: About Me

From a young age, I have loved to write. I find it an effective and enjoyable way of expressing my thoughts, opinions and research. I have more than ten years' experience now of creating articles on a variety of topics, both fiction and non-fiction.

I take great pleasure from the English language: I revel in its complexities and absurdities. I like nothing better than discovering more on the history of the English language and how words are formed and how they have changed, for example "daisy" was once "day's eye" and "fortnight" was once "fourteen-night". It amuses me how times have changed: in the late 19th century, pre-Victorian times, we could not swear to such an extent that "stomach" became a euphemism for "belly" and was considered too graphic; and the normal parts of chicken such as "breast" and "thigh" had to be changed to "drumstick" and "white meat" (Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson). It is also incredible to think how many words we use everyday came into existence as we know them, because someone a few hundred years ago recorded them incorrectly!

I live with my husband and crazy dog, and when I am not obsessing about the English language, I run a copywriting and editing business called First for Copy.

Arts & Humanities > International Writers & Literature Literary analysis: The Country Doctor, by Franz Kafka

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A Country Doctor is an intense story of a doctor attending to an emergency. It starts with a description of the agitations of the doctor as his horse has died overnight, heavy snow lies on the ground with more falling, and his servant girl Rose cannot find any villagers willing to lend him a horse for the visit. It then descends into abstract bleakness: the groom who mysteriously appears out the pigsty after the doctor kicks its door in sheer frustration and his terrible intentions towards Rose; the patient, a young boy who is seemingly well but it then transcends has a fatal and diseased ...

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