At times in my life when I’ve experienced loss, grief and sadness I have often found it greatly cathartic to write about it. I suspect many other writers find that being melancholy is more conducive to being prolific in their craft than being happy, perhaps because it makes for more heartfelt and genuine content that the reader can not only engage with but also empathise with.

But sometimes when something is so recent and raw it’s hard to write about it, and that’s where I am right now. It takes time to process a tragic event and whilst you’re doing it there’s little space for anything else, which is why I’m finding it hard to carry on as normal with my daily blog posts-and indeed why I missed posting yesterday’s despite having written it on time.

Your brain closes down a bit to process grief, ignoring all non-essential things and effectively hibernating until the pain has lessened. I am only on the periphery of this terrible situation and yet I have been deeply and profoundly affected by it, and I feel an enormous amount of sympathy and sadness for those involved. I can’t say any more for now, it wouldn’t be fair. I just wanted to explain why I’m not quite myself, and why my daily musings are temporarily distracted.