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. 

I Choose A Hound For Life, Not Just For Christmas

Poor Francis Thompson. His poem "The Hound of Heaven" speaks of a soul pursued by the Divine. He must've lived exhausted. The poem tells of fleeing the Hound through space and time, hurrying through his mind and emotions. It begins:

"I fled Him down the nights and down the days

I fled Him down the arches of the years

I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears

I hid from him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot precipitated

Adown titanic glooms of chasme'd fears

From those strong feet that followed, follwed after

But with unhurrying chase and unperturbe'd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instsancy,

They beat, and a Voice beat

More instant than the feet:

All things betray thee who betrayest me."

And on it goes. This text was one of those set for my English Literature O level back in 1980. I was class expert in the sort of doctrinal information that got me top marks in essays about Poems of Faith and Doubt. But what strikes me on reading the poem again (after a reflective moment in which it sprang to mind) is that I didn't know, and wasn't taught, to apply the word co-dependency to the Hound / Pursued relationship. And if I knew anything about stalking it was something to do with deer, not frightening, unwanted attention. If I was commenting on The Hound of Heaven now, I might say in my essay that a restraining order on that Hound is long overdue! 

If you've ever been pursued by someone who purports to love you, if you've been hassled, threatened by a person-thinks-they're-god, who won't just leave you alone, who doesn't respect your simplest boundaries, then this poem, which is at one level praising the persistence of divine love, will send a chill to your heart, as it does now to mine. 

If you've ever had this said to you, "I love you so much I'll harm myself if you don't XYZ...," then the whole Hound-poem thing looks more terrifying and manipulative than pinnacle of Victorian ode-writing. No wonder Francis was "sore adread". No wonder he, in the absence of twenty-first century trauma-informed therapy, capitulated to the Hound in the end. No wonder even the care of others who rated his poetry couldn’t help him give up his opium addiction. 

I'm sorry, but English Literature O level notwithstanding, I think The Hound of Heaven a ghastly poem. I know it was written in a different era. I know it rhymes, and is an extended metaphor, and is thought be great, particularly by those who share Thompson’s faith, but that's not enough to redeem it for me.

I'm grateful, nevertheless, that the poem exists for this reason:Thompson and his Dangerous Dog highlight the importance of choosing the right hound to live alongside. One that's cool, self-sufficient, has a band of kind and reliable archetypal friends. A dog who sleeps on his back atop his kennel, listens to Woodstock speaking in Bird, writes novels, and recognises, and has compassion for, human foibles. Most of all, a hound who is at peace with his own doggy, dogged nature, and doesn't feel the need to capture and dominate others. 

So, Snoopy! I choose Snoopy as my hound for Christmas, and for life. 

NB - I searched for copyright-free images of Snoopy ... so I'm aware this isn't a Schulz original! 

I "Do What [I] Damn Well Please"

When Suzanne invited me to see Lambrini Girls (punk band Phoebe Lunny and Selin Macieira-Bosgelmez) at Birmingham's XOYO night club the other weekend, I said yes without really knowing. It was a bit Molly Bloom of me. Yes! I said, Yes! 

I'd never been to a punk gig before, just like there are a lot of things I've never done before. There's an advantage to having spent my youthful years wrapped up in church being told what I could and couldn’t do / say / think. There’s so much I like yet to discover. Hallelujah! 

Sixty was the new sixteen in that night club among a diverse age-group of parents and teenagers: people living and reliving their youths. And even better, the day before I got to walk with Suzanne on the beach. We spent the afternoon in Aberdyfi in the clear November sunshine. It was the perfect, peaceful preparation...

... for the noise of it! The exultant, white, brash, crashing, strident, energetic noise of drums and bass and guitar and that voice (what a voice!) calling out the patriarchy, misogyny, injustice, racism, homophobia ... and there was tenderness too, and joy, and hurt and crowd-surfing and an enormous mosh pit, and all of it LOUD and PASSIONATE and UNAPOLOGETIC! 

It's the un-apology that mesmerised me. And when I opened a birthday card from my younger son yesterday, he framed the thought for me in a way I could apply immediately: Have a lovely day Mum, “doing what you damn well please!” Something about his turn of phrase, the love expressed, opened up my birthday in that moment. I'd planned, for example, to postpone my present-opening till the evening when his big brother would be home. "But I please to know what my presents are now!" I thought, so I damn well opened them over breakfast, and I'm so glad I did, and I knew my sons would be too. What I found was that there are people who clearly know and care about me. So much thoughtfulness in the givings. It made me very damn pleased.

I’d already planned to take the train (I damn well like trains) with my friend Paul (a damn good fellow) to Aberdyfi (thank you for the reminder, Suzanne, that Aberdyfi pleases me). Before boarding, I had damn pleasing coffee and a bacon roll at Shrewsbury Coffeehouse. I took pens and paper on the train and we did some damn writing and drawing. (My drawing has all the characteristics of someone who damn well doesn’t care what anyone thinks. Paul's is sophisticated, funny, and elegant).

In Aberdyfi, I went into the pleasing sea. Damn! It was invigorating! I got wet up to my neck by lying down in it as it was too damn dangerous to go in deep. I pleased myself, eating fish and chips and bara brith, bought a set of chalks, and ginger beer. Paul ate fish and chips and bara brith too, so I think he was damn well pleasing himself, but that's for him to say. The trains ran through storm Bram unapologetically, as pretty much on time as they cared to be. 

At the Lambrini Girls gig, I couldn't take my eyes off mic-brandishing Lunny and her embodied fury, intellect, and too-small-shirt/bare-midriff-fragility. To be so certainly herself - how does she do that, I wondered.  How to care and not to care? I'm damn pleased I learned more about that on yesterday's journey. 

Happy damn pleasing train-swim-fish&chip days to all of us: girls, women, others, Lambrini or not. May there by many happy, damn pleasing, returns.

I Do Happy

Not all my poetry is about love, death, queues, and swimming. This one has just been shortlisted for Poem of the Month, a regular feature of Verve Poetry and Spoken Word Festival. When I saw November's theme, EAT, it felt like the right time to send off my ice cream poem, the one I wrote after visiting Shrewsbury's Gelatistry a couple of summers ago. 

Everything Ice Cream

Sitting on the steps, I’m eating ice cream

when a dog goes past and it seems we’re each in need

of the way he stops and the way I scratch his ears.

The ice cream is my for-now-favourite flavour.

The dog, caramel brown, looks with his chocolate eyes

at the ice cream, then up his lead towards you,

as if to say, 

                    Hey! This – my ears, the ice cream,

this perfect blue and sunshine ice cream day.

This. 

          And so it goes sometimes. The dog and you,

me, sitting on the steps just then, open

to something as ordinary as you walking your dog,

strolling past, stopping by to say hello.

The winning poem and other shortlisted poems can be read here.

I Travel In Time (this one's not about swimming)

The programming of a concert is an art in itself. Done well, an audience will notice the progression from piece to piece, while also having a sense that there’s a whole behind the parts. I felt that whole on Saturday listening  Oran Johnson and Jonty Lefroy Watt’s Strings, Still Lifes and Scenery in the beautiful setting of Clungunford’s St Cuthbert’s Church. 

Since meeting the Four Quartets in English Literature A level, I’ve been fascinated by TS Eliot’s phrase ‘the still point of the turning world’. He captures in this metaphor the idea that, if you can get to the very middle of something (as with a wheel), you'll find that the central point isn't moving, though all around is turning. The point itself in physics terms (i.e. in terms that stretch the limits of my mind and imagination) is one atom big.

Saturday’s programming was audacious, in particular the second half bracketing of two new works (Kulning by Lefroy Watt and Murmurations by Johnson) around the Adagio from Bach’s Violin Sonata no.1 in G minor. This was exquisitely played by Zea Hunt, but (and especially, you may well think), how can two young composers in 2025 sit themselves either side of Bach? Then again, how can they not? 

What this Jonty Lefroy Watt : JS Bach : Oran Johnson juxtaposition did was open up the Bach to newness. As I listened to the three pieces, surrounded by a warm, attentive audience, I felt myself gradually lulled out of time. It was as if the Bach was fresh as the pieces either side. I imagined what it would’ve been like to hear any of Bach's compositions as a world premiere, and then realised I had: feeling on this occasion his composition as completely, viscerally original. This is the joy of live performance - it's all new to us.

By the time we reached the sweeping shapes of Johnson’s Murmurations, I felt myself eternal (not immortal, nothing so grand). I think I mean eternal in the sense of experiencing my life as a singular life stretching backward and forwards within a collective of lives. It was like reaching right into the legacies and promises of creativity as fundamental as Bach's and as vibrant as that of the young musicians in the church. I'm not sure if the still point atom was the quality of  concentration given by the audience, or a singular note - let's say G - of music. It doesn't matter - as Eliot says elsewhere, 'words strain, sometimes crack' if we lay too much on them. 

I’m so grateful to the musicians - Declan Hickey, Eliza Nagle, Zea Hunt and to the composers - all of them so young, and so experienced in musical technique and traditions. I’m so grateful to Anna Dreda and St Cuthbert's for hosting a concert of contemporary classical music. And I'm so grateful to the people listening with me - to all who supported the event in so many ways: for the chance, for those minutes, to feel myself stilled, connected to all that has been, all that is to come. 

Jonty Lefroy Watt; Declan Hickey; Eliza Nagle; Zea Hunt; Oran Johnson

Photo - Ally Dunavant

I See Myself Home

I've returned home from August, and from the resolve that emerged as I went into this gift of a month that I'd swim outdoors each day. It wasn't a rule so much as a blessing I've given myself, and that was given to me by spending most of the time on P's farm in Sweden, a few hundred metres from a beautiful lake.

Something about taking this love of mine - for water - sacredly has been part of a cleansing that I've felt on my skin and within my body. 

The resolve has also been a means for creativity as I've travelled towards home, and for solving how to take this water with me into my homelife via a couple of days in Oslo. I've managed it like this: yesterday - in the open air pool on the edge of Shrewsbury; on Friday - in a barrel of sea water as part of a sauna in Oslo; on Thursday - from a beach on the island of Hovedøya reached by boat from Aker Brygge, Oslo; on Wednesday - first thing in little Norrsjön before I left P's farm for the station. Swimming has given these last few days a shape that has made the leaving of August purposeful amid the undercurrent of sadness that comes with endings.

This morning, I swam out of August's final day in the River Severn just along from where I live. It was J. who helped me to see I could find my way home like this. We met early, and she brought a flask of tea for afterwards. All these years in Shrewsbury, and I've never swum in the river which characterises the town's year with its floods and lows, its duck families, weir, its leaping salmon. Without the peaty clean clarity of Norrsjön it has its own beauty in trees, swans, and tiny fishes.

And on my allotment, I've started a new project: Biscuit Tin Lake. I won't be able to swim in it until I work out how to shrink down to Lilliputian height. But I've sunk the tin into soil, filled it with water, surrounded it with stones, shells, and rose and raspberry prunings. I've floated a few flowers on its surface in memory of friends and family. And maybe, in September, there'll be birds that come to drink, and to bathe.