Many people have mentioned how strange time seems during this period of lockdown. I experience it as a paradox. Like a river with contradictory currents, it’s flowing slowly and quickly… read more →
People keep commenting on the prevalence of birdsong during these lock-down days. Perhaps it really is louder and closer or maybe it’s just the reduction of background noise makes it… read more →
I’ve always had a sense of the rhythms of the different days of the week – a kind of synaesthesia where Monday smells of laundry on the line, Saturday has… read more →
The news with its litany of loss, anxiety and uncertainty is leavened by images of the more-than-human world coming closer to us, encouraged by the lack of traffic, fewer people… read more →
I dream a lot about houses, my own, other people’s, houses I know and houses that exist only in dream-towns. In waking life, I’m intrigued by the faces houses have,… read more →
I love solitude but it’s strange to spend quite so much time alone. Thank goodness for the connectivity of modern life. Emails, online gatherings and the phone … as I… read more →
There’s an area of ancient woodland at the bottom of the back-to-back suburban gardens in our corner of Canterbury. It stretches along the side of a valley that’s part of… read more →
I’m blogging today whilst working on stories, whilst making marmalade, whilst feeling poetry bubbling up alongside the pith and peel in the pan. Last autumn was for me, in the… read more →
After a long break, I am pleased to be back in the Community Room of the library at the Beaney offering a weekly Words for Wellbeing Session. Every Friday from… read more →
This disarmingly simple poem by Lisel Mueller is called Curriculum Vitae and describes a long life in 20 short stanzas with allusions to the great events of history. The… read more →