Blog
On Mother’s Day These Things I Know
Last night was the Annual Dinner of the Channel Swimming & Piloting Federation. An auspicious affair held at Dover Town Hall at which last season’s swimmers are celebrated with ceremony. I was organising the raffle. I should have known things weren’t going to go...
The Hum
I like TED talks. They’re great for lunch – a break from work but not too long, and good for your philosophical advancement. Today I watched Shonda Rhimes ted-talking about her year of saying ‘yes to everything’. I have to say I didn’t actually know who she was but...
The Facebook Motherhood Challenge
Am I the only person in the world that is NOT offended by Facebook’s 'Motherhood Challenge' – the viral campaign that involves posting pictures of you and your beautiful children, before tagging other mothers and encouraging them to do the same? I know I should be....
You not Me
Right. Today I made a decision. I’ve got to stop writing so many blogs about ME: me and my new year’s resolutions; me and Kilimanjaro; me, me, me, me, me. There are far more important things happening in the world right now in relation to children and motherhood. Just...
2016
So we’re a week in. In fact, over a week. I’m going to spare you my full list of 2016 resolutions because it amounts to ten main ones with a supplementary list of a further five and I do like to try and keep my blogs tight. Besides I know there are some people who...
…this moment is your life
‘Be happy in this moment, for this moment is your life.’ I love this quote by the Persian mathematician and philosopher Omar Khayyam. And on Christmas eve, after six days of hard hiking, I said it to myself over and over again as I struggled to reach the summit of...
Mid-Magnitude
As soon as I’d swum the Channel I had several phonecalls and emails from people who know what happens next. After all that training and dreaming and training and dreaming when you finally do it, you slump. The people who knew this told me it was going to happen, that...
A Festival of Fertility in a Quiet House?
In my last blog I wrote about the Fertility Show and this week I want to tell you about a different kind of fertility show which is the centerpiece of a festival that I’m going to be involved in next year. It’s exciting – although an arts marketer I worked with a long...
The Fertility Show 2015
This blog is called The Fertility Show 2015 lest it get mixed up with my blog from the same moment last year which was called And Then I Cried. That was about The Fertility Show 2014. So here’s the thing. I almost didn’t agree to speak at The Fertility Show today...
Suffragette
One of the great things about not working is the cinema. Not that I’d want you to think I’m lazing about or anything but when you’re no longer a slave to the nine to five, you can go to the movies in the afternoon. On a weekday. I’ve seen the new Woody Allen. I’ve...
A New Life Starts Here
This week has been a question. A pleasantly strange one but a question nonetheless. When people ask me, what will I say I do? Last week I left my job at the Lyric Hammersmith: the best theatre in the world. It wasn’t just a job. For fourteen years it was my life. Last...
Standing On Her Brother’s Shoulders
Struggling to have a baby has shaped my life. So now has swimming the Channel. But today, I want to tell you about something else that has made me who I am which I’ve never written about before. On my eighteenth birthday, my best friend’s brother committed suicide. He...
17 Hours and 44 Minutes
For days I’ve been wondering what to write in my blog this week. It feels to me the world knows that I did it so some suspenseful build up about how I got into the water in the dark at 1.30am; was fine until hours three to six when I was so sick that I went off course...
The Wait
When I started my Channel Challenge I didn’t realise how many parallels there were going to be with going through IVF. Maybe if I did, I’d never have done it. There’s the physical and mental toughness of the training; there are all the things about succeeding that are...
Swimming Everest
So blog followers, with any luck you won’t have to read about the build up to my Channel swim much longer because next time I write it could be over. I say ‘could be’ because there are various variables that spectators of this sport should know. My swimming slot...
Test Tube Tales
When I got into bed on Wednesday night, I opened my laptop and saw that I had a new follower on twitter: Louise Brown, the world’s first IVF baby. Wow, I thought, sleepy-eyed, why would she want to follow me? Unlike Louise, my own test-tube tales are traumatic not...
Seven and Six
Forgive me for what is possibly going to be one of my shortest ever blogs. I have just completed the legendary ‘Seven and Six’ . The pinnacle of Channel swimming training, it involves swimming for seven hours on Saturday and going to sleep knowing you’ve got to get up...
The Angel of Peckham
The Angel of Peckham has fallen. Or so the newspapers said. On Friday, the news that Camila Batmanghelidjh – founder of the charity Kids Company which supports the most disadvantaged young people in the UK - was stepping down as Chief Executive hit the headlines. Over...
Fertility Education
About a year ago, I became a columnist for Fertility Road, one of the world's leading fertility magazines. It’s fun writing about stuff that interests me - a bit like writing a blog except, even better, you get paid! For the next issue’s column, I’ve written about...
An event you might like…
Don’t worry you haven’t lost a week in time. This is just a mini blog between my usual fortnightly instalments. I wanted to let you know, in case you’re free and fancy it, that on Monday 29th June we’re hosting an event at the theatre I run in London – the Lyric...
Jessica Hepburn
Jessica Hepburn is one of the UK’s leading voices on fertility and family, as well as endurance sport (even though she doesn’t have children and is the most unlikely athlete). She has become a pioneer in inspiring people to live as big and bravely as possible when life doesn’t go to plan.