In my last extract, traumatised Kitty O'Hara gate-crashed the graduation ball of her ex-colleagues at St Andrew's University. Reaching rock bottom, she now realises that something has got to change in her life. CHAPTER TWO Okay, let’s take a step back. For the first six months after the incident, I fought bitterly against the idea [...]
October comes with lots of memories. Some of them are true, some deliciously fabricated. But one event sticks in my mind like super-glue: a spine-chilling meeting that took place between four educational entrepreneurs and a gang of international mothers at a brand new school in Krakow, back in the mists of time. FEAR It's the [...]
Don’t you think that the act of looking forward to something is better than the act itself? Okay, so I admit it, I’m feeling a bit doom & gloom today. With this being the last day of the school summer holidays, my mind has been hijacked by thoughts of the fickle nature of Time. There [...]
Being deprived of any sort of holiday this summer has made me ... well, kind of nostalgic. Dreamy. Yearning for a summer of long ago. A balmy, sexy summer back in communist Poland of the 1980s, deep in the heart of the Tatra mountains. And here’s the weird thing. It’s a summer I never even [...]
Is it something about the month of June? Is it the heat? The provocative birdsong? Is that why these wayward memories have been taking me down meandering lanes I haven’t trodden in years? So here’s one that’s been assailing me today. One from 25 years ago, when I was dizzily, crazily in love. Ah, those [...]
Believe it or not, I’d never heard of the term ‘dead bedrooms’ until just the other week, when I was having a chat with an old friend about the conundrum of marriage and what makes it so terminal. As soon as she mentioned the phrase dead bedrooms, something deep inside me all at once came [...]
And now, Mother, it’s your turn! Enter Molly Williams, heroine of all my life’s journeys, protagonist of my memoir! Imagine the scene. I have just stepped inside the large entrance hall of Belle View, our Victorian Bed & Breakfast home in Lyneham-on-Sea. I’ve dropped my bags and guitar case on the floor, and am bombarded [...]
Wendy Skorupski 