About Danna UnAbridged

Hello. I’m Danna.

I have opinions.

I also have stories, questions, observations, occasional outrage, an alarming tendency to disappear down rabbit holes, and a brain that rarely travels from Point A to Point B without visiting Points F, Q and somewhere completely unrelated along the way.

I think and write in Spiderwebs.

This blog isn’t about one thing because neither am I.

I might write about getting older. Food. Family. Animals. Bodies. Politics. Local government. Things that make absolutely no sense to me. Things that make perfect sense to me but apparently nobody else. The peculiar things I notice about people and places. Or something completely ridiculous that occurred to me over coffee and subsequently required several hours of investigation.

Sometimes there will be a point.

Sometimes the journey is the point.

And sometimes I may simply need to tell you why I ended up attempting to weigh my own boobs.

A small warning before we go any further

I talk candidly about adult life, bodies, bodily functions, ageing, sex, relationships, politics, toilets, boobs and — apparently — the occasional sex swing.

This is not a children’s blog.

I don’t particularly want to offend anyone, but neither am I going to spend my life worrying about whether an honest observation might.

You don’t have to agree with me. In fact, I’d be rather concerned if you agreed with me about absolutely everything.

But if you’re curious, have a sense of humour, don’t mind the occasional “strong language” and enjoy following a thought wherever the hell it decides to go…

Welcome.

This is Danna Unabridged.

Life, unabridged. Opinions, occasionally filtered.

P.S. Before we go much further, I need to acknowledge Jenny Lawson.

I bought one of her books, entirely by chance about ten or twelve years ago, and I loved it. I laughed. I recognised things. And then, years later, I reread it and came across her description of “rambling parentheticals.”

And suddenly something clicked.

I talk in spiderwebs.

I always have.

I talk in concepts and ideas and connections. One thought catches another, which catches another, which takes us somewhere that may appear completely unrelated — except that, in my head, I can still see the thread connecting us all the way back to where we started.

Sometimes we even get back there.

Jenny’s words made me recognise that the way I speak — and therefore the way I naturally write — isn’t something that necessarily needs to be corrected, straightened out or made to travel obediently from Point A to Point B.

Other people’s brains do this too.

And there was something enormously freeing in that.

So, Jenny, thank you.

Thank you for making me laugh, certainly. But more importantly, thank you for helping me recognise something in myself that I’d never quite had words for before.

And if anything I write ever feels a little too close for comfort, I suppose I should also say I’m sorry.

Although I’m genuinely not sure which is more appropriate.

Thank you?

Sorry?

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

(And somehow we’ve ended up talking about chickens. Welcome to the spiderweb.)