Tag: nature


Aug
2017

more workshop information: hurray!

Categories: forthcoming events, person-centred, poetry

I’m very pleased to be able to say that info. about the first one-day workshop is now up on the site.

I’m getting the chance to work with Simon Davies, late of Dove Cottage, and it’s a such a treat to be plotting and planning together. We had a lovely day yesterday, talking excitedly, eating slightly too much, getting breadcrumbs on the many books of poems which got pulled off the shelves, and generally having ourselves a great time. We are really looking forward to working with whoever turns up and whatever they bring. Do nip over to harvest and seed-time and have a look. One of those people might be you!


Aug
2017

thing 2: ‘named by sunlight’: the morning walk

Categories: celebrating the everyday, mindfulness, nature, poetry, reflection, wildlife

Marooned on a far-away planet, Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker, Arthur Dent, wakes up and gives ‘his early morning yell of horror’.

A Martin Amis narrator talks of ‘the difference between cosmic reality and how you sometimes feel when you wake up in the morning’. Doctors (and obsessively-Googled medical sites) refer, more blandly, to ‘diurnal mood variation’. But whatever you call it, how you feel in the morning is not always good.

Or at least, how I feel in the morning. I shouldn’t make assumptions, though I suspect I’m not alone in frequently finding myself struggling, on waking. There’s a greyscale (more…)


Jul
2017

thing 1: middle-aged woman on a beach (part ii)

Categories: celebrating the everyday, mindfulness, reflection, wild swimming

I’m usually a slow getter-inner, when lake or river swimming in Britain.

I enjoy the gradual acclimatisation process, and the way I eventually reach a point where postponing the gasp-inducing full plunge becomes worse than enduring it. On this beach, however, you have to let go of any vision of strolling casually or lingeringly across white-gold sand into lapping clear blue water as your footprints dissolve beautifully behind you. (more…)


Jul
2017

thing 1: middle-aged woman on a beach (part i)

Categories: celebrating the everyday, mindfulness, reflection, wild swimming

I doubt Leonardo’s going to hustle for the lead in this one.

And it probably says something sadly unsurprising about the state of the film industry that I can’t even think of which female actor would have their agent on the blower to the producer. However, I’ve got to tell you: middle-aged woman on a beach felt absolutely bloody marvellous. (more…)


Jul
2017

what country, friends, is this?

Categories: celebrating the everyday, reflection

Fifty. Half a century. Five decades. Blimey. How did that happen?

And what happens now?

I imagine most people feel those things, or something similar; —or, if they don’t, I probably won’t want to have tea and cake with them. I can’t imagine what it might be like serenely to glide up to 50, untroubled and untouched, perma-sure of self and place-in-world. For that matter, I can’t imagine what it might be like serenely to glide through life at all. Yes, there are patches of glide, and stroll, and float—and even sometimes dance—but they’re punctuated with stagger, reel and flounder. And sometimes with sit-down-and-howl, too. (more…)