I Sprint to the Finish

I'm not a natural runner, but I have become a habitual one. I like the almost weekly feeling of surprise I experience when I turn up at 9am to the start of a run (not a race) with 100s of other participants. Finishing, however, is never a surprise because I've made that my only goal. Were I more of a risk-taker, more hare and less tortoise (to borrow from Aesop), I might run faster earlier, but then I might have to give up (so my thinking goes) and nap en route. As soon as I reach the home stretch, especially when I can see the finish flag, I feel confident and pick up speed. 

I've had several other finish lines to cross this week. These finishes have included the usual ones for teaching sessions at work; a printing deadline for the 2nd edition of a poetry collection I've edited for a friend (more on this soon); my own poetry submission for a collaborative exhibition in Girona in the autumn (more on this soon); a mid-May aim to get sweet corn planted in the new badger-proof section of my allotment (more on this now):

This flurry of finishes has been satisfying but also perturbing- maybe my motivation levels are shallow, and it’s only a deadline which results in completion?

But reflecting further on what I've learned from all those Parkruns leads me to think a little differently. I had, after all, to do the first 199 in order to complete the 200th. Slow and steady. The sight of the finish each time has been the measurement I need to judge the equation between the resources at my disposal and the task in hand. 

I'm going to apply this Parkrun learning more consistently to other areas of my life as I approach the era I'm thinking of as 'elder-hood’ and see where it takes me. Rather than rushing into anything, I’ll try building steadily towards a goal, whether it’s DIY, writing and editing poetry and prose, making a new composting system at the allotment. I’ll wait to pick up speed, relish the sense of completion, when I can see clearly where I'm heading. Then repeat, repeat, repeat.

I Picnic On Ice

Here…

...and it was so beautiful. Imagine! 

There are landscapes I’ve never been in before, and this was one. A high lake in Sweden, frozen to 40-50 cm thick of ice. But not frozen as a single sheet, not as a block-lid, but made from layers and layers, built up over what has been a particularly cold winter and changing now that spring is coming. 

The top lake layer: remnants of recent snow, the morning's recent frost, some places a sheen of water depending on where sunlight has fallen. In places, near the edge and under the tree canopy, there are scenes of broken glass crystals, like the perfect fall of a precious chandelier, and in others, slews of glistening ice caviar. 

This lake surface is flat-with-rising-places. These are mini alpine mountains, where expanding ice has pushed itself into Mont Blanc-resonant peaks to alleviate the pressure that comes with expansion. There are fissures too and in some places, there are small portholes to the next layers down, and these are mysterious with interlacing crystals and thin pastry layer accumulations. 

We sat, P, L, and I, and talked of rootedness and our lives (which, I've just thought, add up to a small-large 188 years). We ate and drank, looking outwards. It was peaceful, and there was a white silence as backdrop to these connections. 

And all the while the sun warmed us without the interruption of a single cloud.

I Fall Flat on my Back

I’m listening to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. One could be forgiven for thinking the opening is prelude to something pastoral and grandly reminiscent of drifts of snowdrops in Cound woods, Shropshire, on a Sunday in February. Spring’s in the air. Some tunes are reminiscent of the 6th - lamb-leaping exuberance contained in the wood, brass, silver and guts of a symphony orchestra.

Imagine that first audience of Beethoven’s thinking they knew where they stood in a Viennese whirl, in their dancing shoes, riding boots. Imagine me thinking I knew where I stood, on Shropshire home soil, in my walking boots, stepping carefully enough around the deeper puddles, plodding through the shallow ones, taking it at variable walking paces, andante, guided by the terrain.

And then imagine me climbing up through the woods, along a clay-slip muddiness of ridge, and spotting, suddenly (through a gate) an open grassy field.

The terrain of the 7th’s second movement is slow to build. It’s funereal, ending in a question, leading to the run down the hill of the third movement.. 

I think I thought I was Maria von Trapp in a Beethoven alpine pastoral for a moment when I saw the hills alive with grass, and I left the path walking, entered the field at an allegro. 

You never run down wet grass, everyone said afterwards. But I did, and I fell flat, picked myself up, fell flatter still. 

Mud on my anorak, my trousers, my hat, my watch, my boots - mud in my hair. I lay face up to the sky, a small child, strayed from the path, accelerating into that faster and faster beat of spring, grin on her face, revelling in this forerunner of an ode to the joys of all the outdoors that’s to come, and soon: a child relieved to be so far beyond hope of cleanliness. 

I Paint My Year

I have taken delivery of the final bowl in my 'tree' series. Here it is:

This is the fourth bowl I've painted since December 2024 at the decorating studio in the Emma Bridgewater factory in Stoke. The visits have been a joy in themselves, the bowls holding memories of time spent with Charlotte, Gabriel, Jonty, Ally, Ruth, and Charlotte again. 

On my first visit, I painted 'Winter', and instinctively set up the style of my Tree Bowl series. A circle of branches outside. Oak leaves inside. A sun always in the inside centre. 

The IFS (Internal Family Systems) model of therapy, which I'd just begun, conceptualises the compassionate, curious, creative, confident, clear Self as being like the ever-present sun, sometimes obscured by clouds, but never absent. 

I used  the colours I am drawn to, which is most of them. I wrote words I felt arise from my own centre around the bottom rim of the bowl. 

In December 2024, I was over-wintering, sheltering from the storms that had swept across my life - trauma revisited and compounded by present-day events. My coping strategies weren't working in the face of the new onslaught, so my therapist was teaching me to find a reliable place of safety within. I came to visualise this as sheltering in the idea of myself as tree. So this first bowl reads: "I am my own tree...I return to myself...free and wild." That was my hope. 

Spring saw some greening at the tips of the crown of thorns branches I'd imagined, then drawn: outside on the first bowl, inside on the second, outside on the third, inside on the fourth. Here's the second, backgrounded by pens and pencils. 

"I await next year's greening."

I knew my healing and growth would take time, the passage of seasons, and patience; and yet, that waiting was so hard and painful at times that I wanted to stop the process. The tree bowls and my perfectionist, pedantic streak helped - I needed to complete the set. 

By summer, the shoots had grown, sheltering me from rain and sunshine - the wreath of leaves on the outside again, the oak leaves inside:

And also last summer, with the help of daily swims in Sweden, and living among trees on Penny's forest farm, I was finding the resources I needed to see the sun beyond the clouds. 

So, to autumn, which is a fall, a shedding. The words on my fourth bowl encapsulate what I've learned to respect as the rhythms of growth. I've come to accept that the storms of 2024-5 will enable whatever comes next, and I treasure these Tree Bowls as keepsakes of my journey, a reminder of the ever-present company of the sun, and so many kind friends and family. Thank you.

"I fall into earth-life.

Acorn. Willow-seed.

We are the making of ourselves."

I Libate My Breakfast

It started on Boxing Day when I was breakfasting with my Longest-Serving Friend. The brandy bottle was still on the table from, oh, I don't know, Christmas Day? I had made up a bowl of granola, yoghurt, banana. 

"Have some seeds with that," my LSF encouraged. "Tim would be pleased."

When my LSF mentions Tim in this context, Tim is Tim Spector of the Zoe project. This is a project intent on researching our gut microbiomes in order for us to live in better harmony with ourselves. We are on first-name terms with him. And when I say we, I mean my LSF and I - I've no idea what Tim thinks about this.

Key to Tim's research is the finding that eating a variety (30 different types each week) of vegetables (including nuts, spices, etc.) is a Good Thing and creates a healthy and diverse culture in our guts. 

So, I added the seeds, then my LSF asked, "Brandy?" or maybe she exclaimed, "Brandy!" and I said, "Yes please," and poured a dash on top of my breakfast pile.

It was rather lovely, so the next day, I repeated the experience, then got on the train back to Shrewsbury to resume normal porridge with berries service. 

Today, after my run with the Shufflers, I decided that to honour myself, I'd skip porridge and have a breakfast of crisps and red pepper hummus in the bath. This is all part of my 'embodiment' programme, or my 'doing what I damn well please' programme. 

At some subconscious level, I think I was trying to recreate the wonderful Boxing Day libated breakfast experience, because about halfway through eating the bag of crisps (dipping them one by one into the hummus) I knocked the pack (perched on the bath side) and it upended into the water. 

I was faced with a dilemma. Crisps floated on the almost-clean-but-not-quite-let's-face-it bathwater. To eat or not to eat? It wasn't really the question - it was, I saw straightaway, an opportunity to find out more about my preferences. 

I can now say that, on balance, I prefer dry crisps, but also that I prefer eating wet crisps to letting them go to waste.

Self-knowledge is a wonderful thing. It's the road less travelled by me to self-acceptance. I didn't berate myself for the crisp dropping, or for my choice to eat them in the bath, as I might've done once. No. I simply got to know myself, and my crisp preferences, a little better. 

I don't know if Tim would be pleased. I suspect he would. A crisp is vegetable, after all, not animal or mineral - as are chickpeas and red peppers. I suspect he'd just remind me to eat 27 further vegetables this week, and to clean the bath later.