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Welcome to Newsletter #161

A bunch of tales I wanted to share with you

A tale I read

Yoga For Cows by Liam McCormick

A tale I heard

Actor and writer Sally Phillips on the negativity she was met with when her son Olly, now 15, was diagnosed with Down's Syndrome:

"There were lots of moments during Olly’s babyhood where I would think to myself, ‘Wait a minute, I am not experiencing this as a disaster.’ But you are so bought into the narrative. All the pregnancy books refer to Down’s syndrome as a ‘defect’. All you get is this information that says ‘High incidence of leukemia, high incidence of deafness’ … It’s totally overwhelming and unhelpful.

I was told he would never ride a bike. He goes for a bike ride every day. I was told he would never be able to climb anything. Then we started having this problem where he would scale the back fence of the garden because he wanted to make friends with the neighbour’s children. None of the rest of us could scale that fence. The thing is, nobody knows what Down’s syndrome children can achieve."

A tale I saw

Frequent Flyer by Daniel Piper

A tale I wrote

Do you remember when sheep
didn't have kitchen knives for legs?
When their ears weren't vampire fangs.
When their noses were wet
from dew instead of blood.
When their soft, white fluff
wasn't tangled and matted with sentences
you didn't properly think about before building.
Do you remember when sheep
didn't jump over your mind, one by one,
with bones made from dead friends?

A tail I like

A book I wrote

My debut collection WHAT DOES A BABY THINK IT IS? officially launches today. It means a ruddy great deal to me and I'd love for you to read it.

If you'd like a copy, click here! Much love. x

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