Being Buttons

Lessons Learned in Lock-down

Lessons Learned in Lock-down

A few weeks ago I shared a few thoughts about life in lock-down. At that point I’d been working from home for four weeks and living in lock-down for just under three. Now we are into our sixth week of life in lock-down and it’s all starting to feel a lot more normal and familiar. In my last post I was still reacting to what was happening, whereas now I feel a bit more able to reflect on the current situation. James and I have spent a lot of time on our daily walks discussing if and what the world will learn from this period of time and how it might adapt accordingly. But I think there’s a lot that we can take which starts with us as individuals before we start to think about what big businesses and governments might learn.

View Post

A love of libraries

A love of libraries

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love books and reading. I’ll be honest, it’s a little bit odd that I don’t write about books more often but I’ve never really been one for writing reviews. However, more and more frequently I’ve become surprised by how few adults I come across own library cards, let alone understand why they would want one. This baffles me! I’ve used libraries from pretty much as soon as I was reading and having enjoyed them as a child the thought never even crossed my mind that I wouldn’t use them as an adult. But apparently it’s not a service that everyone makes use of, and libraries are one of our services that are at risk of losing funding. This post shares my love of libraries, through different ages and for different reasons.

View Post

Twelve non-fiction book recommendations for life in lock-down (or any other time…)

Twelve non-fiction book recommendations for life in lock-down (or any other time…)

When I was younger, I would devour book after book after book and the vast majority would be fiction. I would never consider looking for non-fiction books to buy, asking for them as gifts or getting them out of the library. I had a few, such as my trusty encyclopedia which I would happily sit and flick through but my main interest was always reading stories. That all changed rather suddenly in my early twenties. Whilst I still very much enjoy fiction, I’ve found myself reading more non-fiction than ever before. I have a long list that I want to read and I find myself gravitating towards non-fiction new releases in bookshops.

View Post

A few thoughts on life in lock-down

A few thoughts on life in lock-down

I’ve been mentally writing this post for four weeks now, for about as long as I’ve been working from home. If I had sat down and started writing it at any point before now, it probably would have been very different on each one of those days in that four weeks. As it is, this post won’t be as coherent or logically structured as some of my usual posts but will be a little more personal, focusing more on some of my thoughts and feelings. Believe me, there have been a lot of those over the last month.

View Post

The travel stories that don’t get shared

The travel stories that don’t get shared

Just over a year ago I wrote a post on places which are disappointing to visit and it ended up being one of my most viewed blog posts of the year, as well as sparking quite a bit of conversation on Twitter. It made me realise that there’s an appetite out there for sharing the less than perfect experiences that most of us have whilst travelling. I’ve been lucky that I’ve not come to any serious harm or danger whilst travelling, but I’ve still had some experiences which I don’t really talk about. At the time they might have been stressful and I didn’t want to worry anyone, or the anecdotes might not have fit with the rest of the tales I had to share from my trip.

View Post