As a young teenager, I begged my parents to buy me the Magic-8 ball. You could ask the ball yes-no questions, and then, when you turned it upside down, one of 20 possible answers would float up against the small plastic window – ‘Signs point to yes’, ‘My reply is no’, ‘Better not tell you […]
I love a good – or even middling – horror about an epidemic. I’ve sat through Outbreak, 28 Days Later, Train to Busan and Cordon, to mention just a few, along with the more humorous ones such as Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead, stuffing crisps and chocolate in my mouth while enjoying a pleasurable […]
When my first daughter was a year old, we visited friends and heard about their plans to leave their son with their parents for a weekend, so that they could go away alone together. I couldn’t understand them – we loved going on holiday with our little one! Years on, and a child further, I […]
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I– I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost This quote perfectly illustrates how I feel about making important decisions. I stand at a junction, and the path I take will have a radical effect […]
At the end of a workshop to kick off a new project, I sat in the cosy brickwork cellar of a trendy restaurant with a group of colleagues. As my children’s bedtime approached, I quickly whipped out my Nokia 6021 phone to send a good night message. While busy, I noticed the researcher next to […]
Lying on my desk is an item that is completely out of pace with the modern digital age – my address book. It is the same one I have had since I was a teenager. The spine is broken and the paper has come off the front cover, showing the thick cardboard underneath. Written on […]
The Christmas season is full of traditions, and they were particularly strong in my childhood home. Every evening during Advent, we read part of ‘A Christmas Carol’, timing it to finish on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve itself, we ate traditional Finnish food – roast ham, swede, carrot and potato ‘boxes’, and rice pudding. We […]
In the past, I did always think that Christmas was the most wonderful time of the year – and to pile on the clichés, I also wished it could be Christmas every day. Not surprising, really, given how magical Christmas was at my house when I was a child. Candle arches lighting up the windows, […]
This was my Easter egg competition entry, age 8. Next to this photo in my album, it says, ‘My Easter rabbit-egg – made by me’. I didn’t write those words – and I didn’t make the ‘Easter rabbit-egg’. It was my mother’s idea, and she was also responsible for most of the execution. I did […]
In the 1993 film ‘Cool Runnings’, a group of underdogs is striving hard to win a gold medal at bobsledding. On the evening before the crucial Olympic run, the team driver asks their coach why he once cheated, even though he already had two gold medals. The coach replies, “A gold medal is a wonderful […]