I don’t get why transpenine trains only put 3 carriages on (on a Friday no less) from Manchester to cleethorpes - via Sheffield & Doncaster - & there’s not enough seats & decide to send someone with a Trolley to sell overpriced drinks down. 🙈🙈🙈

Who needs melatonin to help you sleep when you can be lulled by the calmness of pottery throw-down. I love the show but it always makes me feel mega sleepy, even the celebrity version.

IN. *On the extraordinary privilege of being here.* / Today I stood on a stage at TEDx Doncaster and completely forgot what I was supposed to say. It was our dress rehearsal. The lights. The microphone. Amazing humans looking at me. I was absolutely bricking it. Practising in the bath, or in an empty library where the books are your only audience, is rather different from standing on a stage with nowhere to hide. About halfway through, my brain decided it had contributed quite enough. There was a silence. Then a longer silence. If anyone has seen that clip of russel brand on piers Morgan’s show where he spends 2 minutes looking for a bible verse and it sounded like the bible had been mic’d up. Well, mine was picking up my increasingly panicked breathing. A TEDx ASMR experience nobody had asked for. 😆 And yet, somewhere between the terror & the desperate search for my next sentence, I thought: *What an extraordinary privilege it is to be here.* . To have something to say. To be frightened about something that matters. To be alive enough to feel all of it. There have been times in my life when the future wasn't something I could confidently assume belonged to me. Perhaps that changes how you experience things. The ordinary business of being alive becomes something rather extraordinary. / 2 weeks ago, I was eating banana splits and drinking Coke floats with Vanda and Martin in a New York City diner, 5 hours behind everyone back home, when Debbie and I won an *Unsung Hero Award* as part of the Pride of the North Awards. What an honour. Especially to share it with Debbie Hutchinson, my wonderful partner in crime, and to be recognised alongside so many remarkable people. Including Liz Barnes and Zophiya Addinell, whose commitment to Woodlands Community Librar, & beyond, seems to have no opening or closing hours. People who keep turning up. And turning up. And turning up. Growing roots like trees, creating the conditions for others to grow alongside them. / I've been thinking about how much of community is made from things nobody necessarily sees. The kettle put on. The chair pulled out. The familiar face noticed missing. The person who stays another hour because somebody needs them. Little acts of love and attention, accumulating into something big enough to hold us. I think we underestimate how profoundly our lives are shaped by the people we get to do ordinary life with. . And none of us knows how much time we have. We make plans as though life is an endless succession of Tuesdays. We postpone coffees, promise to catch up, imagine there will always be another opportunity. But none of it is guaranteed. Not the Tuesdays. Not the people. Not even the next breath. / Perhaps that's why I'm so interested in the ways we make things together. Communities, friendships, art, places to belong. . The extraordinary human capacity to imagine something that doesn't exist yet, and then set about bringing it into the world. It's what my TEDx talk is about. That creativity isn't reserved for artists. And changing the world isn't reserved for extraordinary people. It's something we practise every day, in the places we share, through the things we make and the ways we care for one another. // I've been thinking about the word *in*. Such a tiny word for something so enormous. To be *in* a community. *In* a friendship. *In* a room full of people who believe things can be different. To be *in* a life still unfolding, without knowing quite what comes next. . To turn up while we're still learning. To make room for others. To contribute something, however small, to the great unfinished work of being human together. Because what an extraordinary privilege it is to be here, to belong somewhere, and to have the chance to leave the world a little better, more playful, more compassionate from how we found it. And goodness, I'm glad I'm in it

Too early commute 😹

Brill 2nd day back teaching!

Seriously, Channel 4 (film4) got such a great curated offer of amazing movies RN! Here’s some of my favs: 🎬 The Holdovers (Xmas & autumn vibes all the way!) 🎬 Bob Trevino Likes It (best movie of the year!!!) 🎬 Broker (trust me!) 🎬 No Hard Feelings 🎬 Shang-Chi (best Marvel ofc) 🎬 Official Competition 🎬 Premium Rush 🎬 The Beautiful Game (change your life kinda movie) (Some of these movies only have days left on @Channel4 so catch them now!)

Most incredible phenomenal sunset tonight 😻🌅🌅🌇🌆🩷

Got caught out a bunch of times in New Hampshire, the other week, thinking I could just use Apple Pay. But NH is full of small independent stores everywhere.

Had a great time visiting @DayDoncaster - thinking about the future- what a brilliant community and incredible, compassionate & creative staff members. They meet with the people who attend, carers, families & community members to plan for the next 3 months, every 3 months! Check it out! Also got a cool gift! 😎

First day back at school today (uni… teaching)

Fascinated by all these people who are out of touch. Its worth saying - because this bit always seems to get missed - the whole student accommodation landscape has massively changed. Outside of places like Oxbridge & the universities that still own a few halls, a HUGE chunk (vast majority) of student accommodation is now private. Massive companies making absolute $$$ out of students needing somewhere to live. And even where universities do still own accommodation, it’s often only part of what’s available. And the maths just doesn’t maths anymore. The average Maintenance Loan English students received in 2024/25 worked out at around £640 a month. Average student living costs? £1,142 a month. That’s a £500+ hole. EVERY MONTH. Rent alone averaged around £529 a month. And then in London the average cost of purpose-built student accommodation had actually become MORE than the maximum Maintenance Loan. So even if you got every penny of support available, it could all disappear on your room before you’d eaten anything, travelled anywhere, bought materials/books, washed your clothes or done literally anything else required to exist as a human being. And this is after years where maintenance support simply hasn’t kept pace with the actual cost of living/inflation. So the idea that students are all living some luxurious uni lifestyle on their loans is just completely detached from reality. Unless you come from $$$ and your family can plug the gap, huge numbers of students HAVE to work alongside their degree. Nearly 3 in 5 students surveyed in 2025 had a part-time job. And THAT is where this becomes an equality/exploitative issue for me. Students are essentially mirroring the housing crisis we have across the UK and the driver is the same.