“It happens upon you. It’s bigger than you. There’s a humility you have to step into, where you surrender to being moved through the landscape of grief by grief itself” These are the words of writer Elizabeth Gilbert talking about how she experienced grief after the death of her partner. She is writing about the […]
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I had an argument in the street with my neighbour. He was shouting at me from his car window without, to my mind, a shred of justification. Once it would have been embarrassing but now it was simply annoying. It stayed with me afterwards, the injustice of it. The disrespect. It irritates me when I […]
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When the children were small they liked to paint, and the simplest way to minimise the mess was to buy a large roll of paper and cover the entire dining table with it. Wherever paint was daubed it didn’t matter. They could dip and brush with gusto creating enormous brightly coloured murals until the discipline […]
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Trying to find a notebook with some space in it I come across a scribbled line which looks like a quote but, the more I stare at it, the more it feels like my own original thought, borne from experience. “The qualities which create love, stifle desire.” As successful romantic relationships require a balance of […]
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The people on the corner appear to be building a house in their garden. Initially, I thought they were just demolishing the garages but over the weeks more and more of the grass has given way to foundations. Walking the dogs with my sister I joke that I won’t be surprised to see the excavations […]
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On a short tour around the Kent and Sussex coast in the 1980’s my band and I hired a van and lugged our gear to venues booked by our hapless manager, “Fat Nick”. Fat Nick’s criteria for booking a gig was non-existent. If he could get us in, he did. A plan which proved terminally […]
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Back at school one of my daughter’s friends arrives with a striking new appearance. Teacher- ”Liv your hair is silver!” Liv – ”I know, I dyed it myself.” The nonchalance made me laugh out loud. Pulled up for a flagrant flouting of the school rules, in that momentary exchange between pupil and teacher, both are […]
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Everything changes, all of the time. I am not fooled by the beautiful hot afternoon with the doors fully open onto the garden. The morning and its telltale dew, heavy enough for Daisy to leave prints across the kitchen as if she’d been standing in water, are reminder enough that summer is leaving and autumn […]
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In the woods, my head is spinning at all of the wild bounty springing forth from the trees and bushes. Elderberries as black as night hanging heavily like chandeliers, hawthorns bursting with bright red berries and, in a secret corner, a stash of sloes I have been patiently watching, waiting for the perfect moment at […]
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It’s the mid-eighties. My mother and father are arguing about something inane and unremarkable. I, in another room, am listening to the bickering and sniping batted back and forth until, predictably, my father gives way to his own favourite method of ending an argument, avoidance. With a flourish and slamming of doors, he decides to […]
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