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PlainTalkBadManners

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Published in

Rogues’ Gallery

·Pinned

Motorist Mayhem! How Many Stupid Things Can A Driver Do In A Day?

I’m sorry to say but I lost count — I’m at a traffic light and someone is blowing their horn. It doesn’t register that the noise might be anything to do with me. A police officer surprises me when he taps gently on my window. Hadn’t he been calmly doing a stop-and-search just behind me? I’m surprised. …

Driving

9 min read

Motorist Mayhem! How Many Stupid Things Can A Driver Do In A Day?
Motorist Mayhem! How Many Stupid Things Can A Driver Do In A Day?
Driving

9 min read


Pinned

Jammed Between the Train Doors

Because I couldn’t be separated from my daughter — We step out of the train and I notice her back pack is not on her back. ‘Where’s you bag?’ I ask her. She turns around. It’s not in her hands either. Realisation hits us both. ‘Quick, we need to go back!’ I say. Without hesitation, she dashes into the…

Parenting

4 min read

Jammed Between the Train Doors
Jammed Between the Train Doors
Parenting

4 min read


Published in

About Me Stories

·Pinned

About Me — Plain Talk Bad Manners

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.

About Me

8 min read

About Me — Plain Talk Bad Manners
About Me — Plain Talk Bad Manners
About Me

8 min read


Published in

The Riff

·Jan 3

A Tribute to a Loyal Servant of Kaiso: the late Black Stalin

‘Caribbean Man’ and ‘Black Man Feeling to Party’ will play as long as there’s a Caribbean man or woman alive — So, the Black Stalin died last week, three days after Christmas. And if in the 1980s, Roger Bonair-Agard hadn’t written a poem as a response to Stalin’s ‘Dorothy’ — a spoken word poem that he read and recorded for his Facebook friends in the wake of the great man’s passing…

Music

8 min read

A Tribute to a Loyal Servant of Kaiso: the late Black Stalin
A Tribute to a Loyal Servant of Kaiso: the late Black Stalin
Music

8 min read


Oct 14, 2022

The Hugs Not Given — or How Not To Say Goodbye to Your Son

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…

Parenting

8 min read

The Hugs Not Given — or How Not To Say Goodbye to Your Son
The Hugs Not Given — or How Not To Say Goodbye to Your Son
Parenting

8 min read


Aug 25, 2022

When Ty Batson Got Angry, Mr Big Came To Life

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. …

Author Interview

8 min read

When Ty Batson Got Angry, Mr Big Came To Life
When Ty Batson Got Angry, Mr Big Came To Life
Author Interview

8 min read


Published in

Climate Conscious

·Aug 21, 2022

Proposing A Re-think of Big Oil’s Profit Motive

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…

Climate Action

8 min read

Proposing A Re-think of Big Oil’s Profit Motive
Proposing A Re-think of Big Oil’s Profit Motive
Climate Action

8 min read


Published in

Write and Review

·Jul 22, 2022

Should A Woman Settle for a Load of Money, or Wait for Love?

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. …

Fiction

6 min read

Should A Woman Settle for a Load of Money, or Wait for Love?
Should A Woman Settle for a Load of Money, or Wait for Love?
Fiction

6 min read


Published in

The Book Cafe

·Jul 10, 2022

What Do We Build In The Ruins of Empire?

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…

Memoir

8 min read

What Do We Build in the Ruins of Empire?
What Do We Build in the Ruins of Empire?
Memoir

8 min read


Published in

Rogues’ Gallery

·May 10, 2022

I Grew Up Catholic — and I Believe in a Woman’s Right to Choose

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…

Abortion

12 min read

I Grew Up Catholic — and I Believe in a Woman’s Right To Choose
I Grew Up Catholic — and I Believe in a Woman’s Right To Choose
Abortion

12 min read

PlainTalkBadManners

PlainTalkBadManners

1.3K Followers

Ex-Doctor, Ex-Catholic, Ex-Muslim. Climate Worrier & Wannabe Climate Warrior. Novelist. Human. Label resistant. https://thefriendlyradicalnextdoor.substack.com/

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