Short and sweet at a glance, then the full course at your leisure — Short and Sweet She, her. Writer. Ex-doctor. Ex-Catholic. Ex-Muslim. So what? Writing personal essays, social and political commentary, novels, book reviews and god-knows-what-else. What life experience though? Born in England, grew up in the Caribbean. Medicine, sales, multi-level marketing, migration, depression, dyslexia, marriage, faith, faithlessness.

I was teaching him not to feel, perhaps because I hadn’t learned how to feel myself — My nineteen year old is in the back seat. We’re sailing down the motorway to the seaside city where he’ll be moving into University accomodation for the first time. And in place of the serious round-the-table family conversations we never got around to, I’m delivering little lectures to him from…

In conversation with the author of Mr Big — When I get there, Ty Batson’s already had a drink. He orders another from the Spanish speaking waitress and I join him at the open air table. ‘I hear you’re writing a sequel to Mr Big,’ I say. He admits it. …

Ideas for working backwards from follow the money, to Unfollow The Money — I hadn’t heard of Jackdaw, the project Barclays is financing, till I saw these four women in the photo, protesting outside of Barclays in Croydon. And I’ve been thinking about their protest ever since. Many people wouldn’t want to show up to a protest of four. It’s not big enough…

The Wrong Way To Wright explores what it means ‘to settle’ — Aya Daniels is a loner with a comfort-eating problem, a woman in debt, whose married expat boss wants to get under her dress. Her meddling aunt and mother think the solution to her problems is a man. …

To write memoir is to journey to a vulnerable place, to dare to excavate the self — On the bus I’m reading reviews of Ira Mathur’s Love The Dark Days. Her book is coming alive in my imagination, long before I’ve set eyes on my own copy. I accidentally leave my water bottle on the train, then flustered by one severely delayed bus, take another bus heading…

Seek, and you shall find — a moral question with no answer. — Warning: references to the act of abortion in this article may be disturbing to some readers. At my all-girls Catholic school in Trinidad, I don’t remember any of us thinking abortions were a good thing. If an older sister, cousin, or aunt had one, it would have been kept from…

Nutritionist Dr Megan Rossi’s Expert Advice, digested in 7 Bites. — First, Dr Megan Rossi wrote Eat More, Live Well. Then, The New Scientist invited Dr Rossi to speak at their Science of Eating Well event in London. And curious about what I might learn, I showed up — to the online stream of the live event — at my dining…

Policing without guns. — A few months ago I wrote this: Two Policemen Stop Two Women, and Right Away It’s Mild Inconvenience Vs Visceral Fear She might be late but her friend might be deadmedium.com One reader felt my article added nothing constructive to the conversations about policing and race in the United States, and worse, potentially did more harm than good. He explained himself in the comments.