Pain in the backside

What will it take for football to become serious about abuse? Does it need someone to take their own life, or is a mental breakdown enough? Nobody wants sport to become sanitised - there's a reason football is so popular around the world and that's largely because of its immense atmosphere, its fanaticism and the sheer joy when a goal is scored or your team wins. It's amazing how transfixed we can become from something which is actually so insignificant. But surely in this day and age, when we know so much more about mental health, there has to be a point where we say "enough is enough". Harry Maguire I can't be the only person troubled seeing the abuse Harry Maguire has been getting. And yes, I know he is rich, talented and famous, but that doesn't make him a human punchbag for idiots who find it funny to abuse someone they've never met. Maguire's crime seems to be both not getting picked for his club side, but getting picked for his country, almo...

Last Friday I had a brilliant session with a psychologist around my anorexia. I felt as relaxed as I had for months and able to cut down on my excessive walking. She pointed out that I put pressure on myself to be productive all the time. Even though I am currently signed off sick I still put on an alarm every day, and my mind is on overdrive all the time; I feel like I am in a rush and I get stressed when I don't get something done or I go to bed late. Her suggestion: go and have some fun. And something clicked in my mind - here was a trained professional giving me permission to enjoy myself, to not waste my time trying to exercise for hours at a time and to spend it doing something where I can switch off for once. It felt like this huge load had been taken off me, that I didn't have to worry about trying to fit in a long walk after my morning cross trainer session. I was already thinking about what I could do with this extra time, whether it be playing games or even just read...

It seems only recently that I was going strong as a journalist, working up to 60 hours a week, starting at 5am most days and sometimes finishing after midnight. I felt fit and energetic despite my IBS and chronic pain and was able to mix watching football, covering elections, breaking big stories and writing interesting features for a living.  I'm now 32 and I work 0 hours a week - and even that feels exhausting. I weigh around 7 stone 6, was recently detained under the Mental Health Act and am now reliant on Universal Credit to live. The Lamy family I feel like a scrounger, which is probably because there is this big narrative that the welfare bill is so high because of the number of people claiming benefits when they are fit to work. It's amazing how much more talk there is around benefits than the billions of pounds lost to fraudulent Covid loans which will never be recovered. Whereas before I would confront politicians and criminals, and rarely feel stressed, now I'd be...