-WW1 Bloomsbury Group meeting - what a bunch of characters they were. Though I daresay I would have become infatuated with the wrong person and had my heart broken - it seems to be a common theme so far!

Also related is Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between The Wars which I am loving - it’s both a pleasure read and very relevant to my research, because I too am exploring ideas of female subjectivity and self realisation in relation to place. I’m focusing on colonial Hobart and Sydney, but I really admire how Francesca Wade has structured this and it’s given me lots of ideas. It’s absolutely fascinating so far!

I finished The Missing Ingredient by Jenny Linford, which was a birthday gift from a dear friend in London. It was such a thought-provoking book about the role time plays in creating great flavour in food. And you might be surprised by the kind of food that responds well to a bit of extra time taken - jam, for example! It was a really interesting read that I enjoyed dipping in and out of. And it made me wish I had read it before we went back to the UK so I might have sought out some of the products mentioned (not that we had much time for shopping in the end!) - but there’s always next time!

The Village by Matt and Lentil Purbrick - I borrowed this from the library as I’m missing my vegetable garden (which is currently asleep for winter) and wanted to get some inspiration and ideas for spring planting. I’m excited to plant some companion plants this year, like marigolds and Queen Anne’s lace, which will hopefully distract the pests! I have also learned my lesson and will PLANT EARLY this spring! I can't wing it here like I used to in my London courtyard. If you want some inspiration for your home veggie patch and living more sustainably and in a more community-minded way, this is a great book to get you started!

The Guardian: Growing up trans in country Australia by Candace Bell

Open Book (State Library of New South Wales): On literary merit by Kerryn Goldsworthy

The Offing: Fourteen Ways of Looking by Erin Vincent

BBC News: We found a baby on the subway - now he’s our son - get tissues for this one!

The Audacity: Knee Deep by Sandy Silverman

Listening to

My “writing beats” playlist which is perfect for client work, editing, writing emails, writing blog posts and also getting psyched up before giving a paper! It’s also great “getting ready to go out and party” music, not that I do much of that these days!

Lots of affirmations this week too on Insight Timer, the meditation app I have used for the last six years. I hit 1900 consecutive days this week which is a bit scary…in terms of how many years that is, but in days it doesn’t seem like that long.

My inner autumn playlist was on repeat.

WILD with Sarah Wilson: You are weird! Here’s the scientist who can explain why

The Imperfects: Glenn Robbins - Listening To The Voice In Your Head - I loved this interview with Glenn and the message felt particularly resonant for me this week. Glenn spoke candidly about how he has battled performance anxiety and nerves for pretty much his entire career, and how he has learned to listen to the encouraging voice in his head rather than the one that tells him he isn’t good enough. It got me through this week and the nerve-wracking thing I had to do! This is my new favourite podcast, all about resilience and vulnerability, and I can’t wait to listen to the back catalogue!

The Full Vegan

Eating

Have I introduced you to The Full Vegan yet? This is a brunch meal that Tom and I started making in January when we accidentally went vegan and enjoyed it so much we’ve kept it up (like many things I decided to do over the summer!). It’s avocado toast, hash browns made in the air fryer, baked beans, sautéed mushrooms - those are the Big Four (even though Tom isn’t a fan of mushrooms, their vitamin B12 make them a great vegan food so he has a few!) and then we usually add some seasonal greens, maybe vegan sausages if we have them in. A blob of ketchup, a glass of orange juice and The Full Vegan is complete. It is absolutely delicious. And so hearty and filling, I honestly don’t miss eggs, halloumi or any of the other things we used to have for brunch at the weekends before. This week’s Full Vegan had no avocado but extra mushrooms and sautéed sprouts (very good!). We also got a new air fryer at the weekend because our old one completely died the weekend before, which I was very grumpy about - but all the grumpiness dissipated when Kmart suddenly got some stock in of the one I’d had my eye on! It’s an upgrade every sense of the word!

Spinach, risoni and lemon soup - recipe here

Bread in the bread maker!

I also made a giant pot of my favourite soup which was delightful - I hadn’t made this soup for ages, possibly not since last winter. It’s so comforting and tasty. Alas, my local grocer was out of fresh dill so I made this batch with tarragon instead. It wasn’t quite the same and I missed the dill (in my top 3 favourite herbs for sure) but it was still amazing!

We had a friend round for dinner at the weekend and we had a vegan cheese platter to start (delicious) and for main course I made the fennel, walnut and sun-dried tomato pappardelle from Special Guest by Annabel Crabb and Wendy Sharpe, a book on whose brilliance and delicious recipes I have waxed lyrical before. I didn’t have pappardelle so used orecchiette instead, and it was just as good as using long pasta! I have also made my own vegan Parmesan which is pretty delicious too - I’ll write up the recipe soon.

I also dusted off our old bread maker and made a loaf in it for the first time in a while - and the house was filled with that utterly divine smell of bread baking. It was a lovely loaf with good structure, it held up well for toast all week. I enjoyed it so much I might set it going tonight so I can wake up to the smell of fresh bread! I also bought some more of my favourite Maggie Beer Seville marmalade this week….so I don’t see that I have a choice but to make more bread, frankly.

Watching

Not much this week. More Parks and Recreation (Netflix) because after some long days, I just needed some escapism and I so enjoy this show. And also The Babysitters Club (Netflix) - the last pure thing on earth. Wonderfully entertaining, enough nostalgia for me to enjoy it but updated to be inclusive, fun and modern. I adore it!

I can’t remember if I mentioned it - jet lag is real and I’m only just feeling back to normal - but we rewatched Frances Ha (we bought it on iTunes and also own it on Blu-Ray) a few weeks ago, and I adored it as much as I did when we first watched it. Greta Gerwig is one of my favourite directors and writers, and I think her work has only got stronger in recent years. I can understand why some people might find Frances Ha overrated or frustrating to watch...especially in 2022, a film about privileged 20-somethings trying to get to grips with adulthood seem to be ten a penny. But in 2012, I think it captured something. I loved it and still love it, even though my twenties were quite some time ago now! I think the film spoke to me because I was a bit of a late bloomer myself and, as long time readers will know, my own twenties were a time of great transformation and flux. I was both Frances and Sophie in some ways - I floundered for many years, and then steamed ahead and people felt like I'd left them behind. I think the movie captures that melancholy and resistance to change quite well.

Quote of the week

“Because you are alive, everything is possible.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

Thank you Jo for inspiring this weeks’s quote!

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this post, or anything else, with me, please do! Stay warm, or cool, wherever you are, and I’ll look forward to chatting to you again next week…which I’m sure will be here before we know it! xx

these past few weeks

Where do I begin? As I tell myself when I sit down at my desk each day - begin somewhere. Anywhere.

As you might have been able to guess from the above photos, I’ve just got back from nearly four weeks in the UK - my former home, the site of so many important and happy years of my life. This visit was not for happy reasons, however, and given that we’ve been in the grip of a global pandemic for the past two years (and with still around 300 deaths a week in Australia this month alone, I do not believe it’s over yet), I personally wouldn’t have chosen to make this trip at this point in time. But we did, and we made the best of it. More importantly, we survived everything that needed to be faced, and are safely home.

Having not left Tasmania since January 2020, it was a very welcome change of scene, despite there being a lot of stressful things to negotiate and our time being limited. However, we definitely tried to make the most of being there. I saw sites related to my PhD which I had long made my peace with never seeing in person while writing this book, so that was incredible. We made pilgrimages to literary sites I had always wanted to see but never made the time to go to when we lived here, which I’d since very much regretted. We drove over 1,000 miles all over the country. We saw some dear friends, as many of them as we could, and even made some new ones. We spent a lot of time in cemeteries. We even got to enjoy the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, which was lovely - no country does pageantry quite like the UK, am I right?

I love the UK, and always will. There are many things I miss about life there, my friends especially. But this trip confirmed for both of us that Hobart is definitely our home and moving back here four years ago was 100% the right decision. In many ways, this trip was like returning to an old life for a few weeks and while that was great fun in some respects, it was also a reminder of what we had outgrown or grown tired of. We felt very homesick for Australia while we were gone; a longing that on my part felt marrow deep. When we were finally on our flight back to Perth, I’m not embarrassed to admit my lip was trembling when the Qantas theme started playing!

I’ve spent the last week waking up at 3:30am (!), ploughing straight back into work including a conference and giving a paper on four hours sleep, and making food that requires long, slow cooking because that is my mode at the moment - go slow. To have gone from a heatwave in London and tanned forearms to an icy, dark winter and flannelette sheets on the bed has been a bit of a mind-bend, in more ways than one. But we’re deeply relieved to be back. It was nice to have an adventure, but even nicer to come home.

I’ll do my best to share the trip with you via my usual This Week headings!

Favourite experience/s

Our first tube ride, fresh off the plane. We have, of course, done that journey a thousand times - the Piccadilly line from Heathrow out to Southgate, almost at the other end of the line, which takes about 75 minutes. Our Oysters still had a little credit on them! From the moment we touched in to riding the escalator to alight at Southgate, we were both overwhelmed by how nice it was to see it all again - how nostalgic we were as the train passed through all the familiar stations that used to signal the end of the working day. The comforting familiarity of it all, how innately we knew the system, exactly where to go and what to do, as if no time had passed at all. At the same time, we were seeing it with fresh, new eyes and it felt kind of wondrous.

Surprising our old neighbours with an impromptu visit! I love surprises - both planning them for others and being on the receiving end of one - so I got a real thrill out of seeing how blown away our old friends were at finding us on their doorstep! We sat and chatted in their living room as the sun went down that first night, next door to our old flat, and it felt just like old times, like we had never been gone.

A morning run around my old neighbourhood park, and brunch afterwards at our old favourite cafe. It was nice to see how many local businesses had survived the lockdowns (and also sad to see how many hadn’t).

Experiencing the new Elizabeth line! We arrived on the day it opened and I was stunned at both the transformation in the stations that I had grown used to being building sites (cough, Moorgate, cough!) and in the efficiency of the line. You can be in Liverpool Street in two stops from Tottenham Court Road now. Mind. Blown.

All PhD related site visits - some in London, some in other parts of England, but all made the world of my characters (I say that for ease, they were real people, but I’m writing fiction) so much more alive and vivid for me. Being able to smell the air, to hear the sound of the wind in the trees, to see what flowers grow wild there in the summer, to see buildings that were already a hundred or so years old when they were living there or to feel the energy of a place where the buildings are long gone….it was beyond anything I could have imagined.

Reunions with wonderful people I love. I wish we could have seen everyone, but sadly it was a very jam-packed schedule and it wasn’t always possible to give people enough of a heads up. I worried too that in between jet lag and all the stress of the reasons why we were there, people weren’t exactly seeing us at our best either. But I needn’t have worried - everyone was very kind, understanding and accommodating, for which my gratitude is boundless. And while I’m also deeply grateful for the modern wonders that are FaceTime and Zoom, nothing quite beats seeing friends in person.

Norwich - a fabulous city we unexpectedly spent quite a bit of time in! I love it there. Wonderful places to eat, great pubs, decent coffee, a branch of my favourite UK clothing brand (Seasalt Cornwall), charity shops full of hidden treasures, an awesome bookshop, and so much history! We saw the cathedral, which dates back to 1145, and a pub that’s been open in the same spot since 1249. The mind boggles.

Seeing Sylvia Plath’s grave. This was deeply moving - sad and strange yet beautiful. I was expecting a bit of a throng of fellow Plath fans and having to wait my turn, but Tom and I found ourselves in a deserted, quiet cemetery on a bright summer afternoon. The grave is overgrown with blue forget-me-nots and I was enchanted by the number of bees buzzing around merrily in the flowers. I think she might have quite liked being a haven for bees who “taste the spring”. It was quiet and peaceful, but not quite what one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century deserves, in my opinion.

Haworth Parsonage - what a wondrous morning we spent here! I could have spent the entire day there happily. It was a real pinch myself moment; the building and its contents have been beautifully preserved by the Brontë society and there are some truly fascinating artefacts inside. My girlhood passion for the Brontës has been well and truly reignited; this visit reminded me of why I had been so fascinated by them.

Meeting lots of lovely dogs - I had forgotten how dog-friendly everything is in the UK! Every pub we went to had a dog in it, to my delight. And they usually made a bee-line for me, much to Tom’s amusement. “Every time! I don’t know what it is,” he laughed.

Anything food-related - see further!

Reading

On reflection, I should have bought all of these books too.

I have to admit, I barely read at all while we were away - apart from the news and anything work-related, because I was still working intermittently throughout the trip. So, this section will be devoted to the wonder that is UK bookshops! I hit all the big ones in London - Hatchards, Waterstones Piccadilly, Foyles on Charing Cross Road, the Brick Lane Bookshop - as well as The Book Hive in Norwich, several Oxfams and we also made a stop at Hay-on-Wye, famous for being one of the UK’s most bookish destinations with no less than 25 bookshops in the tiny village.

I had deliberately packed light so I had plenty of room to bring books back with me. I think it would be safe to say that over half of my suitcase’s final going-home weight was in books. I make no apologies - I am who I am!

Persephone has moved from London to Bath in the years since we’ve been gone, which was not on our itinerary, but thankfully there were plenty of places to procure Persephones about the place. I snaffled a grand total of six. I will be set for Persephones for some time - I do enjoy having a stockpile of them to work my way through!

We also managed to get a SIGNED copy of Jarvis Cocker’s new book which was released on my birthday (an omen). Procured from my old favourite Brick Lane Bookshop, who were as obliging and friendly as ever.

I also loved being able to pick up a copy of Waitrose magazine again - for May and June! Oh, Waitrose - how I’d missed you!

Listening to

The theme tune of our road trip was this song. Quite the ear worm, apologies in advance!

My husband would also like to inform readers of this blog that he procured some vinyl and CDs that are nigh on impossible to get in Australia and enjoyed that aspect of the trip immensely.

Eating

Chips with beer in a pub. Need I say more?

Before this trip, I could count the number of times I have eaten a meal out over the past two years on one hand. I had forgotten what a treat it is, and how exciting it is to try new things and get new ideas for your own cooking. We had some lovely and memorable meals out, interspersed with the wonderful home cooking of friends and family, and we also sampled some of our favourite treats from our old life - Fox’s Chocolate Rounds and M&S hummus (me), Skips and M&S Dutch Shortcakes (Tom), Monster Munch (both). Some lived up to our nostalgic memories and others didn’t! It is funny how your palate sometimes changes as you get older.

Mildred’s - an old favourite in King’s Cross which didn’t disappoint. We started with artichokes with panelle (fried chickpea batter), followed by a “chicken” kebab with kachumber, and a sweet potato and green bean curry with pea-flecked turmeric rice. All so very delicious. And a much needed injection of veg after a day of eating mostly pastries!

Sicilian lemon tart at Theo Randall’s - my birthday cake this year! The meal there was stunning, as always. And I so enjoyed drinking Italian, Spanish and French white wines on this trip, as an aside. There is a freshness about them that always makes me think of happy summers during the years I lived in such close proximity to all three countries.

Wagamama - another old favourite that has had an incredible menu overhaul, with so many delicious vegan options now. I tried the spicy “chicken” ramen (pictured left) and hoisin “duck” rice bowl (right) and both were amazing. The rice bowl even had a vegan “egg”, made from coconut. It was surprisingly realistic!

My aunt is an incredible cook - everything is delicious and wholesome, yet also indulgent. On our first night with her, she had made Nigella Lawson’s liquorice pudding for dessert, which was divine. I will be making it myself very soon!

Not a particularly ambrosial eating experience but a memorable one - we had been driving all day, some 400 miles, and were finally where we needed to be. We found a Travelodge and collapsed wearily on to the bed. Unable to face the idea of going out again, or even of other human interaction, I had had the foresight to buy some Pot Noodles so that was our dinner - boiling the hotel kettle and slurping up these noodles, which were surprisingly good. It felt like we were in our own version of Long Way Round.

We stayed a night with a dear friend in Hertfordshire (readers of my old blog might remember me referring to “my friend the GP” on occasion, this was her!) and after a happy and emotional reunion, she served us a wondrous spaghetti puttanesca which was so comforting and delicious after a day of driving. Accompanied by a chilled Spanish white wine, and with the comforting smell of her cooking in the air and the evening sun golden in the garden, I breathed a deep sigh of relief that the hardest part of the trip was over.

Some amazing Indian takeaway with our friends in south London. Indian food in the UK is really phenomenal, almost as good as being in India itself!

A birthday lunch of Pilpel felafel, which used to be my go-to whenever I would treat myself to a takeaway lunch when I worked nearby. Fresh, healthy, delicious, and the felafel remain the best I have ever had.

But the foodie highlight of the trip was a meal at Erpingham House in Norwich which, if you’re in the UK, I can only urge you to visit as soon as humanly possible, whether you’re vegan or not. You won’t fail to be impressed with the creativity, the quality of the food and its deliciousness.

FSH and smashed potatoes - heaven! It’s a battered banana blossom.

I wish we had been able to sample everything on the menu but in the end, Tom and I both had “fsh” and smashed potatoes (pictured above) and my aunt had “lamb”, and that took quite some deliberation! It’s such a treat to go somewhere and be able to order everything on the menu, not just be scanning for the V or VO options. I got so much inspiration for my cooking from this one meal here. It was simply outstanding.

And, believe it or not, the airline food was OK! I had two favourites - a paratha stuffed with coconut lentils and mushrooms that was served as a midnight snack somewhere between Indonesia and Dubai on the way over, and char kway teow style rice noodles with tofu served for lunch on the Perth to Melbourne flight. Qantas, you did good!

Watching

I discovered Mary McCartney Serves It Up by accident and ended up watching every episode I could lay my hands on - such a charming show with the elegant and charming Mary who cooks all vegan food. I particularly enjoyed Dave Grohl appearing as a guest!

Dinner Date - our old ITV favourite, a comfort watch that has lost none of the cringe factor! For those who don’t know, it’s a reality show where a single man or woman is given five menus to choose from - of those five, they pick the three they most like the sound of (or, most likely, the three the producers have decided would make the most interesting/awkward TV!) and are then subjected to three blind dates where said blind dates cook a three course meal for the guest. At the end of the trio of blind dates, the guest chooses the host they most felt a spark with and off they go, out for a meal they haven’t had to cook! The two unpicked hosts get a commiseration prize of a ready meal. It’s my favourite kind of reality TV and I so enjoyed catching up on a few episodes! I’m pretty sure there’s been an Australian version, which I’ll have to sniff out.

We were also introduced to the nature program Springwatch, which I had never seen before - it’s broadcast live from a series of cameras all over the UK, which “charts the fortunes of British wildlife during the changing of the seasons”. Some stories have a soap opera element about them, with some quite dramatic fates of certain nests of fledglings! It’s really quite relaxing to watch at the end of the day. And oddly hilarious in places, as birds really do get up to some crazy things.

We also watched the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee concert which opened with the Queen and Paddington Bear, which was so very sweet (Paddington 2 is an incredible film, if you’ve not seen it, FYI). We were also in the country during the vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson so naturally were glued to the BBC for the results of that…

Finally, finding Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy available to watch on the flight home after not being able to watch it in Australia was amazing! Dear Stanley, what a lovely man he is. How I would love to be friends with him and Felicity! The program is so thoughtfully and passionately put together, and some parts of it are so tender and moving. And guaranteed to make you want to eat pasta, I’d say.

Quote of the trip

“It’s always better to travel hopefully.” - Rick Stein

Whenever we found ourselves despairing or overcome with anxiety (which sadly but unavoidably happened quite frequently on this trip) about what lay ahead and all the things that could go wrong, one of us would say to the other “travel hopefully”, which is what Rick Stein says at the beginning of his Secret France series, admittedly in the very different context of being hopeful of finding some great food and wine on his travels. We were rewatching some comfort TV in the lead up to our departure, in a bid to keep all the anxiety at bay, and when we heard Rick say the words “travel hopefully”, it became our mantra. And it helped.

It’s hard to explain and I know a lot of people won’t understand, but we had not even gone to the mainland in all this time, so the idea of making such a big journey was very daunting and still felt incredibly risky. We had grown very used to overseas travel being government-sanctioned and off limits, so to be doing it again with very few restrictions felt so strange, almost surreal. And frightening at times, to be honest. I’m proud of how resilient we both were, how we just got on with things, and stayed positive in the face of some very challenging experiences.

And somehow, by some miracle (because our flights were full and we were definitely in the minority in terms of consistent mask wearing), we have remained Covid free! Masks and vaccinations for the win. And travelling hopefully doesn’t hurt either.

So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed the recap! As always, thank you for reading and if you’d like to share your thoughts on this post, or anything else, with me, then please do. I’ll be back later in the week with my usual This Week wrap up. It’s good to be home. xx

deep breaths

I’m not usually awake before the alarm (or Tom) but I was today. I left my phone where it was, charging in my study.

I went straight outside to my garden and meditated, without the app, without the timer. Deep breaths.

I did my morning pages. Had a coffee and watered the garden. Marvelled at the new leaves and pods that two days of heat has produced in my garden. No podcast, no music, no distractions. Just the relative peace of my street waking up for the day. Birds cackling to themselves in the trees. Deep breaths.

I just wanted to savour whatever window of time I could snatch where I didn’t know what had happened and anything could still be possible.

I think I’d like to start every day like this. Only without the gut-churning anxiety!

Sending a huge hug to everyone who needs one today.

how I started running again

As most of you would know, I run for beer! :) 

On Sunday I ran the RunThrough.co.uk Finsbury Park 10k race. It was -4 degrees, I ran with about four layers on, wasn't able to keep my no-toilet-break record, and stopped to walk twice, but I finished! And that was all I wanted.

It’s been a strange couple of years for me. Full of incredible highs, but equally full of lows. Stress, anxiety, grief, burnout…. they certainly make life less fun. They rob you of the ability to see the bigger picture. My wellbeing/self-care is always the first to suffer when I feel like that. But the desire to run, to keep up the kind of training I'd been doing, had completely left me, After years of running a half marathon every weekend, I was exhausted and needed a break.

That's not to say I've not gone running since then - but it's been jogs round the block when I could be bothered, really. But until Sunday I hadn't run a proper race since 2013. Sunday was my first 10k in all that time.

I started running again last year. Once a week, with a group at work. I was in a very apathetic place, very much with a can't-be-fucked-what's-the-point mindset, but figured once a week was better than nothing. Most weeks I managed between 4 and 5k on those runs. It wasn’t a marathon, but, as I say, better than nothing.

I spent so much of last year feeling utterly drained, unable to move forward. Spending such a long time in the company of your past takes a real toll on your sense of self, I discovered. I spent a lot of last year wondering who the hell I was any more. Things that used to be so easy for me were suddenly REALLY BIG THINGS. Like going to parties where I didn’t know anyone. Like writing. Like running. Those things used to excite me, give me energy. But now I NEEDED energy to do them. It was exhausting, frustrating and left me in a bit of a heap.

2017 is only 26 days old but I’ve already bought new running shoes, done two park runs, my standard run with my work running group is now 6k and now I’ve done my first 10k race in nearly 4 years.

Six years ago, almost to the day, I had just started training for the London marathon. I was doing 10ks before breakfast. So you might think it’s a bit disheartening to only be doing 5ks and 10ks considering how fit I used to be. But it’s really not. I feel so happy, so grateful, to be running again I don't care about the distances. I just want to run. It's part of who I am. Something I didn't realise until I wasn't doing it any more.

My life has been a series of ebbs and flows, ups and downs. You can’t have one without the other. The story I shared in The Latte Years keeps going. I’m not the same person who went through all those highs and lows in the book – I’m not even the same person who wrote it, a mere two years ago. I’m a work in progress, always. I’m (still) learning that when life gets a bit much, as it does for all of us, not to let go of the things that take a bit more effort than sitting on the couch with Netflix and crisps, because it's those things that truly light me up from the inside.

Returning to running - not just a jog here and there when I could be bothered - has been marvellous. Not just the joy of being physically active and pushing my body beyond its comfort zone, but I’m remembering how to be my own cheerleader. I’m remembering how important it is just to show up and give it a go - you don't have to be the best, just do YOUR best. How important it is to just run your own race and not worry about what other people are doing, how much further ahead they may or may not be. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for my good health, for the ability to run at all. I have been reminded that negative thinking, in running and in life, is a luxury I simply cannot afford.

Most of all, thanks to running, I feel more like myself than I have felt in a very long time.

PS: I totally signed up for that 10k because of the medal. Isn't it beautiful?