#10 The month of May is the gateway to summer

water buses + London legs + fat balls for the birds

👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hi! If you’re new to these parts, the short version is this: I’ve worked for myself for a long time, writing 15 (!) books, largely done from home. It sent me a bit doolally, being alone that much and also working within an industry that hasn’t always treated me kindly. That’s why I started writing How to Build a Life, now delivered to thousands of readers in over 80 countries. I’d been desperate to unpick why I seemingly had a dream career but life in general felt so underwhelming. I figured out that my brain likes writing but my soul needs something else, so at the start of this year - in addition to still writing my novels - I took a job in a high school mixing teaching and pastoral work. In one million ways this makes no sense at all, apart from the fact that working out of the house with teenagers is making me really very happy. I’m almost 40, a solo parent by choice, and knowing all this means you’re all caught up. WELCOME.

Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards is my free-to-read monthly round-up. So here we go: this was my May, and what I’m looking forward to in June :)

Looking backwards…

As I type this, I’m in a jumper and woolly socks and it’s very overcast outside, very please, by all means, make this the TV day of half term. We just got back from a long weekend in London last night, and the agenda definitely calls for some vegetables, some hydration, and a little bit of going slowly. The details of other people’s trips are always boring, either because you don’t care what they did on vacation or else you wish you, yourself, had had the vacation and are thus overcome with envy. With that in mind I’ll keep it light on the details. We did some nice things though! Maybe you could do some of these when you next leave the lowercase letters and go to the CAPITAL (that’s my kid’s joke. He’s very proud of it.).

went for croissants in my PJ’s and brother’s jacket, TED, war museum, planes!, me as an old woman, science museum, Mr Rogers, tote bags as a motherhood staple, tickets to Wonderlab

Despite having a friends and family discount rail pass thingy, whenever we want to go to London, specifically, the trains are always cancelled for works and so lately we’ve always ended up driving. No notes for the Sunday morning speed down the motorway though, it was so quiet we half-wondered if the world had ended overnight but somehow we had been spared?? We made it in record time and headed straight out to the park because the new play area has been officially opened and we had to go see about THAT. Obviously lunch was at Pizza Union, because it’s cheap and it is GOOD, and then we got an Uber BOAT (!!!) from Embankment to Battersea Power Station. Glorious day, amazing hanging off the back and getting sprayed by the Thames, everyone loved it.

If you don’t know, Battersea Power Station is an iconic London landmark, a decommissioned coal-fired power station that is now… a shopping mall. But a great one! All the best shops without the Westfield crowds (yet), and the vibe is very DUMBO. Like, somebody obviously expensed a lot of trips to Brooklyn as “research”, but we shouldn’t be mad about it. They did good. It kind of feels like a place where you’d be mad your friend is having a “Padel Party” for their joint 42nd with a colleague you’ve never met from their work, but then you go and end up playing, then sitting out by the water, and then having a drink, and then being absolutely rat-arsed and laughing harder than you ever have as you run for the last boat home at 9pm.

Anyway, we went up Lift 109, to go see the 360-degree view of London. We liked it! Learning all the history was cool and it was a small group, handled really well, and had interactive stuff too so nobody (i.e. my kid) got bored. The view is nice, but I feel like if you don’t know London well why would you care where Wimbledon is, or the Royal Albert Hall?? I can’t speak to that, I can only speak to the fact that I pointed out MI6 to my kid and he was like, ‘Wait, spies are actually real? Not for just for TV?’ and I died, was like my dude, let me talk to you about spies forevermore because it is LEGIT! Everybody got something out of that day, as you can tell.

MAY 2025: sheeps, daily collagen smoothie, always feel good in a baggy shirt and jeans, hiking, the birds have been!!!!, burger and pizza date with my boy, burger date alone, TAYLOR, surprisingly good protein coffee from Aldi

Right. Well. For somebody going light on the details it’s pretty baffling that I’m only at the late afternoon of day one, isn’t it? Still, we press on. You’re here now.

On the Sunday we headed out ostensibly for the Transport Museum, but when we got there there’d been an UNPRECEDENTED, UNFORESEEABLE, and UNCONTROLLABLE event that meant it was closed and our ticket wasn’t valid. Womp! But, let the record show that this mama is particularly good at pivoting, at coming up with other solutions and making! it! seem! fun! so my kid and brother mooched around the gift shop and I Googled furiously. There were no spots left for the British Museum, and my bro didn’t fancy the HMS Belfast (my kid saw it when we queued at Embankment for the water bus, and is pretty fascinated by the idea of the army of the sea, of what the Navy does), but what came up was… The Imperial War Museum. YOU GUYS! It’s so hidden away, in this random part of Lambeth, south of the river, and I feel like nobody has ever mentioned this museum to me ever in the history of my life, and after going now I am like WHY! IT IS SO SO GOOD! I was absolutely blown away! We sat and had tea and cake on arrival, to get our energy back, and then spent a good three hours in the exhibits, and again: nobody was bored. I’m so glad it exists! My kid knows a bit about the world wars, and about the Holocaust, so he was invested, and I will absolutely bring him back again and again throughout his schooling life, as he gets more context for it all. But yeah, man, this is my biggest discovery of late: the world’s leading war museum. And it was free!!

sometimes still cold enough for a sitting suit, holding hands, dressed like a painter, actually am painting, my rhododendrons, views from the top, loveliness, had three of these, my chicken was too spicy

When we got home that night I took the dog for a walk at the park, and let him off his lead, and then he ran out of the park and across a road and I thought I was going to have to tell my brother he was dead, so that was awful. I am never letting Ted off his lead again. On our last day my brother went to work and my kid and I went to the Science museum as a duo, which was lovely. I love that with kids the journey is as fun as the destination in London, the combo of overground, underground, buses and occasional water taxis meaning stepping out of the front door is an adventure. My brother calls the step count of living in the city “London Legs”, so my kid and I had to shout ‘LONDON LEGS, ACTIVATE!’ every time we needed to pound the pavement - we clocked up five miles a day to be fair. The Science Museum is free but we ended up paying for the WonderLab, which was 100% worth it - my kid went nuts at how interactive it all was, as did every other kid in there, and we could easy have spent more then the two hours in there that we did but we were hungry and hadn’t packed lunch so we left for one last pizza and salad at Pizza Union, because who cares, pizza rocks. Then we drove home and got a flat and had to call a man called Solly to come and fix it with his van, but not before I called my dad because even at 39-years old, when something happens with my car… I call dad.

kid made soup!, great read, me and my bag of cakes for school, getting new headshots, last day of term, london rooftops, pizza union always, out on the water, birthday gifts 💙

All in we had a lovely half term trip that marked a nice breather between a very short half term at school, and this last almost-8-week-push before summer break. I’m proud of us!

Other things this past month brought me: yes, I turned 39, and it was a truly lovely day. I made a cake for home, and two cakes for school: one to share with my form of 12-and-13 year olds in the morning, and one at break time, in the office of the library, for my colleagues. Everyone said, ‘Why didn’t you tell us it was your birthday!’ and I said, ‘Because I didn’t want a fuss!’ but then every single person I passed that day I said, it’s my birthday! to so they’d wish me well. I went to CrossFit that night and worked on (get this!!) HANDSTAND PUSH-UPS (!!) and then went to get my kid from my parents’ house and they had balloons up and mum had made lasagna and we had Costa lemon muffins for pudding. Low-key, and very nice.

I got an abundance of plants for my special day, arriving throughout May, so I am now the kinda person who gets up at 5am to go check her delphiniums. The birds have finally discovered the feeding table, which feels as big an achievement as just about anything I’ve done in my life, and what else? Oh, I’ve stared to have a collagen smoothie every morning: two scoops collagen, a 200g tub of greek yogurt, a bit of water and a scoop of M&S or Morrision’s smoothie mix. Bish, bash, bosh! It’s almost 30g of protein, and then I’ve discovered Aldi’s protein coffee (90p each!) and so by 11am I’ve had 50g of protein with two easy wins. As long as I have meat at lunch and eggs at dinner, I’m sailing past my target of 100g a day. Need to work on upping my fibre next. One thing at a time. I am only human.

This month I wrote about: the garden hose // how a single mum working 50 hours a week manages her time (it’s me, I’m the mum) // not sure if I’ve mentioned it but I do CrossFit now // a working life maybe-I-am-having-a-career-change update // doing stuff alone // words for when you’re stuck // everything I wore in May (okay not everything, but like, a lot of it)

Looking forwards…

And so to June. Since Easter I can feel myself slowing down, enjoying the outside, letting bedtime creep up a bit later, staying up longer, just… being. I look forward to several more months of that. Summer has made me quite sad these past few years. I think parenthood is so busy, so overwhelming, so relentless, that this encouragement to somehow MAKE MEMORIES feels insulting when I’m just trying to get through a day, doesn’t matter if it’s spring, summer, autumn or winter. But my kid is older now, and my spirit feels more open since starting my career change. Psychically - spiritually!! - I have room to accept the invitation to exhale, to be where I am. I do not take that for granted, not one bit. It’s important to me to pay attention to it whilst the state is here, because lord knows it is all fleeting, it is all so ephemeral, like catching falling snow, trying to grip tight, finding that all that’s left is the water in your palm. But at least the wetness says I tried, I paid attention, that it was beautiful, whilst it lasted.

May your June be similarly full in the admiring of right now,

Laura x