When you flick to your news app and the top headline is ACTUAL GOOD NEWS

I think we all know that autism is caused by AUTISTIC PEOPLE MAKING THE LOVELY BABIES but the trouble is you can’t really yell that in the faces of eugenicist nutjobs, can you, in case they get ideas. Yep guys, it’s paracetamol. Definitely paracetamol.

I’m thinking that before the next election, all the other political parties just get together and make a party called “Not Reform”. The tories can even join in if they like. I’m past caring.

Just trying to write an article for work. For God’s sake, it’s no wonder I can’t get a poem out at the moment. I can’t even order basic thoughts into a comprehensible paragraph. Bloody hormones.

My son’s year 10 weekend homework schedule includes Forests under threat (Geog) Festivals and fairgrounds should be banned (Eng) Nuclear extension! (Physics) and best of all… Plague homework (Hist) Wow, just as well teenagers aren’t prone to depression.

Wow so it seems most of my office has gone down with Covid in a very short time. Seems mild (for Covid) but SUPER transmissible at the moment.

In a historic day for Britain, Starmer absolutely crushed Trump with his Rock Paper Scissors game. “Take that, cheeseface,” he cried, as he whipped out the killer flat hand. WHAT A PLAYER. Rule Britannia.

What a lovely [email protected] used my poem Things That Taste Chickeny as a prompt on Instagram today. She also says she often comes back to this poem, which is an amazing & humbling thing to hear. She does a prompt every day, so give her a follow! www.instagram.com/reel/DOtZKc9...

I used to sneer at Americans calling maths “math” until I realised that we don’t call gym “gyms”.

Me: But what are you going to DO with that conker, Nina? Brain: SHIIIIINEEEEEY

It would be nice to find time to write some poetry, she said, with a steering wheel attached to her palm and a feather duster coming out of her arse.

I can’t decide which is my life’s greatest work: my poetry or this single formula I made in Excel today. It’s. So. Beautiful. 🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓

My 11 year old son really does take nonchalance to a whole new level.

Poets! I don’t need to ask permission for a line from a poem used as an epigraph do I? That’s reasonable use, right?

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Our wonderful featured guests @bethbpoet.bsky.social and @xenonlobster.bsky.social reading for our Stanza this afternoon. Thank you so much, Beth and Gordon! What a stimulating start to our autumn programme!

Sending a poem out again after six rejections is not something I do very often, and it makes me feel a bit like one of those disillusioned parents that you see on Simon Cowell talent shows. Sorry not sorry though. It's true love with this one. CUE VIOLINS.

Such poets! Join us for a moment of words this #LastSaturday in August - free on Zoom from 7.00pm until just after 8.00pm. Don't miss! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/last-satur...

We have a treat for Trowbridge Stanza’s September Poetry event on the afternoon of Sat 6th September, with readings and Q&A by two wonderful poets, Beth Brooke and Gordon Vells, All are welcome and we’re right by Trowbridge station so please come down and join us! open.substack.com/pub/trowbrid...

Bristol friends, Shearsman book fans, come to East Bristol Books 18 September to hear not me (well, me, too) but the splendid Frances Presley and Andrew Duncan. I have such admiration for them both. Share? www.headfirstbristol.co.uk/whats-on/eas...

Just trying to search for my Dad on WhatsApp and some absolute certifiable weirdo butts in 🙄 🙄 🙄

My children are 14 and 11. They are not different species. 😂

Perfect Saturday night. Except for the hooligan.

When you’re wandering around casually snacking on a chipolata, and you sense a disturbance in the force behind you.

Wishing the facial recognition age verification bot would be a bit more like

Wow, I have an “after” poem! And it’s a cracker 😊 🐝

For the moment, my love of poetry seems to have disappeared, probably to Wherever The Hell My Oestrogen Went. Would be grateful for reports of sightings. Of either.

So so pleased for the Lionesses. Probably would have hated them at school though 😂

Delighted that my local Odeon cinema has modernised with fast-food-style popcorn ordering screens, doubling the time it takes to get your snax without reducing staff headcount. Genius. PS If you’re wondering wherever to go Fantastic Four or Superman, go Fantastic Four. Good film.

I feel like someone needs to start a page where you can post cute things you overhear hoodie teenagers saying. In Tesco Express: “I don’t even know what I WANT, man. [pauses by fridge] Oh yeah, I haven’t had my DAILY MILK. I need my MILK, innit.”

FFS just hoovered the whole of my son’s room with just the foot of the Henry Hoover. “Hmm, this isn’t very sucky today,” I was thinking. “Maybe the bag needs changing.” DON’T TRUST ME WITH ANYTHING.

That feeling when you find a poem you wrote a while ago, and you’re not exactly sure what you were trying to say, but, enjoying the mystery of that, you keep it just as it is.

Show: Dedicates much of its last ever episode to tear-jerking cameos by characters who we last saw over 1000 sleeps ago. Me:

Ha, I loved our open mic of poems what we didn’t write at stanza today! I read a super weird poem which was met with stunned silence, a genuine reaction which I loved!! Don’t worry, I atoned by also reading Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf by Roald Dahl :-)

For a thing, I’m trying to find some poems of mine which are “inherently hopeful”. I was struggling til I turned to my work from a few years ago. Even though I was writing a lot about fear and uncertainty, there is still plenty of hope in the poems. My recent work has a darker tinge. Wonder why. 😔

Just had a tepid shower and I can safely say it was the highlight of my day.

Man I love the summer. 😰 Woke up drenched in sweat with a massive tick bite on my leg. It bit me right where I apply my oestrogen gel, so I hope it passed out from all the ethanol and woke up with boobs. Meh.

HRT dreams are wild. In 2 nights I have - Been to an alien planet where everyone believed that nobody else was real - Stood in a room full of terds - Had a disastrous 2nd wedding - invented a new form of rugby And I’m expected to just get on with my day after all this, I suppose 😰

Here on the Somerset border, it’s that time of year when we look up to the skies fifty times a day and wonder, “Is that chopper for a medical emergency? Or is it Busta Rhymes on his way to the Park Stage?”

I am reading Jeremy Renner’s memoir about being run over by a snow plough. Curiosity overcame me. Am I a bad person for speed reading through all the tedious “everything happens for a reason” and “we are all connected to the same energy” nonsense so I can get to the gory medical details? 😬 😬 😇

Things that make me long for a cure for coeliac disease: 1. Massive anxiety about travel (Can’t even begin to explain how tricky it is) 2. Anxiety about socialising (cos it almost always involves food) 3. Gluten free pastries!! 😭 😭 Which look so promising but are actually dry packages of sadness.

Stanza bonanza klaxon 🚨 Trowbridge and Bath stanzas joined for a wonderful open mic at the Royal Sciebtific and Literary Institute yesterday afternoon. Poems, tea, posh biscuits, and turns standing in front of the Big Fan.🥵 Thank you so much for having us ❤️

Today’s prayer to the Oestrogen Goddesses as I rub their magical unguent into my mid to inner thighs: “Please Goddesses, give me even an ounce of motivation, that I might raise myself from my tired and forgetful arse and do even a quarter of the things I need & want to do. Blessed be the Gel. Amen.”

Women who have abortions in England will no longer be prosecuted and it’s not even in the news. However, I’m celebrating it with this big gorgeous sunny daisy.

Not disputing that it’s good that we have a woman in charge of MI6 now, but if it were a man, would the BBC feel the need to conduct an interview with an “expert” to confirm that she “definitely has the skills and experience needed for the job”? 🙄

Ooh so after many abortive experiments with various snore-stopping things, I am doing well with 2 cheap anti-snore pillows from the middle aisle at Aldi and fasting after dinner. Not perfect but better! I seem to have a bit of energy? And some actual drive? And my husband hasn’t murdered me?

The ticks this year! It’s CRAWLING out there! Aggghh! 🕷️ 🕷️

GOD LOVE the wonderful Frome Festival people who were helping me get my entry in for the Crysse Morrison Memorial Competition last night at 11pm on deadline day when the website wasn’t working! Gorgeous humans. ❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜

When the robots are building the bomb to destroy the whole planet, could it put the Google AI in charge of weighing out the ingredients please.

If Kandinsky made sandwiches