Benefit Street, Brighton.

I was a miracle baby. Not that such a phrase would ever have come from the lips of either of my parents. "Oh for gods' sake stop being histrionic." my mother Phyl would have laughed dismissively. While my father, George, would have drily say something  that would  make me the butt of the joke. Both of them had been married before and in each case it had been disastrous. Phyl had been consistently sexually abused by her first husband and, as a result, had been told before she married George that she wouldn't be able to get pregnant. As she was over 40 any cessation of her menses would be down to menopause; not pregnancy, she was informed.   So it was rather a surprise all round when George was called in to visit the RAF doctor. "Ah, yes, George, old man. Marvellous to see you looking so well." "You could have seen how well I was looking at the Mess to-night." George raised an eyebrow. "Yes, yes, jolly good idea. But I thought I'd better tel...

  It's only since I got here 7 years ago that I have begun to understand, exactly, how very unique both my parents had been from the general species. So this is probably a good time to introduce the fact that I usually called them Phyl & George. I shall go on referring to them now in that way - both because that's who they are, and because another thing I've learned since coming here is that we were  English Middle Class. So there are verbal minefields to pick my way through even in referring to my parents.  If I call them "Mummy & Daddy" people will make the sign of the evil-eye against me and accuse me of being Middle Class. (Which I find  a bit unfair, as they are the people who put me in that box. I had gone happily through my whole life until 2014 without knowing I belonged in any 'Class' at all.) On the other hand, if I referred to my parents as "Mum & Dad" I'd have to keep pinching myself to remind myself who I was talkin...

 Anyone who knows me at all will know two things about me: I resist labelling ; and I detest jargon . Which is rather unfortunate. Because, at the moment I feel like I'm trapped inside the box of my flat drowning in a sea of both; and will be discovered one day strangled by the strings of all those labels, with a note saying "I have ceased to conform within the paradigms which constitute proof of life." It's fortunate that, after those dark years of thinking I would never again be normal, I at last came out of the fog. It was miraculous and freeing, and opened the world up for the first time in 6 years. And then we went into Lockdown. And I realised I would never be normal. Now it might surprise anyone who knows me that I have always dreamt about being able to pass unnoticed through a crowd. To walk into a gathering and to be able to join in with what everyone else was talking about. To have shared the same experiences. The same cultural background. And to know automa...

              The day I stood before the door leading to the first classroom I ever entered in China, I paused with my hand on the door handle for quite some time before my brain stopped sending down the "Panic! Run away! Disappear through a hole in the floor!" messages and switched to "Open door". I was already floored to find out that lectures here took place in large school classrooms, were furnished with old-fashioned desks with hinged lids, green chalk-boards and adults sitting scrunched into them so thickly there wasn't a spare seat in the house. Like so much in China, the architecturally modern, streamlined exterior wasn't necessarily any indication of what pertained behind that public presentation. I was unprepared also for lugging armfulls of forms and books and notes and schedules up six flights of stairs, in a stone building whose cold cement treads struck through thin sandals on a hot late-summer day. But most of all I was unprepared for...

  The last blog I put out was treated with icy British disdain by the general public; who stayed away from it in droves (Well, ok: in larger droves than usual). They didn't even click on to it. They simply read the title and strap-line, thought "Eeeuww!" and kept on scrolling down for something more wholesome. What had I done? Had I f-bombed them in unceasing assaults? Had I perhaps given altogether TMI about my uterus - currently prolapsing away even as we speak? Did I tell the story of my twat-tatt? Had I, in my abysmal ignorance (ye gods, not again. Please!) made bold and airy use of some word which is anathema in every corner of the British Isles? Unfortunately, it turned out to be the latter. And the word - which by now, doubtless, you'll be agog to know?  I have no way of whispering it gently into your shell-like to reduce its loathsomeness slightly. I must throw it down like a gauntlet. Yet I'll present it prettily as I can. The word that must not be named,...

  No I haven't gone back into Alice-country again; and no, paws actually don't have anything to do with anything at all I'm wittering on about. In fact neither of the two nouns in that sentences have ever played a vital role in my life. And that's pretty much a common experience: there are some things in life we are only familiar with at second-hand, because they are characteristics associated with other species. From White rabbits to seals the common factor is not the apparatus which enables locomotion. It's whiskers. The very first entry on a basic on-line search for the word "whiskers" brings up the information: "one of several long stiff hairs that grow near the mouth of some animals." The example sentence follows: "The cat licked its whiskers. "  Now I'm not one to credit conspiracy theories; I spent years as an investigative journalist. But, this thing about the whiskers? It just seems so fishy to me. I think it's cheap so...

  When I was 16 I was living a double life. During term-time I was a convent Boarder in a rather posh school in Australia. I was 'too young' for most things; I wore my hair in two skinny plaits; clumped about in sensible school-shoes; and and was condescended to by everyone in the world who was over 17. But during the long Summer Holidays and the shorter ones in between, I flew home to my tropical island in the sun and lived my real life. In this world I rarely wore shoes; my hair - which had never in my life been cut - flowed freely down my back and over my bum and I wore a frangipani or hibiscus behind one ear. In this world I had been driving for the past two years; smoked cigarettes socially, was rather knowledgeable about wines and whiskey, and was treated no differently to anyone else. It was in this world that my father, asked to do a spot in the annual Xmas Concert down at the Army barracks, airily informed all and sundry that he would be accompanied by his Glamorous As...