I love this time of year – the freshness of the mornings, giving way to mild, sunny afternoons, low mists lying across the water meadows by the river, the sculptural forms of seed heads and drying stems. I gathered up poppy pods to put in a jug on the kitchen windowsill. I find the way nature perfectly marries form with function especially beautiful – the frilly caps stop the tiny, full-stop seeds from tipping out before they’re ready to be carried on the wind to fresh ground.
A sinuous trail of silver-topped mushrooms appeared in the garden at work – a fairy path across the dew-tipped grass. It has been a relief to have the rain back. I stood beneath the fig tree in our garden listening to the tap, tap, tap of falling drops one mellow evening, The thick, waxy leaves create wonderful acoustics. I’d gathered a handful to take in to make an apple and cucumber raita to accompany pumpkin parathas – such a delightfully seasonal meal! Did you know fig leaves smell of coconut? Neither did I until I tried this recipe – you soak them in warmed milk. I stood with my head among the rain-dancing branches and inhaled the mild coconut scent of the sun-warmed leaves cooling in the shower.
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Just after I signed off from the blog I had news I could reveal the cover of my latest book, The Tiger Who Sleeps Under My Chair, so here it is in case you missed it on Twitter and Instagram. The cover illustration is by Lucy Rose and the cover design is by Jessie Price. They have done a fabulous job. I’m so pleased. The Tiger Who Sleeps Under My Chair will be published in Feb 2023, coinciding with Children’s Mental Health Week, which is very apt as mental health is one of the themes. It’s set along the Jurassic coast here in Devon. I hope you will find it a beautiful and inspiring story. I received my proof copy in the post over the bank holiday weekend, which was super, super exciting! More news to come in the Autumn!
Hasn’t it been a strange summer? Although I took a break from social media through August it was hard not to catch glimpses of people’s gleeful summer pics, delighting in the hot weather. For many of us, the drought has been accompanied by a deep and unsettling uneasiness. The team at Riverford wrote an article about how they were going to run out of water despite the huge investments they’ve made in water capture and irrigation systems. A local farmer to us, wrote of her despair at seeing fields of crops shriveling in the heat, the loss of this produce only likely to add to the cost of living crisis. The irony is we’ll be wishing we could have bottled the warmth when winter comes. And that was all before the horror of water companies releasing sewage on to beaches where families were holidaying.
In the grand scheme of things, my little allotment doesn’t matter much but tending my plot brings me closer to what is going on in the soil. I’m glad I opted for more perennial veg this year. My tree cabbage isn’t the slightest bit phased by the heat. I’m also glad my haphazard approach to companion planting meant many of my veggies got some shade from jumbling nasturtiums, marigolds and cornflowers. But still things struggled. My beans needed desperate watering to stop them withering on their poles. Leeks and winter greens, which should have been happily getting going this month germinated or were transplanted then, did little more than hang on for dear life. We were picking blackberries at the end of July, for goodness sake! Flowers have bloomed and faded in a matter of days. Everywhere, everything is going to seed. I worry for the pollinators. And of course, in my day job, I’m on the end of the line for the sick, the elderly and the economically disadvantaged, who have not found this heat fun in the slightest.
Flowers on the plot
One salve to this gloominess has been a book I read over the summer by Claire Ratinon. Unearthed, charts Claire’s personal journey into growing from an urban, Black, working class background. She has no easy answers but what spoke to me most was her gradual unpicking of the habits and behaviours she had developed in response to society’s perception of her and her family history. Gently and methodically she pioneers her way into new territory, retreating when the forces of inequality become too ferocious to bear so she might live to grow another day. Set against the backdrop of the historical and ongoing environmental destruction wreaked on her parents’ home country of Mauritius, this book felt profound in many ways. It gave me new impetus to feel that one of the biggest things I can do about the climate crisis is to grow as much as I can for my own table, but most of all, to be here, not jetting off on holiday, here, engaging with the realities of this place, summers of sewage and all.
Home grown beetroot!
Claire’s book was also a tender reproach to me. Despite my best resolutions at the beginning of the year, I’m too busy, doing too much (again!) and sinking fast! Rashmi Sirdeshpande shared on Twitter the other week:
“One of the hardest (non-financial) things about being a children’s writer is the lack of visibility when it comes to your schedule. You pitch things, you wait, you have nooo idea what the future looks like. Will you be freee? Will you be smashed to pieces by deadlines? Who knows?
I’m thinking of traditional publishing here. Sometimes it’s pitch wait pitch wait pitch wait wait wait OH NO EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING AT ONCE… Or everything is ALMOST happening at once (so many ‘Nearly There’s in publishing as publishers think about whether to take you on!). I should also add that personally I neeeeed routine and certainty. I feel dizzy and restless without it. The relief when a schedule is pinned down is immense! So it’s a tricky industry for me!“
I’m not a full-time author, so the ‘pitch and wait’ thing isn’t quite my experience but I do work a full-time job and have three children, so that horrible feeling of dizzying uncertainty as you may or may not get “smashed” by deadlines while trying to keep the usual plates spinning is something I can really relate to. All the while, you know you had to put in place the things you did because you needed to know you could pay the bills. This is mixed in with a disorientating sense of gratitude and relief because my work is being published, which is wonderful. Holding the proof of my book and chatting with schools and bookshops about potential visits for when it comes out is very special. Claire Ratinon’s thoughtfulness made me look at where I’m going wrong… again! We had a wonderful week at our friend’s cottage in North Wales, which gave me a bit of space to think. It’s in the middle of nowhere and, appropriately given Claire’s book, was originally a squatters’ cottage on marginal land. We climbed mountains, visited castles and played in the woods. It was very cathartic. There’s nothing like the view from a Welsh mountain to blow away some of the capitalist cobwebs we all unwittingly internalise. So, fresh resolutions made, the new term awaits…!
Welsh mountain views
A final short note on comments on this blog: I switched comments off over the summer to avoid having to go through and label the spam. Honestly, there’s reams of it and the content is awful. So, I’ve decided to keep the comments off here permanently. Many of you are kind enough to follow me on Twitter and will reply to my tweets letting you know there’s a new blog post. I love hearing from you and that seems to work well, so please do comment there 🙂
The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee feels like a long time ago now. Elizabeth seems a dear old lady, but I have mixed feelings about the institution of monarchy. I lived in Scotland, where the Crown has done some truly terrible things. My mum is from Wales, where the Crown has done some truly terrible things. I’m learning more and more about global British colonialism and imperialism, where, in the name of the Crown, some truly terrible things have been done. And I’m from Devon, a region with a proud history of rebelling against royalty. But at least the monarchy does have some accountability to the public, unlike faceless multinational corporations or the likes of Richard Branson, spending our carbon budget on flying into space. So we went to stay with our friends in the Pennines, walked the hills, fed the chickens, had a go at driving a tractor, toasted sausages on a fire, thanked Liz for an extra bank holiday, and ignored the Jubilee.
Things that make me happy: a box of allotment produce
At the allotment, I turned back the tarpaulin covering the muck heap and found the most enormous, elegant slow worm relishing the warmth. I speedily dug out what I needed, careful not to disturb her, and pulled the cover back down. I love the allotment for these sorts of encounters with wildlife. These moments always catch me when I’m least expecting it and make me smile for the rest of the day.
So far, other than my parsnips, which haven’t come up at all despite re-sowing, it’s turning out to be a good growing year on the plot. The sweet peas have been magnificent and we have jam jars full around the house every week. We’ve gorged on strawberries and raspberries. My experiments with perennial kale and cabbage are going well. And my red Duke of York new potatoes have been delicious – not a bit of blight.
Book event fun!
I attended an in-person book event at our local independent bookshop, Bookbag, the other week. I’ll just say that again… an in-person book event! The event was part of the Africa Writes Festival and featured Karla Neblett, author of the King of Rabbits, a story of class and race in rural Somerset. I loved hearing about how she had been inspired to write this story for the men in her life and found her thoughts on the loss of a key family member severing a link to your heritage very poignant. But mostly, it was just really lovely to be at an in-person book event! Too often, I think I’m too tired to get along to things like this, but a bookshop event is not like going out in the ‘socialising’ sense. You sit and listen to people talking about wonderful books in the soothing atmosphere of a bookshop. There’s no pressure to make conversation or ask questions if you don’t want. And Bookbag are only up the road… so, one of my resolutions is to get along to more events.
We went camping last weekend with my sister. We usually go at this time of year. We head to a remote, rural spot where we love to mark the lightest days. I say camping but really our camping days are done and we stayed in a cute little wooden pod with views over the fields. I did my knee in playing rounders, which was okay because it was time for snuggling up under camp blankets with a hot chocolate. I had to share this picture with you; the sun setting over the fields. Whenever I have lived away from Devon, the thing I have missed most is lingering evenings. No British county (whispers: perhaps Cornwall!) does evenings like Devon.
Summer fete haul!
I am posting this after getting back from the summer school fete, where it didn’t rain, though it did look threatening. I’ve had my head down in edits so I wasn’t doing my usual PTA duties and this year, I was able to wander the stalls with Wren (Finch was off with his mates). I managed to steer her clear of the Colour Table (colour-themed raffle prizes, win every go) in case we won back our donations!
There will be no blog post from me next month. Last year, I took August off from social media and found it was a helpful month of recalibration, so I’m doing the same this year. Comments will be off on this post as I get so much spam and really can’t face coming back to the sheer volume of unpleasantness that will have accumulated. I’ll share this post on Twitter however, and would love to hear your thoughts there. But for now, I hope you have a good summer and that the light-filled days, lighten your soul.
May started with a bang for us, quite literally. Finch leap-frogged a bollard, didn’t make it, and face-planted the pavement. Amongst the tears and considerable amount of blood, there was a silver lining. Through wet eyes, he grinned at me – his front two milk teeth, which have been wobbly for ages, had finally come out. It was an expensive week for the tooth fairy!
May is a glorious month, isn’t it? The natural world goes into super sonic mode, and everything, everywhere, is blooming and bursting forth. My last lot of edits for the new book handed in, I was able to breathe a little. It was charming to watch blue tits from our kitchen window, diving in and out of our rambling roses, picking off aphids. They did me a great service in pest control and entertainment value. Down by the river, I cycled past frothing towers of May blossom on the way to work. First thing in the morning, the scent seems to linger in clouds like no other time in the day. I’m sure there must be some clever reason for that.
And then the swifts arrived, which means summer is really here, screeching and wheeling between the rooftops. Up on the moors, we explored bluebell woods and flower-filled meadows. One hot day we found a brook to paddle in, the crystal-clear water pouring into an icy pool from a spout beside a ruined mill. These May days are ones to savour, storing up memories of warmth and light for the dark days of deep midwinter. Now, as we emerge tentatively from the pandemic, for me, they also carry with them the memory of May 2020, when we were finally allowed to go a little further for walks. I remember the children running through buttercups fields and dipping their toes in glistening streams as if the world were brand new. I may have done a bit of meadow-running myself!
This month, I was part of a Scottish Centre for Conflict Resolution (SCCR) online event for The Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival (SMHAF). I teamed up with Dr Sara Watkin to talk about our work with the centre over the years. I spoke of how words connect us to the local and to place – its significance underestimated at best and wilfully erased by the centres of power at worst. Our thinking has been boxed in on all sides by our industrial and imperialist past, our capitalist and colonialist legacy still an all too present reality in oppressing other cultures around the world – oppressing ourselves too, if we’re honest. Our relationship with our own landscape, the soil that nourishes us in these islands, is mostly hugely dysfunctional. I can’t help reflecting on this as I remember the red lines which appeared across my slides, offensive insults in the comment box and a voice spoke over the top of me. Someone had hacked into the event and was intent on being malicious.
A rather unflattering screenshot of me presenting! 🙂
It wasn’t personal, a lashing out at something good. Sara Watkin commented compassionately as she began to present, this person is in great distress but we are not in a space that is appropriate to try to help. She spoke later in the session, of the way a child growing up amongst domestic abuse might choose to identify with the aggressor in a bid to find power in a situation they have no control over, becoming an aggressor themselves. It’s a maladaptive coping mechanism and in the light of the shooting in Texas, it’s hard not to wonder how it might be undone. I have read before of how traditional Hebridean villages would buffer the impact of troubled parents on their offspring because these young people were embedded in a local culture, their kith just as important as their kin. And of course, there is the land itself. Many of us can speak of the deep anchoring that comes from our connection with place, with our rootedness in a particular landscape. I think the response to such tragedies must be societal.
But now, it is back to work for me – a new round of edits have landed on my desk. Here are a couple of pictures from our trip to Charmouth this month, fossil-hunting. I may have been doing a little fact checking for the book while we were there. Hopefully that whets your appetite for what is to come!
This little guy followed me while planting my spuds
April has been such a dry month this year. I’d been panicking about sowing my seeds too early at the allotment after the temperature dropped, and then decided I’d maybe done right, glad my sowings had at least got a bit of moisture to start them off. I’ve also gone ‘no dig’ with my spuds, which has raised eyebrows. My plot-neighbours have decided the opposite and are going for deeper trenches this year. Half the fun is chewing it all over, as long as you don’t mind that the apocalyptic commentary on whatever approach you’re taking usually comes after you’ve already committed!
Attempting ‘no-dig’ potatoes this year
Fortunately I don’t grow sweetcorn, which has been the source of the greatest chewing-over between plot-holders this season. You see, there is a canny badger on the site who is partial to the golden crop. In a bid to outwit our striped friend, one gentleman is planting his sweetcorn inside a fruit cage. I overhead his pal scoffing at that, this badger can almost certainly pick locks! Well, in that case, he’d consider installing lasers. Immediately I had visions of the badger, clad in spy gear, dropping down on a wire from the nearest tree, glint in his eye.
Action shot!
I had a wonderful author visit to Seaton Primary School this month, running a session for KS2 (years 3-6, in case you were wondering), followed by a creative writing workshop for Year 5. The children were fabulously imaginative and engaged. I’m super-grateful to Jenny at the independent bookshop, Owl and Pyramid, for setting this up. Since things have opened up post-pandemic, it really has been very special to get out there and meet readers. I’m gaining confidence with each visit and it’s been heartening to get some great feedback from teachers… instructive and inspiring which supports their work in the classroom. I’ll take that.
Easter decorations this April
My first lot of notes arrived from my editor for the new book this month too, so I’ve had my head deep in thoughts about re-writes. This first stage of the editing process usually pays close attention to the structure of the book, making sure the pace is working, prodding characters into life, identifying plot-holes and those saggy bits that lack enough tension to drive the story forward. It doesn’t matter how lovely the editor, most writers seem to agree there’s a heart-sink moment when you get these notes. My brain screams, I can’t do it, there’s been some terrible mistake, someone mis-took me for writer, I have no ideas left at allllll! This panic has a name: Cognitive Dissonance. It’s where your neurons scramble for ideas to try and resolve the crisis of contradiction, searching every dusty recess of your cranium for something that might help, anything in fact, and slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, finds glitter amongst the dust. Then you’re away, freshly fired up to make this book the best you possibly can. That is, until the next round of notes arrive…
The other week a bird woke me with its clear song while the day was still dark. Our bedroom double-glazing is badly fitted so we are usually woken by raucous seagulls or the revving engines of the early-shift workers heading off, but not that morning. As I snuggled down for another five minutes (fatal!), I remember thinking, hurrah, that’s Spring then!
Since then, we’ve had blue tits exploring the second bird box on the end of the house. They tap away at the entrance with their beaks, and then tap from the inside, as if checking it’s solid enough. I hope they decide to stay! Our lawn has turned into a sea of celandines and primroses. We even had our first daisy. I’ve been working hard to encourage other plants than just grass to grow, and it seems to be working. Lots of early nectar for pollinators!
Though I’ve had a fair few soakings on my bike this month, the last couple of weeks have been heavenly, with some really spectacular blue skies. Entirely appropriate then that the house should be full of Christmas tunes! The kids performed their Covid-cancelled, school productions last week, bedecked in tinsel and festive jumpers. I have to be honest, my heart wasn’t in it, not with tulip bulbs bursting forth.
I handed in final illustrations for a project with The Scottish Centre for Conflict Resolution (SCCR) this month. These images will be part of a new campaign exploring the biology of decision-making. It’s a great project and it was great to work with them again. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve illustrated for SCCR since its inception, so it was lovely to be asked to be a panellist with Dr Sara Watkin, discussing our work with SCCR, as part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival this coming May. The event will be online, so anyone can attend. It’s free, but ticketed. You register via the following link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/293049227127
I also have some very exciting book news I can share a little bit of now. I have a children’s novel coming out in February next year! It’s a new story with a new publisher. I can’t wait to tell you more about it!
A wonderful Low, from The Spellbinding Secret of Avery Buckle, for World Book Day
I’ve landed in a heap at this weekend, and I’ve so much to tell you. I’ve been sitting here, Wren at my side, trying to craft it all into some sort of narrative but February has passed in a blur and I think I may only manage vignettes, like glimpses through train carriage windows. Wren is singing away as she colours rainbows over a misprinted 2021 diary I brought home from work. My brain feels a bit like her drawings, a frenzied riot of every shade in the rainbow.
Maybe I should start with a funny story…
“I have never seen that jumper in my life,” protested Middler, near the beginning of the month.
His poker face is incredible.
I raised an eyebrow.
“What? You’re telling me you’ve never seen the muddy school jumper in your size, with your name sewn into it, shoved in to the back of the wardrobe?”
He shrugs, grins and makes a run for it.
Storm Dudley rocked up, followed by Storm Eunice, followed by Storm Franklyn, which was all rather testing for my waterproof mascara on the bike to work. I hope you all survived. One morning, making a dash for it between squally gusts, Atlantic seasalt pebble-dashing my cheeks and my glasses, I glimpsed a lone swan, standing drearily on one foot in the churning grey waters deluging the river meadows. That was the day Russia invaded Ukraine. As the news rolled in, I felt a lot like that poor bird, uselessly standing on one leg, wondering what on earth to do with the deluge of grey news from a world seemingly determined to forget anything we ever learned through two world wars.
A cheeky primrose, seeded in the cracks of a pavement
We picked up the shards of five panes of greenhouse glass at the allotment after the storms had passed. Our back fence had blown down at home. Beneath the splintered wood, primroses twinkled in dark hollows. Daffodils in a tub we brought from Scotland, trumpeted golden glory, just as they have faithfully done every year since Little Owl pushed the bulbs into the compost with five year-old fingers. I cycled precariously to work with a pot of tulip bulbs balanced on the handlebars to brighten up the view from our office window. Sometimes the incongruence of the world seems unbearable. War and spring flowers. But it would be so much worse if the flowers didn’t bloom.
Little Owl’s daffs
On my phone I have a recording I made last February, of dawn out on the estuary. I rode out to the mouth of the river and in the dim lilac of a new day, listened to the wading birds calling to each other, the stars reflected in the millpond-still water. It’s a haunting sound and I love it. Deep inside, the language of wild things speaks to my heart in words I can only fathom wordlessly. Apple seeds I put in the fridge over winter to germinate are sprouting. They will be Wildings, of course. Most apples are from grafted trees, which produce a more reliable crop. I had been inspired to germinate these seeds by an old tale from the 1600s, of a tree up on the hill, going out of Exeter. It was famous for producing the best cider apples and it was a Wilding apple tree. So, who knows what my Wildings might become. Though I find infinite solace in wild things, I have no trite nature-related answers about the state of the world. I read an article by the social scientist, Chris Smaje, in the most recent edition of Land magazine, and couldn’t help think that we as a species need to work out why these ‘big men’, whether it’s Putin or Trump, continue to emerge from our group dynamics to wield such oppressive power. How is the world still reckoning with these archetypes that feel as though they’ve marched freshly out of the Roman Empire?
Over half term I took the children on one of our favourite school holiday trips – a cup of tea and a rummage through the shelves of the ‘big’ library in town. I stood outside the toilet in the library, studiously avoiding looking at the elderly gentleman waiting next to me. I was sure he didn’t approve. Little Owl and Wren were in the toilet together and all that could be heard was them singing the Bee Gees classic, “Ah-ah-ah-ah, Staying Alive!” over the sound of the hand drier. He looked a very ‘proper’ man and I was certain he wouldn’t have let his children carry on like this in his time. Mums everywhere can regale you with stories of older people who like to dispense their wisdom about your parenting fails just when you’re feeling at your most vulnerable. I couldn’t decide whether to brace myself for the comment I was sure was about to come, or to rap on the door and tell them to hurry up. It was then that I noticed his knees bend, and to my astonishment he started bopping up and down, singing along with them under his breath, “Ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive!” He caught my eye and winked.
Beaming after my school visit
Out of the blue, I was asked to do two very lovely things for World Book Day – a school visit and a library workshop. After struggling more than a little with the awkwardness of self-promotion as a debut author last year, it was so nice to be asked. And if anyone reading this is wondering about asking, please do. Whatever, your circumstances, as long as I can get the day off and you can cover my expenses, my answer will probably be ‘yes’. So, on the day before World Book Day, I did three author events in a row, each to three classes from year 6, then year 5, and finally, year 4. Apart from a couple of things I will tweak next time, they went really well, and I absolutely loved the imaginative ideas bursting out of these wonderful children. I was able to partner with a local independent bookshop for booksales, which was an added bonus.
Reading some of The Spellbinding Secret of Avery Buckle at my Riddles Workshop
Then, on actual World Book Day, I ran a Riddles Workshop at our local library. Exeter is home to a very special 10thcentury book called, funnily enough, the Exeter Book. It lives in the library at Exeter Cathedral, and is the largest and oldest volume of Anglo Saxon writings in the world. It contains a number of riddles. I talked about this with the children and we had a go at writing our own riddles on authentic (wink) 10th century parchment. It was another fun event, full of brilliant, bouncing children.
The Exeter Book
In other news, I’m working on an illustration commission, there is top-secret book news to come, work continues apace, and my fingers are itching for seed sowings in March! But for now, I think I will colour rainbows with Wren.
Around this time of year my Instagram feed fills with pictures of chitting potatoes from like-minded grow-your-own-ers. I love it! So here’s mine, and my treasure trove, box of seeds. I had a go at collecting quite a few of my own seeds this year so we’ll see how that works out (she says, somewhat nervously). Now and again, especially on a particularly grey afternoon, I like to lift this box to my ear and give it a shake to hear the seeds whisper that very special word… Spring!
Time. It’s a slippery thing. There have been seasons of my life where I’ve had too much of it, waiting for it to pass, knowing that each ticking second is a second’s worth of healing, or a countdown to freedom. In other seasons, it has vanished in the blink of an eye, too fast and too fleeting for me to even register it was ever there.
This week, Big Dreamer and I were given the gift of time passing at the pace of our heart beats. My wonderful mother-in-law minded the bairns and kept the home fires burning, while we spent six days in a holiday cottage, deep in a wooded Devon combe. And this week, I felt like my soul caught up with my body. This year marks a big birthday for us both, and though it isn’t really any more significant than any other birthday, we felt the need to take a moment, mark time. We’d both felt the sands shifting beneath our feet and needed to take stock.
And things have been shifting for a while. Wren, our smallest child started school, taking to it more like a duck than her namesake. Little Owl, no longer very little, started ‘big school’. A surprise job saw me moving on from my beloved District Nursing, and taking on a full-time, employed role – one, I’m loving. My award-winning children’s novel finally made it onto bookshop shelves, an event I’m unsure whether to chalk up as a beginning or and end. And Big Dreamer and I, have other dreams we want to pursue, dreams and hopes that slipped in under the door like the rays of sun on the dawn of the first day of Spring, unexpectedly bright, and unexpectedly right.
If I could give myself one gift for the years after this birthday, it would be the gift of everything in its proper time: to not have to rush the children into their school clothes and out of the door each morning; to not resent the minutes spent making packed lunches because I’m so desperate for bed; to savour writing my shopping list (I know that sounds ridiculous but aren’t well-stocked shop shelves a miracle to savour?); to daydream over my morning coffee, appreciating the unfolding of the seasons outside the window; to give our dreams time to grow.
But the truth is, that would turn my days into weeks, my months into years, which reflects another truth – I am doing too much. In the last couple of years, my friend has given up having a diary. She says it has made her more “zen”. She realised she was micro-managing. I’d love to do the same, but I know I can’t at the moment, because it would expose me – there are too many spinning plates, too many balls in the air. Without a list for this and a note of that, it all comes crashing down. I know, I know, what’s the worst that could happen? What exactly am I afraid of? But the alternative is not the way I want to live. I don’t want to spend my time lurching from one near-miss to the next, most of the time saved by other’s preparedness or convenience food. But, and it’s a big one, I also want to live everyday at the pace of my own heartbeat, not just special breaks.
So, we have taken stock this week and one of the difficult things I have decided is, to only write a blog post once a month. I don’t know if that will matter to anyone at all, but for me, it’s a hard thing to say because this blog has been a weekly practice that has nourished my writing, both good and bad (sorry about that!). This blog is just over ten years old, and as we explore new things, it seems the right time to step back a little. My plan is to post something around the first of each month. I hope you faithful readers will continue to stay with me. Here’s to 2022 – a year of exploring new things and starting to live at heartbeat pace.
January often sees me turning reflective, seeking out essayists like Kathleen Jamie and Alistair McIntosh, to give me the words and images to navigate the dark winter days. Old folk songs sing of the ‘ghosts’ that visit us at this time of year, and for me that’s a very apt description – the ghosts of paths not taken, the pang of loss, the bittersweetness of time passing and my children growing (no matter how well spent or wonderful), and the finger-tip touch of my hopes for the coming year. The old songs advise us to entertain these ‘ghosts’ – today we might call that allowing ourselves time to ‘process’.
These are words from John O’Donohue’s book, Blessings, which my sister bought me, and this January has given me words for the dark days. The idea of these blessings is rooted in old Gaelic prayer traditions, captured in Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica – blessings spoken over the routines of the day, from Grace at mealtimes through to milking the cow or taking a journey. These prayers were also often called ‘charms’, revealing the awkwardness of language in trying to capture the nuance of the human spirit. Words like ‘charm’ bring out Fundamentalists in a rash, and attracted the fire and brimstone of Presbyterianism back in the day, but these prayers are a practice we now understand to be deeply contemplative.
More recently, echoes of this spiritual practice are also to be found in the beautiful book Lost Words by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris, which was re-imagined by traditional musicians in Spell Songs, reconnecting the written text with its oral, spoken roots. Here is a link to one of the songs, The Lost Words – Blessing.
As a busy, working mum, I recognise in these blessings or charms, an imaginative response to exactly what John O’Donohue describes – the rushing and fast travelling of modern life. These prayers were, and are, the tools of ordinary folks to anchor themselves, rocks dropped on ropes to the stormy depths, so as to keep noticing the “small miracles” amidst the waves and currents of the daily grind, and to keep themselves “slow and free” in a rapidly industrialising world.
And so I have begun to collect my own blessings, short strings of words, inspired by my daily routine – getting up in the morning, putting on my clothes. When I speak a blessing over the quick evening tea I’m serving up, asking for the food to nourish my children, I slow down, and the task becomes a “small miracle”. The words make me take notice. In our consumerist society, which both despises, and erases, the work and the worker, my little blessings ground and dignify my work to provide for my family and my community. Now there’s a thought for dark days.
