HAUNTINGS & POCKETS OF TIME

A diary entry of an ordinary day tinged with sadness and memories, that turns into a tiny but perfectly formed and extraordinary escape.

REMEMBER, REMEMBER

I’m fascinated by the prevalence of pyromania in the place where I live. Trees, benches, posts and wheelie bins throughout the city and its suburbs bear the charred and blackened scars of impish arsonists. Burnt out cars and stolen motorbikes languish on the playing fields, like the washed-up carcasses of marine creatures, molten puddles of...

HALLOWEEN NOTES FROM A TRAIN

These days, returning to the mothership, even for the briefest of spells, brings lots of ‘feels’, especially when it coincides with a visit from a faraway tribe member.  Together we resurrected the spirits of our shared ancestry and peered back into the shadows. Curious, like Hansel and Gretel at the gingerbread door, it was strangely...

BERTIE BIT MY FINGER

As Bertie’s back molars clamped together on the end of my middle finger, acute pain turned to a flash of indignant rage when I caught sight of the poor hen’s glass bead of an eye. Glazed with a passive kind of terror, it swivelled sideways to meet mine and seemed to ask, ‘Why?’  I had...

A BOX OF GREENNESS

There was a microcosmic wonderland we called ‘The Indoor Garden’ right in the middle of the house where I lived as a little girl.  It was a secret retreat for frogs, geckos, snakes, or sometimes enormous whirring cicadas that you would glimpse with unease through the open air brick walls that were meant to contain...

Morning Prayers

My last morning in Eskdale I bathed first in faceted layers of jubilant birdsong and soft golden light. The wrens and throstles sang from the cherry blossom, a mocking chant, ‘You must leave today, ha-ha! We can stay forever, tee-hee!’  The tumbling stream beckoned with the seductive whisper of a secret lover. It’s proximity to...

LET ME EXPLAIN…

Side by side, we remained rooted to the spot unmoving, boots planted in the frost-encrusted sand, eyes squint-searching for signs in the wide expanse of undulating curls and sharp gulley edges of a gritty North Sea swell. We looked on, patiently waiting in faint hope for the rhythm of foamy breakers to slow to a...

SEASONS EASING

Back in the days of ART&ROSEGallery I had the privilege of spending a few weeks exhibiting a mixed media painting by artist and author Julian Swift. In it, a pair of sight hounds, lurcher like long dogs, stand side by side, their gaze crossing great distances in time and space from a wide wetland landscape...

To Err Is Human

Errrr… WTF happened?  One minute I’m skipping all over the place like a ketty-jacked Mr. Motivator, a Green Goddess, Slimmer of the Year, bad marriage leaver, firm and lithe flippin Fonda-follower, full of fun, frolics and fantastic foughts of the future.  I turn my back for just a second, (maybe longer, like, 12 months, perhaps)...

Never underestimate the person who cuts your hair.

Throughout life I have maintained strictly monogamous relationships with those persons permitted direct scissor-access to my bonce.  It started from birth. As soon as my wispy white-blonde curls were long enough for a teeny trim, my Dad, being good at everything, and naturally nifty with the shears, took on the mantle of chief coiffeur in...