Here in the UK, it’s Mental Health Awareness Week, an initiative hosted by the Mental Health Foundation to focus attention on mental health issues across the nation. This year the theme for the event is nature, with a focus on the supportive role the natural world can play in boosting mental health. The theme appears…
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Years ago, when I had a ‘proper’ job, I was a participant in a set of development centre activities for graduates. It was standard development centre stuff, including participation in group activities and receiving feedback on performance by an assigned observer who monitored the tasks. In one such exercise, I was observed in a team…
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The last week has brought a myriad of feelings – anxiety, contentment, fear, comfort, positivity, helplessness, happiness. Stories that are not mine to tell mean that there has also been shock – and sadness – too. The devastation wreaked by Covid-19 seems to creep a little closer, reminding us that statistics are not statistics –…
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In the week or so since I last wrote the world has shifted once more, with another layer of the UK’s Covid-19 response unfurling towards ‘lockdown.’ Citizens are restricted to a narrow range of activities, with outings from the home permissible only for work, obtaining food or medicines, helping the vulnerable or partaking in one…
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In the week since I last wrote, the world seems to have spun completely on its axis. The Covid-19 virus has the UK in its grip, a pandemic that threatens not just our wellbeing, but the very essence of how we live. All around us, the social structures that anchor us to the world are…
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This week, I have found myself reflecting on the changing seasons as winter slowly turns to spring, and then back again, in the game of back and forth that so often characterises March in Caithness. Here and there, primroses peek out in cheerful colours, while on verges, daffodils open up like yellow, honeyed eyes. In…
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A couple of weeks ago, I reached my 50th Parkrun milestone – a feat I never would have imagined possible when I turned up at my first Parkrun event around eighteen months ago. Back on that day in late 2018, I was looking for ideas on family-friendly activities for a stint on BBC Radio Scotland,…
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Hello, and happy 2020……! The sun has risen on a new decade, and as usual January brings with it a sense of expectation. Resolutions, plans for diet and lifestyle, pressure to overhaul just about everything in our lives. I don’t really go in for New Year resolutions, preferring instead to set goals throughout the year…
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Truth: I don’t always feel happy, or even positive. In fact, now and again I get days where I can really feel quite down. On days like those, you won’t find me posting jaunty captions on Instagram, or commenting on other people’s photographs. In my own experience, social media can be a tricky instrument to…
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A couple of years ago, I spent a long period feeling pretty awful. I won’t bore you with the details – if you’re interested, you can read more about that here and here. For about a year, from 2017-2018 I suffered the effects of a sort of ‘mystery illness’ that left me feeling exhausted, in…
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