(Re)starting a blog in 2025…

Back through the mists of time this website was basically just a blog where I pontificated about whatever random stuff had wandered across my consciousness. Blogging was very much The Modern Thing at the time, but now in August 2025 it’s three years since I posted anything at all, and seven since my last attempt to post regularly, so what on earth am I doing here now?

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure. It’s 2025. If I want to pontificate I should probably have a Substack or communicate my thoughts through the medium of viral dance trend on TikTok. But both of those sound like a) a lot of effort and b) like they’ll be every bit as out of fashion as old school blogging in another five years time, so here we are.

I think the reason I woke up this morning though and thought, ‘Let’s restart an entirely defunct blog’ was a growing frustration with social media and the way conversations online tend to descend into argument and ‘Well, actually’ and exchanges that are all about winning or being seen to be right, rather than engaging, listening or, indeed, actually being right. And sometimes that’s fair enough – when you’re dealing with a troll, polite discourse doesn’t necessarily cut it – but other times it just makes me weary, and I turn into a grumpy old woman who thinks the world is losing its manners and its nuance.

And I don’t like the grumpy version of me. I don’t want to be chuntering at the modern world. I want to be engaged with it. I used to think of myself as being quite political, but it feels like political conversations are so toxic now that I’ve backed away. And that backing away is part of the problem. Backing away leaves a big empty space for bigots and zealots to fill.

So restarting this blog is, I guess, me trying to step back into that space but in a way that hopefully feels less fighty and more thoughtful than just shouting in the comments on semi-strangers’ Facebook posts.

I make no promises to be here on any sort of schedule – ‘most weeks’ is the vague intention, but who knows? I am going to try at least to write stuff here about what’s on my mind, about the world we’re navigating through, about the bits of it that scare me, and the bits of it that bring me joy. Or if that’s too much some weeks I might just not, or I might share some pictures of cake instead. We will very much see how it goes.

While you’re here, making a living through writing is super tricky right now. Authors’ incomes are falling, and bills very much are not, so if you are able and you enjoy what I write it would be lovely if you could drop me a couple of quid by way of acknowledgement or thanks. I believe people generally say ‘buy me a coffee’ but I don’t like coffee and I’m lactose intolerant. So buy me a soya milk hot chocolate?