I started this blog the day I finally fixed a tap for the first time. The sense of triumph gave me the feeling that I could also master the complexities of setting up a blog. Clearly not, however, as I had intended calling the first post, not the whole blog, I Buy a New Washer. By the time I worked out how to change the blog title, it was too late. I dwell on whatever has caught my attention in the day.
My mother taught me to read using a set of word cards. I can see her holding them up in front of me in the corner of the vicarage dining room in the winter-dark. I see myself as very small. Four, perhaps. Many significant things happened when I was four. The dog arriving, for example. The letters on the cards were large and some were red, some were black. That early evening, I knew I couldn't…
I cycled to my allotment first thing - let's say 7.00am. It was a continual and sun-washed morning in this long drought of UK summer, and even though I wasn't as hot as I've been in recent days, I relished the gift of water lurching from the watering can onto my feet as I splashed the courgettes, beans, tomatoes, and the monstrous one-fruit-a-day cucumber plant which has taken occupation of the…
… and I don’t mean Declan Rice, of Arsenal and England. I don’t forget him because I have a football sticker of him on my phone case. No, I mean risotto rice. My longest-serving friend and I are on our annual camping trip and we forgot the essential ingredient in our much-loved camping dish. It felt like a stumble when we realised this yesterday, deep in our camping valley, not a risotto rice shop…
I'm not a natural runner, but I have become a habitual one. I like the almost weekly feeling of surprise I experience when I turn up at 9am to the start of a run (not a race) with 100s of other participants. Finishing, however, is never a surprise because I've made that my only goal. Were I more of a risk-taker, more hare and less tortoise (to borrow from Aesop), I might run faster earlier, but…
Here… ...and it was so beautiful. Imagine! There are landscapes I’ve never been in before, and this was one. A high lake in Sweden, frozen to 40-50 cm thick of ice. But not frozen as a single sheet, not as a block-lid, but made from layers and layers, built up over what has been a particularly cold winter and changing now that spring is coming. The top lake layer: remnants of recent snow, the…
I’m listening to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. One could be forgiven for thinking the opening is prelude to something pastoral and grandly reminiscent of drifts of snowdrops in Cound woods, Shropshire, on a Sunday in February. Spring’s in the air. Some tunes are reminiscent of the 6th - lamb-leaping exuberance contained in the wood, brass, silver and guts of a symphony orchestra. Imagine that first…
I have taken delivery of the final bowl in my 'tree' series. Here it is: This is the fourth bowl I've painted since December 2024 at the decorating studio in the Emma Bridgewater factory in Stoke. The visits have been a joy in themselves, the bowls holding memories of time spent with Charlotte, Gabriel, Jonty, Ally, Ruth, and Charlotte again. On my first visit, I painted 'Winter', and…
It started on Boxing Day when I was breakfasting with my Longest-Serving Friend. The brandy bottle was still on the table from, oh, I don't know, Christmas Day? I had made up a bowl of granola, yoghurt, banana. "Have some seeds with that," my LSF encouraged. "Tim would be pleased." When my LSF mentions Tim in this context, Tim is Tim Spector of the Zoe project . This is a project intent on…
Poor Francis Thompson. His poem "The Hound of Heaven" speaks of a soul pursued by the Divine. He must've lived exhausted. The poem tells of fleeing the Hound through space and time, hurrying through his mind and emotions. It begins: "I fled Him down the nights and down the days I fled Him down the arches of the years I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears I…
When Suzanne invited me to see Lambrini Girls (punk band Phoebe Lunny and Selin Macieira-Bosgelmez) at Birmingham's XOYO night club the other weekend, I said yes without really knowing. It was a bit Molly Bloom of me. Yes! I said, Yes! I'd never been to a punk gig before, just like there are a lot of things I've never done before. There's an advantage to having spent my youthful years wrapped up…
Not all my poetry is about love, death, queues, and swimming. This one has just been shortlisted for Poem of the Month, a regular feature of Verve Poetry and Spoken Word Festival. When I saw November's theme, EAT, it felt like the right time to send off my ice cream poem, the one I wrote after visiting Shrewsbury's Gelatistry a couple of summers ago. Everything Ice Cream Sitting on the steps, I’m…
The programming of a concert is an art in itself. Done well, an audience will notice the progression from piece to piece, while also having a sense that there’s a whole behind the parts. I felt that whole on Saturday listening Oran Johnson and Jonty Lefroy Watt’s Strings, Still Lifes and Scenery in the beautiful setting of Clungunford’s St Cuthbert’s Church. Since meeting the Four Quartets in…
I've returned home from August, and from the resolve that emerged as I went into this gift of a month that I'd swim outdoors each day. It wasn't a rule so much as a blessing I've given myself, and that was given to me by spending most of the time on P's farm in Sweden, a few hundred metres from a beautiful lake. Something about taking this love of mine - for water - sacredly has been part of a…
I left London when I was 24, so I'm used to cities by now. Nearly. In contrast to London, Sweden's capital, Stockholm, is home to between 1 and 2 million people, depending on where the line is drawn. The city's structure is watery, and forests live between, and close to, even the most densely settled areas. Last week, I took a trip away from the farm on which I'm writing and being with P. We…
I will not forget last night’s swim until I forget everything. I went, with L&P, down to the harbour 1/2 a mile from where I’ve been staying these past three days, nestled on Sweden’s west coast. L had urged me to experience swimming in the dark. There’s a jetty there, and a swimming ladder - Sweden thinks all the time of getting in and out of her waters. There’s a bench on the jetty to leave…
I may be testing your patience, dear readers, but my daily swim in Little Norrsj ö n has become the pivotal moment of my days in Sweden, so here's more swimming writing. For the sake of geography, I should say that Little Norrsjön is attached to Norrsjön (sjö - lake) where the river feeds in. If you imagine the attachment as a T-shape, the river is the long stem. It branches into a right and a…
I’m reading ‘Teaching a Stone to Talk’ by Annie Dillard. She has an extraordinary perspective which includes some direct observations about living, including: “We are here on the planet only once, and we might as well get a feel for the place.” For her, it’s not about the spectacular, but about seeing “what is there” (p.74). I’ve found I can see what is there in lake little Norrsjön by swimming. I…
I took care, when I waded into the lake this morning along the side of the rowing boat, to note where I’d got in. It’s skirted with pines and I could imagine the boat becoming hidden the further I swam out, and mistaking one clump of trees for another, or one of the scattered houses, painted the burnt red colour which is traditional in Sweden, for its neighbour. I was swimming the lake, little…
Things on the allotment have started coming to flower and fruition - things like roses and chives and broad beans and pinks and mint and jasmine and strawberries and thyme and garlic and rhubarb and four types of lettuce leaf and raspberries and two new potatoes and rosemary and one onion. Enough things to get me knowing how to celebrate my son’s birthday today. Sons may grow (I am thankful). They…
As I pushed it closed on Tuesday, it became apparent that the shed door, which had been shaky for a long while, was in danger of becoming completely un-hinged. Screws were loosening, some parts of the wood around the fixings was becoming distinctly flaky. I could see that if I didn't act soon, the whole thing would come adrift, leaving the workings of my allotment (spade, fork, trowel, shears ...)…
isolate - From the Latin, insulare , to make into an island I - sol - ate I am solo since the positive Covid test have made myself an island plotted my time as a map of solitude coordinated myself to a pattern of rest I - sol - ate within my flat on the sofa under a rug beside the coffee table between lunch and supper among books music TV podcasts phone calls with glasses of water within on under…
I have felt myself in the underworld this winter. I feel, therefore I am. There is richness here, and discovery. There are people to meet, a mycelial network of seekers, resting travellers offering stillness, wisdom and quiet hope. In therapy, I have felt the presence of new parts of me too, and they need attention. I have had to absent myself from some of what has being going on above ground. As…
My sons are grown up and living independently, and more than capable, but there's a part of me that feels a tug towards their birthdays - of course I do. This includes some sense of responsibility for their happiness: a wanting them to have special days. And since I feel an almost equal tug towards cake, which combines so naturally with this birthday wanting, it made sense to me at around…
I did not expect to be moved to tears by my greenhouse, but there I was, this sunny afternoon, at my allotment, phoning my Longest-Serving Friend. 'It sounds like you're crying,' she said, her voice full of concern. 'I am,' I replied. 'Please don't worry - they're tears of joy.' I explained how I had replaced the panes of glass broken by Storm Darragh. She was delighted for me and felt tearful…
Lately, it’s been about counting. Years. Runs. Words. Work. Breaths. Days. Trees. 60 years - a number I may not have made. There was, among so many other near misses, that dangerous overtaking move I made in a dark blue Ford Cortina on my way to Mull in 1986 after finals. I was driving my Longest-Serving Friend, and I think Dave, Seb, and Richard. We were rushing to Oban for the ferry and the car…