Jem's field notes

Despite my best intentions, it was inevitable that raising £20,000 to buy my ex out of our joint mortgage was an optimistic endeavour at best. Right from the beginning I had to factor in a more realistic plan: remortgaging the house for the value of the outstanding mortgage with our joint provider plus the £20k… read full entry »

Guess who failed Whole30 on the first day? It started well enough… fried eggs and garlic mushrooms for breakfast, no coffee. However, it turns out that a getting a Whole30 compliant lunch in a chain pub is virtually impossible, and even worse than that is feeling like a massive dick trying to abstain from basically… read full entry »

Today marks the last day of my nutritional freedom. I celebrated last night by eating a 2 course meal (extravagant) that was, ironically, whole30 compliant until I chucked a knob of butter on the veggies and washed it all down with a glass of wine. But really that says it all: my eating habits are… read full entry »

I’ve had a potentially absurd idea. I can’t remember what inspired it, but I’m pretty sure that I’m going to go ahead with it. I’ve decided that if I’m going to “fix” whatever is wrong with my mental health at the moment, that the best way to start is with a completely clean slate. By… read full entry »

I am currently sat in bed crying into my second glass of wine. Wine that I shouldn’t be drinking because I’m the sole carer for my children tonight, as with most nights, and if they wake up in the middle of the night with some sort of medical emergency I want to be competent enough… read full entry »

Back in October of last year (feels weird saying that; happy new year!) I told you about how I’d started lifting weights — and some other soppy shit about being in luuuurve — and how because of it (the weight lifting, not the love part) I’d managed to finally lose two dress sizes. Well, in… read full entry »

At this time of year I traditionally write a post about the year prior and come up with some arbitrary goals for the year ahead. I can’t be arsed this year because a) you’re all fed up of me moaning about last year as it is and b) I have enough shit to be worrying… read full entry »

I was going to write a long boring post today about all the shit that I’ve gone through this year. It’s a lot of shit. In the past few weeks alone I’ve felt the sting of death, twice, and helplessly watched my son crying out in fear and pain as a doctor manipulates his pudgy… read full entry »

A client recently asked me to make the post excerpts in their blog page clickable. This seems like a reasonable request and the logical answer (if you know your WordPress basics) is to open the relevant template file (probably index.php or home.php in this case) and wrap the_excerpt(); in <a href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>”.. (and so… read full entry »