“It was not the cold, clear voice of one giving advice and warning from serene heights to those who were struggling and sinning below, but the warm, living voice of one who was fighting for us and by our sides, and calling on us to help him and ourselves and one another”

Tom Brown’s School Days. Thomas Hughes

In the polarised world we live in, every action we take or decision we make is construed as a representation of the kind of person we are. Nowhere more so than on the question of masks. Social media have already split those who wear and those who refuse to comply, into tribes: if you don’t wear a mask you’re a Trump supporter or a Brexiteer or a “Covidiot” - someone who puts their personal liberty above the greater good. If you don one for every trip outside you’re following a herd mentality and are not questioning the rules - and in particular the personal inconvenience to you as an individual. Which camp are you in?

It’s that time of year when we look back at the highs and lows of the past 12 months with the intention of finding ways to do even better over the next - a heady mixture of nostalgia and optimism, achievement and potential, regret and hope

Am I alone in noticing that mid life women and our hormonal travails are trending right now? Those of us of a certain age are being digitally stalked by peddlers of articles, podcasts and the like, constantly reminding us of our changing bodies and telling us how we should experience them.

We’ve come a long way in how we think about mental health over the last few decades. It seems incredible that back in my childhood of the 1970s and 80s Victorian asylum-style institutions remained the primary treatment route for people with psychological problems

When it comes to women, a lot (or even a little) risks being too much.  The many paradoxes presented by the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s decision on how much testosterone maketh a woman, go to the heart of current confusion about gender and difference. In Caster Semenya’s case, the Court decided that despite her gender classification at birth and a life lived as a woman, her hormone levels relegate her to some kind of grey area of middle ground, effectively disqualifying her from competing against other women and threatening her career.

You can count the seconds from any mention of International Women’s Day until the first (usually white) male asks the question: “Why don’t we have an international men’s day?”

Statistics suggest that I am far from alone in finding day-to-day day life more of a struggle at this time of year.  Certainly, ideas for blogs are not tripping from my fingertips onto the keyboard and there is a bleakness to the days that goes beyond the weather.