Turns out this photo is a fake, by the way... Even though if it did fool the folks at Forbes magazine, but... that's OK. It says what I want to say, AI or not. It's a picture that "shows" French farmers protesting in Paris. They are there, by the way - as I type - with tractors and trailers, and even sheep , lining the grand Avenues and Boulevards of the Nations capital, hosing down Government buildings with the occasional muck-spreader. When French farmers are unhappy, they

Way before "stories = letters forming words", they would be carried from the mouths of our elders to the eager ears of a younger generation of listeners. Tales of fire and creation - of seas, lakes and mountains. The wonderful animations around the family tree of all things starry and celestial. These ancient tales were not fixed things, back then. There were no documented points of reference, or scrolls unfurled in proclamation. The stories moved from firelight to shadow, a

"Did you have a good Christmas and New Year?".. I mean, that is about as soft, low risk enquiry as we could possibly be asked at this time of year. It's almost so seasonal, that we could wear it as a sign around our necks so we can avoid even saying the actual words.. It's a verbal handshake. No sharp edges. Not a trick question. At all. "Yes, thanks..we didn't do much; long, lovely dog walks, too much to eat and some catch-ups with a few dear friends... You?".. The answer is

Somewhere around the two-week mark, January starts to itch. The pristine list of resolutions is still magnet-fast on the door of our fridge, exactly as we wrote it. The intentions are still there, yet you perhaps suspect that enthusisam might be trying to call a cab. New Year confidence - " this time will be different" - has been replaced by something more familiar: realism. This is the turnback point - when going home to get your phone is more of a pain than going shoppin

I used to love that day in school, when we were given a brand new writing book. It was a thing of mint, undefiled beauty - filling us with a quiet, focused determination to write really nicely. To do really well. I mean, OK, we were easily pleased back then, but there was still an undeniable thrill which - to this day - draws me helplessly to the pen and ink of the stationery shop. New books, new beginnings, New Years. They are all versions of a familiar and robust re-set. T

Truffles have been around since the Pharaos were in short pants. Quite why the first sandal kicked the first truffle, prompting its wearer to bend down and take a mouthful, is another story altogether. But we have been loving them ever since... King Francis I of France (let's hope he didn’t endure the challenges of rhotacism) was the first noble notable to put truffles on the royal platter. His truffly gusto was duly noted by the brilliant lawyer-turned-chef, Jean Brillat-Sav

I have always thought of exhaustion as a physical thing. The outer limit of fatigue. An elevated, adult sense of tiredness that comes from our own sense of just doing too much. It's personal, of course, because we each have our own sliding scale of feeling "sapped", which varies with age, fitness and foibles. But let's take a minute to look at exhaustion through a different lens. As a cause rather than an effect - the result of something much deeper than that old chestnut

It’s the last month of the year — a season of celebrations and festivities designed to brighten the darker days. But what is December, really? Dec-  once meant the tenth month until calendars were reshaped to suit emperors, systems, farmers, and politics. Even the moon keeps its own measure of thirteen lunar cycles, reminding us that time is elastic more often than we gather. This certainly isn’t a lesson about timekeeping, but a gentle question about how we spend the time we

December is often called the month of giving — wrapped boxes, warm gestures, small surprises left on doorsteps. But for every act of giving, there is an act of receiving. And strangely, that’s the part many of us find to be the harder of the two to do with grace. We all know the feeling...

Vanessa and I are currently in the quiet throws of the annual gift search. For us, being in the beautiful depths of rural France, it is all about Amazon. Most of our pressies are UK bound anyway, and life is easier, cheaper and so much more convenient without the need to manage postal deadlines or their astronimical, associated costs.

There is a particular kind of pressure that arrives every December, almost as predictable as the myriad lights and endless lists. That little "gift" that slips quietly into our thoughts before we’ve even noticed its pre-paid weight. " This year, it has to feel magical. This year, I'll get a real tree. A big one. This year, I’ll get it right..."

A year-end inventory around who I’m keeping, who I’m releasing, and why clarity is a kind form of courage. "Well that's not very " Happy New Year of you"... No, perhaps not. But we are only a fortnight from 2026, and our New Years resolutions - the biggest, most bombastic, annual re-set tale we tell oursleves. People talk a lot about New Year, New Me - but the truth is, these delusional decisions don't generally fall into the silo of "real change". Resolutions are more-than

Christmas...the great revealer of who people really are. There is something about the holidays where grinches and gaslighters find their normal camouflage difficult to don. Perhaps because the festive season is ostensibly about the core values of love, tradition and unadulterated joy, toxic personality types in particular, find themselves sorely lacking the opportunity to grab the kind of attention, admiration and entitlement they so desperately crave.

Soulstice Immersions are two-week, women-only experiences, designed to help us come home to ourselves - through courage, creativity and connection. The quiet clarity that emerges when life finally gives us space to breathe.

France is famous the world over for its attention to mealtime detail. None more so than the Christmas Eve celebration of “Le Réveillon de Noël”.

Once a simple word for a regular townsfellow, the term " bourgeois" has travelled through centuries of revolution, ridicule, and refinement. Its journey from common noun to common mirror, reflects our own uneasy juggle with progress and social aspiration. It is neither really a word of belonging, but perhaps more one that suggests "becoming". The hapless work of the sausage roll that wants to be a "Pork Wellington"...

Generally, the French go at Christmas less hard than elsewhere it is celebrated. They don't post a shopping day countdown, or fall out of bars wearing reindeer horns from mid-November. France (mercifully) lacks the pub culture that brings the English "together". Nor, might I add, do they have TV programs of a necessary standard to keep people at home on the sofa. I cannot think of a single French TV show, where a Christmas Special wouldn't be acutely painful.

Every year, I hear someone say "It just keeps getting earlier "... referencing the sudden appearance of Christmas in late September. Like it matters. For me, any season that is associated with joy, giving and connection to loved ones can start its shift as early as it damn well pleases. Many do not share my view here and I fully respect that. For some, the hoildays are strongly linked to sadness, stress, depression and anxiety, for which I am profoundly sorry. That must suck.

A note on some feelings which recently surfaced, when Vanessa and I ran into a couple we hadn't seen for a while, and what began as a pleasant enough conversational exchange, soon had us on the back foot, in a sort of panicked display of what can only be described as "anxious over-explaining". It was very aparent that this was a central tenet to our personal sense of being in the right place.

French supermarkets at Christmas-time are irresistibly mesmerising. Perhaps it’s the seasonal theatre of it all - quarries of oysters; gentlemanly rows of sincere-looking Champagnes, serious wines that require a quick chat before being chosen. Stockpiles of chocolate logs arranged like artillary ordanance. Or maybe it’s simply the Star Wars scale of the Hypermarché itself, which in December feels less like a shop and more like an obstacle course in Oz. "It's ok, I've got thi