Why does it matter what the land or people were like before now? Because firstly, we forget what things looked like so, so quickly, and this is like forgetting what a face looks like before it’s bloody, bruised and bleeding. It’s important to recall what health looks like. Secondly, we…

I worked in Samarinda in 1992. I was 26 years old but oh, dear, I was unwell. I had an eating disorder that ruled my days, I was promiscuous for all the wrong reasons (zero self respect) and I was angry particularly about injustices. But this is not a political…

When I was a young child When I was a young child, I was taken from my beautiful home and my kind, loving parents and put into an institution (in the form of a boarding school). …

Almost every time I open Medium, I find myself bombarded with articles about how to get rich, how to write for publications that will make me rich (almost always if not instantaneously, then within a few weeks, or months at most), how to become more proficient as a writer, or…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=SdLLizKayK Holding Moses is a very short (16 minute long) documentary about dealing with the almost overwhelming challenge of caring for a profoundly “disabled” (I’ll use this word because the documentary does) child. Its relevance to social care work is obvious: we are often caring for people who other people…

I’ll talk here about whether or not there’s a soul, or spirit, on the basis of the experiences people might have had of OBE, or out of body experiences. …

Magda Osman has written an interesting piece on why people still believe they make free choices about things like what to buy when they are confronted by advertising, or who to vote when they are bombarded with political propaganda. She ends by saying, “ultimately, the world as we know it…

I’ve been following the recent debates about the value (and inappropriate use of) AI. I signed up for Chat GPT (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) to see what the fuss was all about. …

Ducks are great. Too many ducks are not so great. Their droppings are slippery. But this article isn’t about ducks. It’s about other species we normally think of as being pests. I’m writing this while I watch a spider walking at top speed in loops and zig zags across the…