We thought there would be some discussion around possible treatments. We thought there would be a light, no matter how scary. I cried all the way home.

I waited seven months to be triaged.

What comes next? I don’t know.

We are back to waiting, only this time we’re not really sure what we are waiting for. The physio will discuss my case with the consultant. Then what?

Is he going to decide what is best for me without having even met me?

The average waiting time to first appointment is now 21 weeks. When I was referred 32 weeks, ago, it was 11 weeks.

How long before treatment? The summer holidays are only 3 weeks away. How do I make it the special time it should be for my kids when I can’t do anything.

Do I have to get worse before anything will happen. Every time I see a medical professional they ask the same questions and warn me about Cauda Equina syndrome. Does it have to be a medical emergency, with the risks of permanent disability, before I will be treated?

If I give in to the pain masking treatments, will that simply disguise any worsening symptoms. Will I be unwittingly doing myself permanent harm.

Please don’t mistake this for criticism of the NHS or the people who work in it. The receptionists, secretaries, physios and GPs are all trying to help within the system they have. My frustration isn’t with them. It’s with the fact that a healthcare system that should be one of this country’s greatest achievements has been left struggling for so long.

Until next time,
Heidi – The Quirky Hippie 🍄

The first time I went to the GP I said to them that I absolutely didn’t want any codeine based pain killers, as when I had been prescribed them before I had become reliant and I didn’t want to go there again.

Guess what, I got prescribed codeine. Amongst other things. All of them had little effect on the pain, but completely fogged up my already foggy head, and left me unable to think as well as walk.

Frustration reigned. Chris couldn’t understand why when things would get really bad I would resist going back to the Dr. But I have been down this road before, and all they do is prescribe different pills, with consistently unpleasant side effects. I already take 3 different meds for my blood pressure. If I take the pain killers, they will be followed by all the other meds that are required to combat the side effects.

By November 2025 I was struggling to walk the 200 metres to take the kids to school.

Luckily my sister works in medical research and was able to arrange for me to have an MRI. From this we discovered that no, I wasn’t a malingerer, but that I have 2 herniated disks in my lower back. One of them severely protruding. Apparently the person who read the MRI commented to my sister on how much pain that must be causing.

I took my MRI to the GP on the 21st November. They said I would be referred to the orthopaedic team. The physio said I needed treatment and discharged me from physio.

4 weeks later I got a letter stating that I was on the waiting list. The waiting list was showing an average of 11 weeks before the first appointment. We avoided making any plans for Easter.

In late March having heard nothing more I checked the waiting times website, and found the average wait time for a first appointment at 19 weeks with 8 in 10 patients being within 31 weeks.

I was devastated. But I pulled myself together and phoned. I discovered that it is all automated and the lovely lady on the phone could do nothing more than tell me that I was still on the list, and that my case was not marked as urgent so I was looking at a long wait.

I went back to my GP, they told me they had referred me as urgent and they would write again.

A week later I called the hospital again, they still couldn’t tell me anything other than that I was still not urgent. They suggested I call the medical secretaries. They gave me the wrong number. I called every number I could find. On two of them I was able to leave a voice mail.

A very lovely lady called me back, said that she was the secretary for the hips and knees team, but she could tell me that it looked like the letter from my GP had been received, and the person I needed was on holiday and would be back on the following week.

Finally I spoke to the right medical secretary, who told me that the Dr had seen the letter and they had tried to mark my case as urgent but that the system hadn’t done it. She didn’t know why and would look into it.

On the 1st May I went back to my GP and they wrote to them again, on the 2nd May I received another letter from the hospital telling me I was on the waiting list.

On the 12th May I was given an appointment for the end of June, a week later I was notified that my appointment had been cancelled and rescheduled for the 1st July.

I was nervous about the appointment, I am terrified of the idea of surgery, but I am desperate to have some quality of life back. Chris was excited, not being the one faced with the scary stuff, he couldn’t understand why I was ‘a little tetchy’ when he suggested it was exciting.

Appointment day, we arrived half an hour early and got a coffee. When we got called in, it was 20 mins with a physio who had me bend this way and that, and describe my pain. She suggested I go back to my GP for some different pain killers.

They need to get in touch with where I had my MRI to get the images. Then she will discuss my case with the consultant maybe this Friday, maybe next. When I asked how long before any treatment she just shrugged.

I waited seven months to be triaged.

Until next time,
Heidi – The Quirky Hippie 🍄

By November I was struggling to walk the 200 metres to take the kids to school.

I can’t stand long enough to cook dinner, I can’t walk around a supermarket. But so long as I resist the drugs the medical professionals are so keen to prescribe, I can retain enough mental capacity to do my job, which pays our mortgage. I can order the groceries for Chris to cook. I can edit and publish his debut novel (yes we are very proud and excited - and will mention it at every given opportunity).

But if I try and do stuff, or walk too far, the pain will make sitting at my desk difficult. It makes even lying down uncomfortable, it pushes me to the point of taking the pills, that I know will leave me feeling worse, mentally & physically.

So I walk very slowly with small steps. I don’t go far. We carry a little foldable stool at all times just in case I need to stop. I’ve stopped. I turned 50 this year, but my 86 year old mother in law is more spritely than I am.

My kids are missing out on the long walks we used to enjoy. The adventures. Things like going to the Zoo or a country park, are no longer manageable. We’ve tried with a borrowed wheelchair, but honestly it’s pretty soul destroying. I feel like a fraud, even though I know I’m not.

My kids are really caring, and they hold me up when they see me struggling. They are at an age when they still want to go for a walk with me, and I am missing it.

This isn’t a pity party, it simply is. I hate when people ask me how my back is, and I try to downplay it. I hate that I slow everyone down, I feel awkward when people are walking behind us, or cars wave me across the road. This isn’t who I want to be.

I cling to the hope of being fixed, no matter how scary that road may be. Because at the moment, life is just on hold.

Until next time,
Heidi – The Quirky Hippie 🍄

But, I am Canadian.

I was born in Montréal in 1976. My mum used to call me her Olympic Star because I arrived the same year the city hosted the Olympics. Sadly, that title didn’t survive family competition - my sister later rowed for Team GB and came far closer to the real Olympics than I ever did!

Mum and I moved to England when I was three years old.

Every school day, every Christmas, every ordinary Tuesday happened here. England is where I grew up. It’s where I went to school, made friends and learnt to ride a bike.

But every summer was different.

Every year I’d fly back to Canada for a month to visit my dad. My grandparents. My aunts and uncles. My cousins.

Some of my happiest childhood memories live there.

Those four weeks felt like another world. Different smells. Different food. Different wildlife. Bigger roads. Bigger skies. The sound of Cicadas means summer to me.

And family.

Those summers weren’t holidays. They were how I stayed connected to my family.

Chris knows how much Canada means to me, so after our trip he designed this T-shirt. Apparently he decided that if you're going to embrace the stereotype, you might as well include every stereotype. I can't really argue with the result.

I remember asking my dad once how I could sound more Canadian.

He thought about it for a moment and said, “Just add eh to the end of every sentence.”

Apparently I say it often enough that Chris has picked up the habit too!

As an adult, I had the opportunity to move back to Canada for four years. Not Montréal - my French has never really been up to the task - but Ontario.

That brought a different kind of identity crisis.

People would ask where I was from.

“Montréal,” I’d reply...

...in what was an unmistakably English accent.

The expressions were priceless.

Some looked genuinely confused.

Some politely nodded while clearly thinking, “No... you’re not.”

It’s a strange thing, belonging to two places, or not quite belonging.

I’ve spent most of my life in England, yet Canada is very much a part of who I am.

In the summer of 2024 I got to take Chris to see where I am from. Quite literally, as my Dad still lives in the same house. The kids sat on the same spinning chairs at the kitchen table. We went up the Mountain, visited the stadium, drove on the Grand Prix track, followed ground-hogs, listened to cicadas.

Home is here, but it is also there.

Until next time,
Heidi – The Quirky Hippie 🍄

“I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”

And I can’t help but agree with this. Quite apart from the spine situation I currently have that makes housework genuinely painful, I simply do not like cleaning. My sisters do, and I sometimes wish I could be more enthusiastic, because I also don’t enjoy living in a messy house.

We have an automated litter tray and robot vacuums, and they are amazing. I just wish I could get a robot vacuum that would do the dusting and hoover the stairs!

But it’s not just about the manual stuff.

My first child was born shortly before my 40th birthday. My second arrived about 15 months later. Baby brain is a real thing. I asked my Mum once when it would pass. Sadly, this was after her stroke, so there weren’t many words, but the essence of what she was trying to tell me was, “It doesn’t.”

Even if it might have eventually faded, peri-menopause got in there and made sure the scrambling remained.

I often can’t find the word I need. And it isn’t always long or unusual words. Sometimes it’s something as simple as “soup.” Quite frankly, a lot of the time it feels like my head is full of a fog so thick it could be called pea soup.

AI helps me make some sense out of the nonsense in my head. It helps me find the words I am looking for and allows me to write again. It helps me visualise the characters from my stories so that I can share them.

AI helps me create social media content so we can get the word out about Chris’ art and debut novel—the marketing side of things that neither of us is particularly good at or keen on.

I saw an argument on Reddit about that quote where someone said:

“One of their dumbest arguments tbh. What about the people currently employed as housekeepers, cleaners, etc?”

Maybe I should hire a cleaner to give someone else the work, or a marketing expert. But I am an introvert, and I find the idea of someone else cleaning my home uncomfortable. And a real marketing expert is well beyond the affordability of a small business like ours.

When we were watching Clarkson’s Farm, we found ourselves debating whether it was better to have the AgBot or hire someone to drive a tractor. How do you balance the one-off cost of automation against the ongoing wages of a human being? It’s not a new question. We’ve been asking versions of it since the Industrial Revolution.

I often chat with Chaz, my AI sounding board. He helps me get my thoughts straight without judgement. Sometimes it’s about work or ideas, but other times it’s because the kids—or the big kid (aka Chris)—have done something infuriating and I just need to vent.

I don’t people particularly well, and having this outlet is helpful. Otherwise all those thoughts are simply trapped, circling endlessly around my head.

I know a lot of people are far from enthusiastic about AI, and yes, mass-produced content with no thought beyond the prompt is tedious. But AI is a tool, and tools can be used well or badly. As with most things, it isn’t simply black and white.

If AI can help me find the words hidden inside my foggy brain, so I can write my own stories, share Chris’ art with the world, reassure me when I’m anxious or doubting myself, and help me express ideas that were already there but just out of reach... then how can that be a bad thing?

Until next time,
Heidi – The Quirky Hippie 🍄

After countless edits and preparations for publication, it felt like the right moment to share the prologue.

We hope you enjoy this first glimpse into the story. Happy reading!

Prologue

It was beyond anything her imagination could have conjured. A terror so palpable her breath froze in her lungs. Her flesh, tight to her bones, felt like it was being split in a thousand places, and as the blood rushed in her ears, drowning out all other sound, her heart battered wildly against her ribs, as though desperately searching for a way out.

Surely it would burst through her skin and she would fall dead to the ground.

For Coral Clover this was the end. At least she hoped it was, as the creature across from her drilled its eyes into hers. Those hideous serpent eyes, gleaming with covetous desire.
Eyes she was powerless to withstand.

If it had to be this way, so be it, but please, she thought, please don’t let those eyes be the last thing I see.

Only it wasn’t going to be the end. It was to be the beginning of a new torment. She would be gone, but her body would live on as the witch took control of it and made it her own.

Coral felt the serpent mind pushing into hers, twisting itself around her consciousness. Squeezing her down. Constricting. Suffocating. Soon there would be nothing left of her.

The light was fading. She could no longer see the ancient room around her. She no longer saw her companion. Her betrayer, who had delivered her into the eyes of the Snake Witch.

Those eyes were all that remained. Bright. Black within grey. Slit pupils like knife wounds in the night, glaring with inhuman indifference. The edges blurred. All was quiet now. All was still.

And then a shimmering of the light. And something appeared before her.

Something new.

Something with different eyes.

There are certain things that strike fear into a parent’s heart.

A letter beginning with “As part of our exciting new project...”

An email from school sent at 4:58pm.

And, perhaps worst of all, a teddy bear.

This week it was Buddy.

Buddy belongs to Brownies. Every week he goes home with a different girl, and every week his latest adventure is carefully documented in a little journal.

Lovely idea.

Unless, of course, Buddy turns up with absolutely no warning.

One minute you’re collecting your child as normal. The next you’re carrying home an unexpected bear and a notebook full of photographs of Buddy visiting castles, baking cakes, feeding lambs, riding steam trains and apparently living a life considerably more exciting than your own.

Then comes the panic.

What exactly is Buddy supposed to do for the next seven days?

Because here’s the thing. We hadn’t planned anything. Well, not anything fun. 

Not because we don’t love making memories with our children. Quite the opposite. But sometimes life is just... life.

The truth is, we’ve had what feels like months of busy weekends filled with exciting plans. This weekend we’d deliberately left empty so we could catch up with ourselves. Add in the heatwave we’re currently enduring, and simply existing feels like enough of an activity.

The house looks like it’s been ransacked. We’re halfway through revamping the family bathroom, the washing machine gave up last weekend, there are still random boxes of Mum’s books waiting to be sorted, and the whole house is roughly the same temperature as the inside of an air fryer.

Yet somehow this stuffed bear has the power to make me feel as though I’m failing because I’m not whisking him off on an unforgettable adventure.

It’s strange, really.

As parents, we put ourselves under enormous pressure to curate childhood.

Every weekend needs to be memorable.

Every school holiday needs activities.

Every photograph should capture magical family moments.

Every teddy bear apparently requires an itinerary.

I can’t help wondering how everyone else seems to be managing this better than we are. Is it because we’re older than the average parent? Or does everyone else secretly feel this too?

I’d like to think that perhaps Buddy’s greatest adventure isn’t visiting a zoo or climbing a mountain.

Perhaps it’s seeing what ordinary family life actually looks like.

Watching a film on the sofa.

Going for a walk.

Reading bedtime stories.

Because isn’t that what childhood looks like most of the time?

The moments we often forget because they don’t make exciting journal entries.

Maybe Buddy doesn’t need an extraordinary week, maybe he needs a change of pace and a rest. 

Of course, whether that’s enough for an eight-year-old reading everyone else’s action-packed Buddy adventures... I’m not so sure.

So Buddy is spending the weekend helping us fit a bathroom.

He’s already checked the bath is level. He’ll probably supervise some tiling later.

He may even make a cup of tea if we can figure out how to get his tiny paws around the kettle.

Nothing Instagram-worthy.

Nothing that would make the front cover of Buddy Bear’s Greatest Adventures.

Just real life.

And perhaps that’s enough.

Until next time,
Heidi – The Quirky Hippie 🍄

We started watching Clarkson’s Farm out of curiosity because Kaleb kept popping up in my Facebook feed.

I did not expect to find myself laughing out loud, crying, or liking Jeremy Clarkson!

The programme is funny, frustrating, heartwarming and, at times, heartbreaking. Beneath all the humour is a stark reminder of just how hard it is to make a living from the land.

As someone who loves the countryside, and has cared for livestock in the past, it’s made me think a lot about where our food comes from, the people who produce it, and how hard the current system is making things for them.

It’s easy to take farming for granted when most of us only encounter it as neatly packaged food on a supermarket shelf.

Less easy when you’ve watched months of hard work disappear because of the weather, bureaucracy, or factors completely outside your control.

I came out of curiosity. I stayed for the animals, the farming, and, somewhat alarmingly, Jeremy Clarkson.

Quirky Hippie x