Learning to Fly

Becoming a parent has to be one of the most transformative experiences ever. It is like a major system upgrade that you drowsily accepted one night when it popped up on the screen of your cell, without bothering to read the fine print (does anyone ever really?), only to be completely and utterly gobsmacked when your screen suddenly goes blank in the middle of a frantic search for a cab. You feel breathless, gasping like a fish out of water; a veritable Toto far far away from comforting, commonplace Kansas where the sun was golden and the roads ran straight and true. And in my case this was but a shadow of what my helpmeet was going through. I would like to say that I am an evolved and empathetic 21st century male who is brimming with concern and understanding for what women have to endure during parturition, but I just don't have the right gonads to fully understand what my wife went through when our daughter decided to shove her way out into the world and throw the her innards int...

It is at the fag end of a 5-day holiday that I have mustered up the energy and wherewithal to sit down and pen this piece. Hopefully this is the first of many, many more after a long, LONG time of somnolence that seems to have dulled my usually fecund thoughts. I still have the ambition to do something with my creative gifts, ill-treated as they have been in the last few years, so making this small start. Not the great novel that my 20-year old self dreamt feverishly about, but every journey begins (or resumes) with that first single step. And here is to hoping this is mine!  It would be very easy and convenient to put this hiatus in writing down to life and the myriad things that pull you in different directions and leave you barely any room to breathe, let alone sit down and compose coherent thoughts to blast off into the ether. I do have a demanding job which requires me to be constantly switched on (even in different time zones and states of health) and frankly takes a lot out ...