I don’t know if I was ever proud to be British — but for a long time, I was grateful.

Our sense of patriotism is much less overt than our American cousin’s (I’ve never once formally Pledged my Allegiance), but a not-so-subtle sense of superiority was bred into us from a young age.

At school, we‘re taught about Nazis and Soviets — warmongering fascists who committed endless atrocities, often against their own people. We learned about countries like China, one-party dictatorships without a free press or open Internet access.

By contrast, we in Britain — in the West in general…

On the night of March 3rd 2021, 33-year old Sarah Everard disappeared whilst walking home from a friend’s house in south London. Nine days later, her remains were formally identified, found discarded in a woodland area 60 miles away.

The police have now charged a man — a metropolitan police officer no less — with her kidnap and murder.

As a woman of similar age, who used to live in the same area, Sarah’s story struck a dark chord with me — and I’m not the only one.

Since her disappearance, women in London and beyond have spoken out about…

Life is full of strange synchronicities.

A couple of years ago, I made a short documentary about a-little known Doomsday cult that formed in the wake of WWI and the Spanish Flu pandemic. It was a bizarre story, featuring a female messiah with divine healing powers, and a frantic mission to open a sealed box of prophecies.

All of this took place in a small market town in the East of England, where Jesus himself was expected to make an imminent arrival.

Fast-forward to 2020, and I’m living through a global pandemic of my own. I’m also dealing with the…

There comes a point where you have to admit defeat. Gone was the self-confident woman who had travelled the world by herself — the vibrant, curious human who attacked life with all five senses. In her place was a stranger. An echo. An epitaph.

Anxiety had won.

My partner’s words were the final blow: ‘you’re not the woman I fell in love with anymore’.

To be fair, I wasn’t.

The ‘new me’ was deathly afraid of everything — and I mean everything. Dying, going insane, food contamination, my mum falling down the stairs, the moon (a glowing space rock was…

I have a confession to make: I spent £175 on essential oils and accessories this week. I feel good about this decision, although my partner— who shares a bank account with me — does not.

Right now you may be lowkey judging me— and I get it. Essentials oils have a bad rep. At best, they’re expensive bottles of nice smelling liquids. At worst, they’re quackery of the highest order. They conjure images of wannabe saleswomen trying to shift dodgy oils on Facebook, shamelessly claiming they’ll cure your Aunt Pam’s cancer or little Johnny’s autism.

That was my impression, at…

“So, what do you do for a living?”

I can’t begin to describe how much I used to hate people asking me that question. I’d smile and stall, internally wishing I was an accountant (or something similarly straightforward).

Truth is, the answer has never been fixed. Over the past few years, I’ve been a writer, documentary filmmaker, and co-founder of two unrelated software startups. Even within those things, I’ve worn a lot of hats.

In the interest of saving time, I’d normally settle on: “I’m something of a Jack of all trades.” …

For a long time, my LinkedIn headline and Twitter profile had me down as a ‘female founder’. I’ll be honest, the decision to adopt that label was mostly inspired by the fact that many female business leaders did the same. I was a woman, and I was an entrepreneur, and the alliteration sounded punchy. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time — but it was.

I was making a statement (and hadn’t fully thought it through).

As something of a Jill-of-all-trades, I juggle multiple labels regarding what it is that I ‘do’. I’m also a writer, documentary…

Somehow, I’ve managed to make it to nearly 30 years old without my eyes turning square. This has come as something of a shock, given my parents’ (casually traumatising) warning that this would happen if I spent too much time glued to a screen — which I definitely have.

Studies show that the average adult will spend 34 years of their lives staring at screens — that’s nearly 5,000 hours a year looking at phones, laptops or televisions. Whilst it’s pretty shocking when spelled out that way, it’s not really surprising. We live a digitally mediated existence, where everything from…