Jeni Barnett

1976 was the hottest summer on record. 35 degrees and counting. I was working at the Leeds Playhouse rehearsing ‘England Expects’ a show that ‘Belt and Braces’, our theatre group, was relaunching. Six years earlier I was at a Children’s Theatre Festival in Harrogate. My first job, enthusiastic, eager and single. I saw an actor … Read more

On May 9th Marie Bernadette Maher would have been 72. We met in Hampstead in 1969. She from the Wirral me from London. We went to the Wimpy Bar in Golders Green and talked through the night. She puffing on a small cheroot and me mesmerised by her sophistication. She was a strawberry/reddish blonde, drove … Read more

‘A fire on them.’ ‘I wouldn’t give him the snot out of my nose.’ Two choice phrases from my well educated mother. She got a scholarship to Raines’ girls school in the East End of London. I still have her gym slip and cloth badge. She was well clever my muvver, but like a lot … Read more

Every body has an opinion. Everybody knows someone who has it. Everybody is doing what they can in their own way. Everybody is living their best Sunday. Unless you’re not. Unless you haven’t got food, or neighbours, or the wherewithal, or the imagination, or the support, or family or friends or youth or the internet … Read more

The towels have been in a 60 degree cycle and are now blowing about on the washing line. Magnolia petals are strewn over the lawn, and the newly laid grass seed has been eaten by the little birds pecking away at it. A box of vegan cheeses have arrived, a packet of wire wool and … Read more

My heart is breaking for the lad, who opened a bar in Peckham, put every penny he had into it and then Boom. My heart is breaking for the girl, who taught dance to disadvantaged kids in Rome, saved all her pennies to buy a ticket and then Boom. My heart breaks for the shy … Read more

It was International Woman’s Day today so I fulfilled my duties as a woman in as International a way as possible. I phoned Boston and Saratoga, Chatham and Hackney, Devon and Wales and even pinged a text to Togo. I think that’s pretty International dont you? Having lived with the old git for forty three … Read more

Hyacinths and daffodils have taken over the kitchen table. Outside crocuses, primroses and hellebores have bust their buds in honour of spring even though the garden still looks like Le Mans, the Suki dog’s legacy. I await the carpet man. We have had a new bathroom carpet laid, but being an old age pensioner with … Read more

Last week the wind ripped the bark off the eucalyptus tree and sent it flying all over the garden. A vase blew off the woodshed and shattered into tiny pieces. A trampoline blew onto the railway line between Orpington and Sevenoaks and Waitrose was empty save for me and a few other souls who were … Read more