Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Words On Loving Yourself Plan was this: to go to the woods then come home and write. I had asked my clever brother to make a graphic for me, of a phrase I use and wished to share, because it is so nearly my 50th birthday it was making me feel beneficently wise. What happened was: I was watching the happy arse of my dog as she thundered towards the river when a bundle of words arrived with a ferocity equal to her velocity, as though she had tugged them into being. Writing was done awkwardly, immediately, balanced on a knee.  These words: 'Imagine a sheet of paper, imagine you have a spoonful of ink. You fling the ink at the paper; some of it will miss. You are like this ink. But you are not this ink. You can refling yourself over and over and in doing this create something more fluid, dynamic, astounding, authentic, than anything any of us can fix to paper. Please breathe and feel your breath.  Please love yourself. Whatever doubt ...

Words On Wanting A Rose Garden 11th January 2020 Merely a trace of chest plague left, so I’m back to training and now my legs and arms have the pleasant ache of effort. At work today and doing more sneaked-in writing. Another fiercely windy day: witnessed a heron in perilous flight this morning, snaking its neck like a pterodactyl. Took my favourite long commute around the back of Colliford Lake where the sky was all freckled with starlings, and white topped waves frisked, and shaggy calves skulked on verges. I am saying please let things work out well now. I have enough practice finding flowers at the roadside of doom, I say, no more with that now! Time for a rose garden, Universe. 13th January 2020 Third in a hat trick of shifts, nothing too demanding, just the having to get up early and being organised. The weather is all storm warnings - we sat at Porthpean watching seagulls in the shallow froth declining to go further out. We sat in the warm car, bellies full, with a h...

Words On Gently Beginning Anew 1st January 2020 At midweek we have begun a new year and a new decade. The page turning, blank calendar moment. Is this the beginning of pivotal stuff or merely Wednesday? One can pivot at any moment, dear hearts, whereas Wednesdays come by only every seventh day. So, what to attend to? Still ill from Round 2 of flu, I am sat in bed writing this, also drinking good coffee, also eating low carb homemade chocolate treats. I am watching the evening arrive in my garden, how it is sifting away light and colour, how the shadows darken and spill out, how still it is, paused, imbued with the night-sense of adventure. Attend to the moment. Here I am. Saying to myself: in 2020, maybe I will… brush my hair. Tidy my sock drawer. Eat apples. Jump in the sea. Have tea with a friend. I have a good feeling about these resolutions.