REINVENTING MYSELF
Three months into the Covid-19 lockdown, I realised I had nothing to get out of bed for. No work, nothing to do, nowhere to go. I could dust, perhaps, or do some gardening. But I could feel a tension and a fear telling me this was it: game over.
Work is often erratic if you’re a freelance journalist, and as a woman in my late 50s I’d often wondered how long it could last. Now, as countless publications closed or slashed their budgets, I realised the slow slide into doing a little less each year until I atrophied completely had begun. It was devastating. I felt useless and irrelevant, particularly as an older white voice in a young black country. Surely I had more to offer the world than that, and the world had more to offer me?
So one day I hatched a plan. I remember it clearly: I was sitting at my desk, thinking maybe I should just bum around the world. But I wanted to earn a living and
