All part of my #BookFairiesOffline day yesterday. I litter picked in the morning and read 2 and a bit books in the afternoon 💚📚💚 @the_bookfairies

Wordle 1,820 3/6 I'm impressive!!! 🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

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On Sunday, I avoided doomscrolling by: - working my Sunday morning swimming shift - reading, reading, reading - watching an episode of the new series of Running Point

Wordle 1,817 3/6 I'm impressive!!! ⬜🟩🟨🟨⬜ ⬜🟩🟩🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

On Saturday, I avoided doomscrolling by: - meeting friends in Bradford to explore the amazing Waterstones in an old church - having lunch at Zizzi with a fab Eton mess pudding

On Friday, I avoided doomscrolling by: - meeting Mike Gayle at Pontefract library and buying a copy of On We Go - celebrating a friend's 40th birthday with a Taylor Swift themed meal - scoring zero in the Taylor Swift lyric competition, give me 80s sing lyrics 🤣🎶

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Barbara is all of us

On Thursday, I avoided doomscrolling by: - topping up the free bookcase that I run at Pontefract castle café - hiding pride Book Fairy books at the aids quilts display at the castle - planning my swimming lessons - teaching my swimming lessons

This is awful. The last ever Denby Pottery going to the kiln. Why is there not uproar? Where’s the government in this?? We all have Denby in our homes, in family heirlooms, as our history and now it’s closing through lack of support, such a sad sad day. #SaveDenby @denbypottery

And today's probable adhd song playing in my head is Bat Out of Hell by Meatloaf.

Wordle 1,814 4/6 I'm splendid!!! 🟩⬜⬜⬜🟨 🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Today's probable adhd music constantly playing in my head is Your Song by Elton John. My brain turns off all the thoughts apart from the book when I read, which is partly why I read so much.

A couple of pale mauve phacelia in a field in Norfolk. If you play my little film to the end & let your brain immerse itself among the flowers, research shows it will help you recover from stress much more quickly today🌿🧠:

Wordle 1,811 4/6 I'm splendid! ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩 🟩⬜⬜🟨🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I was fifteen when I realised my mother's sadness was not a phase. She stopped cooking and going outside. Some mornings I would find her sitting in the kitchen, staring at nothing, still in the same clothes from the day before. I became the adult in our house without anyone asking. I cooked, cleaned, and made sure my younger brother ate before school. I checked on her before bed every night and left a glass of water on her bedside table because she often forgot to drink. I did all of this while attending school, writing exams, and trying to seem like a normal teenager. Nobody at school knew. I laughed the loudest in class, was voted most likely to succeed, and teachers called me mature for my age. They had no idea maturity had been forced on me by circumstances, not chosen. I was not mature. I was just a child with no option to be one. My mother got better slowly over two years with therapy, medication, and time. The day she cooked dinner for the first time and called us to eat, I sat at the table and cried into my food. She thought they were happy tears. They were, but also years of exhaustion finally finding a way out. I am an adult now and still check on her every day, not out of fear but out of love forged in the hardest years of both our lives. If you know a child who seems too mature, too responsible, too okay, look closer. Sometimes they are carrying things no child should carry alone.

I think it’s a crisis that kids are growing up with no knowledge of Robin Hood & Merlin, Charlotte and Babar, Ratty and Badger and Long John Silver. In the words of Katherine Rundell, “We need to be infinitely more furious that there are children without books.”

Today, I avoided doomscrolling by: - singing 1940s songs with my choir in a carehome - listening to birds in a tiny woodland - reading some more of my book Survival Show by Juno Dawson - watching an episode of Running Point on netflix

Just a friendly reminder that libraries are free. Not “free trial” free. Not “free with ads” free. Not “free if you give us all of your data” free. But free free.