I'm probably not the only one who was surprised by the news yesterday that Russell Brand had been, after all, charged by the British Police and would be appearing in court next month regarding those allegations of sexual assault and rape (or do they all fall under sexual assault? I'm not sure).

Perhaps I wouldn't mind so much if I didn't know bots get through anyway. Being well aware of the prevalence of bots and how they've been permitted to skew the world of live events, I do wonder sometimes at the futility of these little tests and captchas, destined to prove I am not a robot.

Something I've been contemplating a fair bit, and you may have heard me mention in previous posts, is the relationship I have as a writer with the people in my life. There's all sorts of jokes going about online about writers "putting you into their books". But that's no joke, and I don't think it's as cute or easy as it's made out to be.

Increasingly, in recent years, I've met a lot of couples who met online. And I don't just mean through dating apps, I don't really believe in those, and also, I think they're becoming quite common place. 'Cause like ten years ago even, it would've been a wild thing to go out with a stranger from an app, but now it seems a lot of the couples that I know just, that's how they meet. So it sort of becomes impressive when they don't, when they met through other, more natural ways.

When we signed up to breathe for 21 days, I don't think any of us knew what they were getting into. Especially by the way our teacher had talked it up, telling us about the way some people had dug up some pretty intense emotional stuff, how it had brought about important changes, and all that. It never ceases to impress me, the hunger we humans have for changing. We keep expecting there's the great big figured-out exit, just around the next corner, don't we? To be honest, I think that was mostly why we got into it.

I've actually been thinking a bit about make-up lately, so when I saw the theme for the new Ladies of Hive contest, I figured it was an invitation:Do you like makeup? How does it make you feel? Tell us about your makeup routine. Are you an expert? Do you use a lot of products? Or do you prefer something simpler?