The way I say ‘class’ tells you mine. I am a working class hero. The easiest answer to anyone who asks me why I often write about class is that it’s just who I am – my class is the heart of me. My background shaped my opinions and my nature. It’s what I sound like and look like and identify as. But you could point out, ‘Yeah, but you now live in Crouch End down that there London. You left your hometown of Coalville (a now defunct pit town, rather than a metaphor like Coketown in Dickens’ Hard Times ) decades ago. You have a Smeg fridge. I do. It still makes me laugh. I’m immature as well as common. I was the first in my family to have a flash fridge, the first to have a washing machine, the first to go to University, the first to have a credit card, and the first to date a lord. (I felt like a different species. I couldn’t get my head round how someone didn...
I’ve never grown up. I have never put away childish things. I am deeply immature. These are things I celebrate. They allow me to play. They allow me to be creative. And I have never needed that silliness more than I do now. I have aged at least a decade since You Know What* confined my life to a shadow of its former self. The irony was that this was the year when I’d promised myself that I’d get back out there after several years forsaking a social life in order to do my Creative Writing MA and work to support that —writing and teaching my fitness classes and 'beasting' my personal training clients who had day jobs. I’m no spring chicken. I also have chronic asthma, so, even though I’m much fitter than many my age, I’ve been told by my GP to be very cautious and advised by the government to shield. So, I rarely leave the flat. When I go for a walk, the number of people I see on London streets ignoring the rules freaks me out and makes my chest tighten ...
Fifteen years ago, I was medically overweight, and now I’m not. I lost two-and-a-half stone and I’ve kept the weight off ever since, thanks to that miracle cure of eating a bit less and moving a bit more. (It really is that simple and that difficult.) My current body, older and creakier though it is, feels more like me than the younger but chubbier body ever did. But there was a time – quite a long time in fact – after I lost that weight, when I didn’t quite believe I could get into a size 10 or 12 and shopping was— confusing. My hipbones felt weird. I wasn’t too sure of my perimeters. (Note, I didn’t say boundaries, as I’ve never been very sure about them.) I felt more vulnerable. A bit more naked, somehow. That’s what it’s been like for me becoming (cue trumpets and bunting) A PUBLISHED AUTHOR! Authors, to me, are mythical beasts. P...
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