Whilst you are waking - a memory surfaces.

I marvel at you

The mists of sleep dressing your eyelids

As they move from deep somnambulance

To a dreamy semi-consciousness

The softened muscles, contours

The hills and valleys of your landscape

Your bare-chested forests, 

Uncoiling from winter to spring, taut, vibrating

From dormant brittleness to fluid movement.

I walk your brow with my fingers,

As your abeyant dreams, touched by a cautious sun

Allow a little smile to display itself like clouds of snowdrops

And drooping daffodils,  dressing the banks of a meandering

Riverbed, swollen, sluggish, powerful.

As you emerge from sleep, the weight of burdens

Sliding like silk-sheeted storms from your bed.

And the air is perfumed by your quickening breath

As birds rise, as clouds disperse, as grass quivers

And winds calm. Spring, sweeping hesitant,

Along the lanes and byways, a light touch,

A gentle presence pulling the earth into re-birth.

Whilst you are waking I gather myself in, 

Alert to the uncurling softness, the downy yawn

Surfacing, a blinking moment of awareness

Comforting like my warm palm against your rough cheek

Or a sweet, shy kiss. I hold this moment, knowing

That soon you will rise and wander away towards summer.

February, 2024

Quite the nicest present I've had this Christmas was a cup of tea in bed that my eldest made for me. I can't remember the last time someone bought me a cup of tea in bed, such a simple but lovely treat, full of heart. Tomorrow will be New Years Eve and in 2024 a whole chunk of my past life will have gone, many of the people in it, and the home where I nurtured my family since my husband to be and I, moved there in 2001 shortly before our marriage. The home where I saw my girls grow and flourish, entertained friends and ... so much of all that life, the memories, the love, the laughter have all withered away. My husband has decided that the woman he met on the internet and whom has been calling him, her 'boyfriend' since Christmas Eve 2022, is the one he wants to move forward with because he understood we were over. And beside she's sweet and I'm terrifying (apparently). People are complicated aren't they? There are only victims and survivors when a marriage collapses. Whilst I am grateful that the holding pattern of 2023 is now over, I grieve all those memories, all those wasted years, as I realise what an utter failure I have been. I can't pin point the wrong turn, was it getting married in the first place? Did I miss something? But as this year, this life and this marriage steam-rollers to a close, and I face the spite, and those taking pleasure in my pain, I can't see a fixed point where I failed to do what mothers do 'keep it all together'. Perhaps there were too many. It's really hard to love yourself, without tangible proof that you are loveable.

I'm just embarking on a book by Philippa Perry entitled THE BOOK YOU WANT EVERYONE YOU LOVE* TO READ *(and maybe a few you don’t). In it Philippa, a psychotherapist (artist and agony aunt),  identifies areas where people most need guidance and tools to help them through life. The first chapter is entitled 'How We Love" and why we crave connection... I seem to be losing all mine, unable to find people outside of my working life who make me feel good, and whom have the time to spend it with me. Perry says "Everyone needs to feel that they belong, maybe to a family, a project, a community, or to another person. We are creatures of connection and we deny this at our peril". Then there's 'How We Change" navigating the New for Better or Worse. I'm probably going to have to read this a fair few times and make good notes-to-self. In recent years I've lost a raft of constants and floated on a lake of uncertaintanties. My girls have grown up and are busy forming their own lives, both my parents have gone, my marriage has  inexorably failed, my finances are unstable, my future - a sea-mist. That's a lot to deal with in order to manage the final chapter 'Contentment'. I strive for that, a 'metaphorical' cup of tea in bed, a contentment in life, it's a low ambition to match my low self-esteem but it's something at least. 

It's pretty late in my life to be negotiating such a big and unnatural ending, and if I'm honest I can't find the heart or the enthusiasm to think about beginnings. I'm still processing that one of the biggest life-changing commitments I have ever made has crashed and burned, and how destructive that has been. I've made mistakes before, I've endured life events that took strength to pick myself up from but this one has somehow eaten away at me from the inside and if there's a spark of light left in me to rekindle my spirit, I can't find it. I shall have to be content with that emptiness, continue to read books that may or may not have the answer and remain calm in front of the coming storm. 2025 will be here soon enough, and if I'm there with it having survived, I can only hope that there's the promise of a cup of tea in bed and perhaps a home, cosy, welcoming, with a view from the windows, someone to take my hand, hug my shoulders and walk across a sandy bay,  leaving footprints behind as sea birds wheel overhead and waves run in and out with happy excitement. (I write that with some irony, that line of 'faux positivity' becomes not just nauseating but also exhausting).  A wise soul recently shared some wisdom on dealing with overwhelm,  'just nibble at the edges' they said. Sound advice, I shall nibble at the edges like a biscuit and hope I get to dunk it someday in a cup of tea that has been bought to me in bed.

Winter’s Bridge

Don’t you think the coppered leaves

Swing boating in the damp air

Are treasure, rare?

Can you hear the kestrels cry

As they swoop above the mornings mist

Isn’t it rich with promise?

Have you seen the drooping Bryony

Thin stemmed and weeping

Their bright-berried beading??

Can you smell the wet earth

Decaying under wind-swept skies

Tree roots delving in the fruity soil

And burrowing insect life?

Don’t you think the ancient oak

Bare branched in the biting storm

Stands, a mighty form?

Isn’t the shock of frost cracking

The slap of cold air at night-fall

A moving memorial?

Isn’t the strike of rain on hard ground

The fall of hooves on frozen stone

A percussive encore of land and bone? 

Here at the end of the season

Joy still held like a breath

Ice keeping life in a moment

Of contemplation and death

Stealing through valleys and hillsides

Gardens, field hedge and old lanes

Moving from a ripe maturation

Concealing new life in its pain.

Soon you will see the Spring coming

The revival of field once flood-drowned,

Listen to the song of birds busy building

Feel the give underfoot of soft ground

Sense the quickening of life in water

Flowing with purpose renewed

Wonder at the bounty of changing season that

From this place on this bridge you can view.

©JulietB 2021

The sea was limply swilling around the bay

In the snow-bitten air

As the Dorset mummers prepared to put on their play.

It seemed everyone had stopped to hear.

The thrumming tambours and bashing of tin cans 

Rowdy along the quiet Sunday seafront,

A beer-induced ruddiness spreading a breathy good cheer

The ancient, outlandish, ridiculous flummery

Flashing through a crowd, hungry for all that.

"Here come I, Old Father Time" cried a man in a battered yellow hat

And a soft, beautifully intricate kimono

That once must have been a treasure.

A man in horns, tights and leather flying jacket

Danced among the bollards

Shouting “Keep off me schmatter it cost a packet!”

As a loping woman in fairy lights and boots

Waves her violin and lisps "Give room, give room"

And give me room to rise
And I'll show you such activity
On this merry Christmastide.

Activity of youth, activity of age

Such activity has never been seen

Or acted on a stage.

And by the bus stop, clad in black and fur

The slasher prowled and growled, delighted no doubt, 

By the thought of slashing in his Dorset burr

And terrifying children.

A man in garish Crimbo jumper topped by crown of green

Starts the crowd a dancing (like he didn’t think he’d be seen).

And a man in a nearby guesthouse watching for snow

Sighed a sigh of centuries, as he gazed from his window

Reviewing how his year had passed,

Of what he had to let go

And wondered if his broken heart

Missed him much, or no?

Could he be a better father, uncle, brother

Left without heart amidst all his deep sorrow?

As the bells and flashing lights 

Of the merry mummers passed

Like a cluster of crows

Stoking up the fires of their bravado 

With chaotic percussion.

The man grabbed his coat and set to follow.

And in the warmth of a seaside pub,

Rough and sticky with spilled cheer and blood

The ancient folk tale revealed its own pain

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen all

And a merry Christmas to you all
I am a noble doctor, both stout and good

With my created hand I can purge the blood

Cure the stitch, the itch

The palsy or the gout

All pains within, all pains without,

Silenced by a curvaceous Saint George

Wielding her mighty light sabre 

(from a stall along the prom)

Decrying the crook and climbing on tables

Niftily saving her ample breast from 

Deftly clutching fingers.

Heroically, rising from legend and myth

With the promise of rescue, healing, 

O hold your hand

O hold your hand

And let these quarrels fall

For here we get our bones all smashed

For no cause at all.

And the men at the bar, the women by the fruit machine

Eyes misted with memory and unfulfilled dreams

Slapped their hands, stomped their feet, and joined in with a roar

Because wasn’t this merriment what Christmas stood for?

And the man from the guesthouse, scrolled through his phone

As if Christmas was in there, as he joined with the throng.

Impromptu caroling, all drunken and stout

Erupted as the mummers stealthily saw themselves out.

No asking for dues, no shaking of hats, they left -

Back to the hospital, back to their shifts

Back to a Christmas impossibly lived.

Christmas Mummers

© JulietB

Here in the UK we have been suffering a chaotic conservative government that keeps appointing Cabinet Ministers who espouse deeply extremist views, or whom are simply not intelligent enough to hold a position of power without exposing their ignorance and vices to the general public. Thanks to social media, and the digital highway the general public in this day and age are far less tolerant of stupidity and malfeasance when the perpetrator is having much longer lunch breaks in all expenses paid in-house restaurants, and getting away with 'stuff' that others can't, simply by dint of being an 'MP in Westminster'. Our latest 'sacking' of a cabinet member is our wholly 'unsuited to the job' Suella Braverman (1), who despite being the daughter of refugees had taken on a hard-line stance as UK Home Secretary (2) on 'stopping the boats' (3) (refugees fleeing war, or political, moral or religious persecution and crossing international waters in unsuitable craft, often exploited by criminal gangs, in order to take sanctuary in more tolerant countries). She also made headlines by declaring that people who were homeless had made a 'lifestyle choice' (5). Colleagues and senior party members advised her to not discuss such complex issues and to use wiser language but Suella refused to budge and ultimately this was her downfall. She was sacked on Nov 13th, 2023 in a a Cabinet shuffle, following comments made to the media that stirred up the far right and led to ugly confrontations in London during the Remembrance events at the Cenotaph (4).

The Lifestyle choice comment touched me deeply. I recently chatted to a man who came to fix my heating, who told me that he tried to steer clear of politics and get on with living his life. I replied that I felt, as a woman in a patriarchal society, that I had a duty to get involved with politics, otherwise people would make detrimental decisions on my behalf and I would have no voice in the making of those decisions and subsequently less control over not just my own life but over my own body. We had already discussed how he nearly lost his wife in childbirth and how that had affected him.

I don't suppose anyone other than those with an eye to supreme power and megalomania really want to get involved in politics, its a dirty, egotistical world, however as so many enlightened women of the twentieth century have discovered, it's a vital step in giving a voice to the repressed, supressed and downtrodden. Sadly, that clearly doesn't mean that female politicians aren't subject to the same corrupting influence that power and status exherts. But is homelessness a lifestyle choice? Anymore than poverty is? No, I truly think not. I think that a capitalist driven state means the few exploiting the many, that a majority of people are driven into poverty, homelessness, debt, and vice not through choice but by design. The design being government policy influenced by moneylenders, banks and business who profit and exploit the lack of education, ignorance and naievite of people who are trying to live more simply, or whom are more susceptible to undue influence. "There but by the grace of God, Go I". In 2020 Cambridge University press published :-

Stating,  "Many have depicted a steady rise in lifestyle politics. Individuals are increasingly using everyday life choices about consumption, transportation, or modes of living to address political, environmental, or ethical issues. While celebrated by some as an expansion of political participation, others worry this trend may be detrimental for democracy, for instance, by reducing citizens to consumers. Implicit in this common critique is the notion that lifestyle politics will replace, rather than coexist with or lead to, other forms of political participation. 

In dealing with lifestyle choice purely from a political perspective the article echoed something deeper in the fabric of society, that politics was in fact, pre-determining 'lifestyle'. I am not sure that 'choice' is anything more than a throw-away add-on giving the phrase more resonance because increasingly, 'choice' has become a luxury not a right. As government policy undermines, throws in to chaos through its refusal to accept legislature and blindsides any 'human rights' that hitherto have given the poor, the disenfranchised and the vulnerable an opportunity to improve their circumstance, protect their dignity and claim their human rights, there has been an erosion of quality of life, of societal expectation and of access to basic human needs - shelter, food, protection.

These are dangerous times, and any government culpable in the destruction of the roots of a compassionate and humane society, should be held to account. The line between criminal negligence and poor governance has long been blurred by this conservative government and the fall-out is yet to come. Lifestyle choice is not, and never should be an appropriate term to use in reference to people who have been dispossessed or disenfranchised.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suella_Braverman Braverman was born in Harrow, Greater London, and raised in Wembley.^[2] She is the daughter of Uma (néeMootien-Pillay) and Christie Fernandes,^[3] both of Indian origin,^[4][5] who immigrated to Britain in the 1960s from Mauritius and Kenya respectively.

2. The secretary of state for the Home Department, more commonly known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom and the head of the Home Office.^[3]The position is a Great Office of State, making the home secretary one of the most senior and influential ministers in the government. The incumbent is a statutory member of the British Cabinet and National Security Council.

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugee_crisis

4. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/11/suella-braverman-accused-of-fuelling-far-right-violence-near-cenotaph

5. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/04/fury-as-braverman-depicts-homelessness-as-a-lifestyle-choice

I’ll never forget how it felt, when you were lying in the cardiology unit, the wires and monitors, the dressing over your heart, the vulnerability exposed like a raw wound.  Your heart rate spiked— I don’t know exactly what caused it, a call, a text? but I felt the change, it crackled in the air with one cruel nurse almost ready to physically propel me from the room and the nurse hastily hustled me out. When I was invited to come back in, something had changed, your girlfriend had called?  Do you know at that point, when they walked me out that they asked me if I really was your wife? How was I supposed to answer? Legally yes, if you had died that morning  (and how lucky you were that you didn’t), it would have been me that picked up all the unfinished pieces. The endless paperwork, the bureaucracy, dressing the open sores of grief and sorrow. I hate that I read body language, ignorance would have been so much easier. I hated the nurses for being complicit. I left feeling ashamed that despite my compassion I was being sidelined, discarded. Those twenty years suddenly counting for nothing, nothing at all. Meaningless. I'm older, uglier, I don't get the sympathy vote.

Did you phone her when you thought you might be dying? Did you wish you hadn’t called me? And at any point when you were lying in that hospital did you think how it might have been for me when my father was dying? When I came back from all those attritional visits to see my uncle? When you asked me to pop in and visit your colleagues wife, and I could see, she too was dying ?- Oh, that was the biggest tragedy of them all, given her youth, her humility, and her deep, enduring love for her two young children. 

The next day, when I arrived, having checked with you that you wanted me to come, I was accosted again by a staff member. You had two visitors, you shouldn't have so many. For a moment I thought maybe it was her, but no she'd come the day before - after me. Poor ward staff, how often does this happen, how clear were you? After an hour of trying to find a car-parking spot, I didn't care. I was the wrong person to attempt to lecture, I chucked your next-door neighbours out, they are complicit too. I was past caring, the passive aggressive car-park chaos still burning on my retina - everyone's need was as great as the next persons - no prisoners were being taken, it was a miracle there wasn't a four-car pile up, or maybe there was and I sailed past it - eventually channeling my inner-goodwill hunting-vibe.

Did you ever step out of your self-centred zone and wonder in all the mess and pain after my father died whether you’d really done right by me? Or were you too busy, masking the guilt at the relief you felt and relishing the thought of new possibilities? When you discovered me, alone in the chaos of my fathers house, after a brief hospital interlude myself, having noted the washing-up needed doing — did you feel anything other than the fact you were late for a hot-date with your girlfriend? Did you feel one iota of consideration for my needs, or was your “I’ll help you get rid of some of your father’s junk next weekend” sufficient?…Some weekends are a very long time coming aren’t they? 

As I left your hospital bedside today you said “I’ve missed you”. Really? Or have you missed the twenty years of comfort and nourishment, as I withered. I don’t know. I’ve given up trying to walk in your shoes, it’s not good for me. It hurts me. At the Hospital today, we talked about families. Yours couldn’t drop me me fast enough, I wasn’t sure about calling your parents, was it my place? I called your sister-in-law, when she remembered who I was, she, at least, was compassionate. Your father called me, a whole twelve months and some…too late, asked me how I was before moving on to you. Another question that was suddenly too hard to answer. 

You told me it was my ‘choice’ to leave. I’m not sure self-preservation is a choice, it’s more a visceral need to find high ground, a deep primal cry for help and fear, a lot of fear. I’ve been terrified, every day for the last nineteen months. Every step of that time, I haven’t known what was ahead. You made so many assumptions when I left, and today you said, “we probably need to talk in the New Year”. Talking never seems to have solved anything at this murky end of our relationship. Generally, I listen, you assume, re-fine the narrative that makes you feel more comfortable with yourself, and I go unheard as you listen, but don't hear. Does assuaging your guilt make it better? Even at a moment of life and death, you manage to break my heart. Just when I thought it couldn’t break further.  I will never forget these past two days - the profound emotion of someone you love facing death, (THAT is an emotion I’ve experienced before, it still hits hard). The setting aside of blame, hurt, history, to be compassionate and caring in someones time of need, and then the thunderbolt shift, the realisation that you are existing in a liminal space where you have no place, the utter agony of that loneliness compounding ones loneliness. You let me down, I didn’t deserve that.  I will not allow you to hurt me any more.

Will I regret writing this? I hope not. Every now and then,  I will sit with these words, and as time passes I hope I will be able to edit and re-shape them. May life bring me sweetness to dull the bitter.

Addendum:

The year is not yet done and I have had a final kick in the teeth. And that blow has taught me something that perhaps I knew, intuitively - but if anyone else reads this and can pass it on for the greater good, then please do. 

It is this: 'Don't start a new relationship before finishing the old one" it causes untold hurt, deep, deep, pain - to a multitude of people beyond those involved in the immediate relationship. Weakness, immaturity, is no excuse. 

I bought two new books back with me from Cornwall. The Salt Path purchased in the Falmouth Bookshop and Sea Fever bought in the National Maritime Museum Cornwall. I started Sea Fever one stormy evening in Maenporth, even reading bits aloud to my youngest (who probably wasn't listening) as its various accounts, facts and famous fiction about the sea are so brilliantly drawn together, chimed with a more recent re-telling of a sea journey my daughter's friend had made from Norway to Ipswich, which had challenged the crews' wits in survival against the sea. 

The Salt Path is something else, a story of lived experience that is incredible, heart-wrenching, almost impossible to contemplate and yet, it is beautiful and funny and compelling. Ray Winns account of her walk along the south coast path with her husband Moth having lost almost every material thing including their family home through the treachery of a friend, is a rite of passage.  Surviving on barely any money, with Moth's ill health looming large on their horizon Ray captures the geography of the SWC and evokes the wildness and romance of the counties Ray and Moth pass through while facing hardship and homelessness. She broaches the concept of homelessness that challenges preconceptions and asks the reader to consider the morality of a society that still refuses to tackle homelessness with any genuine understanding for its causes, or compassion for its victims. There is a vulnerable faith in the kindness of strangers in this journey, as humour and hazard walk hand in hand in this extraordinary book. And what a gift, to know such an enduring love, that alone is reason enough to read this book.

What is blocking the heart of my country?

I walk in its verdant valleys, that dress the horizon.

I trace the twist and tumble of its streams and its rivers, 

I stumble through its forests, ancient and knowing,

But cannot find the source.

At sea, I crouch in the conning tower as we sweep around this isle

Surveying subterranean roots of majestic cliffs for rock fall, 

The dim sea bed for fault lines.

There is a suffocating malaise, a slimy bloom

It slips through nets refusing to be caught and spreads like fear

And the sun breaks, across the hills and sweeping downlands, solemn granite mountains

Pale marshes and the sandy flats, as the long shadow reaches.

I dream of the wind whining in the oak barn, lifting the loose straw,

And the gale smashing flotsam against the old seawall.

The slowing beat of the earth beneath us, as planets reel in distant galaxies

Has not yet silenced the Robin at my window, or the hum of bees on the lavender bush

But the sluggish pulse that chills the sun, and gathers cloud, is rattling bones

In the ivy covered churchyard, and causing the earth to moan.

I found this book in a second-hand bookshop. Despite its publishing date of 1937 (second revised edition), it is full of sage advice and advertisements for 'must have' gadgets including the Hamble Line Passer - still a useful tool for hitching a line to a stable object from a distance. The author W. Eric Wilson, D.S.O with assistance from Admiralty Chart Agent J.D. Potter based in the Minories in London and their neighbours Imray, Laurie, Norie & Wilson Ltd., the oldest Nautical Publishers in the world (or so they claimed) who published this hefty tome in their printing works in Hackney, all conspired to produce this detailed guide for the serious sailor.

Guides, in all forms, are there to assist in times of trouble, need, or in expectation of either. A firm hand on the forearm, a gentle nudge in the desired direction from the 'you don't have to do this the hard way, allow me to enlighten you' folk who have gone before. We navigate our lives making good, bad, and indifferent choices. Guidance is always worth listening to, in navigational terms experienced guidance is essential. Like sea shanties and folk songs, handed down by word of mouth for centuries, changing with the times but doggedly true to its original form. The Pilot's Guide is a sensible practical tome on the vagaries of the English Channel, of necessity it must be trustworthy and reliable, lives depended on it. 

W.E.W could surely not conceive of a modern-day Channel full of super-tankers and people in barely sea-worthy inflatables, and the seasonal influx of top-heavy gin-palaces, and I wonder if he, or J.D. Potter or Messrs Imray, Laurie, Norie & Wilson, gave thought or conversation to a time when printed maps would be digitised, along with instruments so that maps became less important and computer screens plotted courses and pinged against satellites to guide sailors around the English Channel. 

There is a reason why sailors for the most part are easygoing. they've learnt to make and read signals, to predict the weather, how best to make an approach, judge depth, understand the tides, and perhaps most useful of all how to use a compass including variation and deviation, and having absorbed all that understood, practised and reflected on that wealth of seafaring knowledge, a good sailor might also digest that cautionary truth as expressed thus by W.E.W "Discretion must be duly exercised in the use of all Sailing Directions as aids to navigation, and they should not be regarded as infallible, as a little consideration will show. A chart or a book may be accurate at the time of publication, but it may become unreliable in some particulars owing to the changes in shoals and their constant and numerous alterations in Lights, Buoyage, etc." In effect, guidance is just that, the sum of someone else's experience but the world is not constant, it is ever changing. For the Pilot amongst us, it pays to be humble in plotting a course, to stay calm and prepared, and to meet the unexpected with the same assurance in which you meet all challenges, with a weather eye to the horizon and a quick arrival at the most practical solution.

Today we ambled around the Helford, starting at Glendurgan Gardens, the Fox family's coastal playground for their numerous children. And neighbour to Trebah Gardens. The highlight of the three steep, lush, tropical valleys plunging down to the Helford is the cherry laurel 'maze' - a delightful distraction from giant rhubarb, tree palms and ferns, magnolias, camellias, and a historic collection of plants from the Foxes travels around the world. Durgan beach is a pretty, pebbled, rock-pooled stretch of beach with boats moored on the Helford and the remnants of the pilchard fishing industry that dominated Cornwall. Best cheese scones ever were to be found in the glass and oak framed tea shop back at the top, plus a rootle through the second-hand bookshop (a genius idea by the National Trust for all its properties) which at Glendurgan included a donation from (I would surmise) a very interesting and well-read gentleman's collection of many rare and interesting books. 

Traveling around the Helford offers so many wonderful views, a feast for the photographer, a delight for the walker, a challenge for the cyclist and a draw for canoeists, kayakers and paddleboarders. I should be evoking the richness of this part of Cornwalls coastline, the green cathedral-like lanes, the emerald ria (flooded valley) of the Helford (Dowyr Mahonyer) and its seven creeks from west to east. These are Ponsontuel Creek, Mawgan Creek, Polpenwith Creek, Polwheveral Creek, Frenchman's Creek, Port Naval Creek, and Gillan Creek. I should be talking of Daphne Du Maurier, or of conservation, field crickets from Spain, or even of mystery and smuggling but the sun was shining and I was beginning to remember how-to-holiday, so all romanticism was pushed aside in favour of beach-hopping.

The Helford deserves not to be skimped over, given the wild and vivid landscapes of Cornwall, its myth and legend-evoking history. The Helford holds it own against the rugged, fishing coves of the Roseland peninsula and the bustling commerce of Truro, the piratical romance of Falmouth and the Lizard Peninsula, a plateau surrounded by sea cliffs, here and there providing a safe haven for a small harbour, fishing village and sandy cove. The Helford starts from its wide estuary mouth continuing inland to the muddy creeks upstream. With its sheltered, wooded valleys it is a haven for sailors and in good weather, it is scenically beautiful and serene. All seven of its coves are cornish gems.

I've been reading 'Sea Fever' by Meg and Chris Clothier. If you're going to be beside the seaside, then this book will set you right. From the shipping forecast to flora and fauna, to resorts, tides, distress signals, and all things coastal including that evocative poem by John Masefield that begins "I must go down to the seas again..." and concludes "and all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, and quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over."

I wanted to get to Helston, we diverted to Mullion after a brief glimpse of RNAS Culdrose drawn by the sun and promise of a dip, but the tide was in and the stocky, battered sea defenses undergoing repair, so after a sunbathe on the sea wall we headed off to the chocolate factory where iced coffee was cooling and mobile signal restored, revealing a plea for fresh clothes from the youngest, who was off to a Captains Dinner in Falmouth as part of the Tall Ships event. I had an emotional moment or two, stuck in traffic at end-of-shift-time passing by Culdrose again. Happy memories and some sadness for times and people - gone. Unable to re-visit the blackberry lane down to Mounts Bay with my daughter as planned, we sped back to Falmouth on the A394.

It's been three years since I left the shire for more than a day and the journey, or the descent into Cornwall was full of joy and some sadness as familiar roads reminded me of past holidays, places we might stop, views we all marvelled at. In particular, I felt the absence of our dog, our brown lab Morti who died at the start of the Covid pandemic. All that long journey it was as if he was with me, dogs came up to me tails wagging and I could sense his nose pressed to the car window as the air changed from chalk dusted seed filled Wiltshire through Dorset -  old fossils, heathland and London Clay through to Devon - the greensand of the Blackdowns, heathy grassland and shale, a tang of iron from the red oxidising sandstone, to the greying granite of Dartmoor where the air has settled from the collision of tectonic plates leaving an acidic taste on the palate. We holidayed in South Devon nearly every year and these smells and traces on the tongue resonate the most, along with the sense of lush greens and folding in of hill and valley from the more open plains and valleys of Wiltshire. The rich geological patchwork is largely untouched by the ice age scouring of the spiny ribs of Wiltshire and Dorset. We are unhurriedly heading towards the Tamar having decided to dip into Plymouth where copper and arsenic were once shipped from the Devon mines and now, this ocean city sings of Navy, culture, and a wealth that papers over poverty, aspiring to create a grand gateway to Cornwall.

And so we cross the Tamar duly heading towards Bodmin and the swept, granite moors of Jamaica Inn before dipping down to St Austell in search of sea glimpses and that wet, loamy fern-filled, tree-arching comfort of cornish coast roads. We weave between coast and sub-coast before diving down the zig-zagged roads to Mevagissy (Lannvorek) an ancient fishing harbour, where the houses and cottages cling to the hills like limpets and the fifteenth-century Fountain Inn snuggles under the cliff, and a maze of streets wind around the harbour guarded by a small lighthouse. A boat trip from here might afford you a glimpse of dolphin. We ate at the street food van beside the harbour, salt and pepper squid with frites - freshly cooked and delicious. Then having been on-track in terms of our planned three hours to Cornwall - typically, our schedule fell apart as Cornish time and tides crept like a sea-mist upon us and having chatted with the man in the Yarn shop (aptly named) mourned the retirement of the Potter over the road whose lovely mugs and pots and plates seemed to sadly display themselves in the shop window we then meandered to the Lost Gardens of Heligan to subject our calves and feet to the constant delight of beautifully rescued vistas of planting, landscapes, woodlands and jungle! It was too much for one visit and the Burma Rope bridge finished off my travel-weary feet, so it was time to go. My senses overloaded with scents floral and more exotic we headed out through the shop (as is the way of all things) via the Farm shop and set our course for Falmouth.

I am an adventurer and the eldest is an excellent navigator, so it was only a short while before we found ourselves 'off the main track' again in search of those uplifting sea-vistas and weaving along single-track lanes, submerged in sunken clay and stone, tumbled barns and leafy ferns creating magical secret ways to hidden kingdoms. I have learnt from my Devonian adventures that there is no shame in reversing, don't moan, don't panic - if you meet another car (or tractor), reverse to the nearest passing place. Hence, as I drove and marveled at the old roads, the valleys and old farms, my inner monkey frequently cried "passing place!' as we circumnavigated a small stretch of coast passing Gorran, Caerhayes and Veryan before heading through Tregony and onwards to Truro, the southernmost City. Cornwall's only City. A glossy, traffic-congested centre of commerce and leisure where two rivers merge into one.Truro always seems like a sausage mixer, you are squeezed through it and emerge the other side, forever changed. Our progression to Falmouth and then Maenporth was mercifully direct and straightforward. The sandy beach at Maenporth after a typically wide-then-narrow-wide-then-sharp-bend-narrow-then-narrower was a welcome sight, and my Sea Fever instantly becalmed by the gentle rolling surf and the open aspect of this once important harbour turned hang-out beach. After locating Wave Watchers (our apartment on the rising hill, leading out of Maenporth towards Glendurgan) we finally stopped, and settled in for the night, the waves lulling our travel-weary selves into a state of expectant sleep, where pirates marauded and miners mined and fishermen set sail, ever hopeful of a 'good catch'.

I have had, for some years now, a sense of approaching my Finisterre, I have withdrawn from the misery imposed by the UK's post-Brexit dysfunctional dystopia and contemplated (too much probably) what the 'end of my earth' might look like. I have drenched myself in lush English countryside, rolling Wiltshire downlands, and ancient woods. I have perambulated chalk hills and admired undulating valleys, paused alongside crisply mown cricket greens and village football pitches, lent against oak gates, and waded through bramble and nettle trying to regain a sense of place and failed. I've lingered in the shadow of church towers and strangely angled gravestones attempting to re-connect with this once magic isle. My ancestry which traces back to the Norsemen, the ancient Priories of the south and across to northern France, speaks of people of the land, and travellers - it rattles loosely in my bones, a sense of knowing when I'm in certain places, an occasional calling to follow a certain road, drink in a certain view. All this is why, like a Pirate, I like to go adventuring. 

I have to admit I'm a romantic, the bookworm in me sees mystery and magic in alleyways and castles. I believe in secret tunnels and treasure, and I eternally hope for the chance to play my part in solving a crime, or coming across a blue Police telephone box and stepping inside... In my youth my days were full of possibility, that I might find myself riding home in a helicopter or witnessing a pod of dolphins on my drive to the coast, or that the sudden appearance of a mysterious gate, or doorway might herald a wonderful adventure. I have fought to retain these wild expectations but somehow imagination becomes less a thing of wonder and more a fear of insanity, as the hope of magic starts to recede under the weight of worry, anxiety for the future, and the stronger desire for security and the bigger fear of the loss of it. Mundane concerns over ones physical body, the wear and tear that begins to show, all play their part in the diminishing of joy and the struggle to retain a belief in the endless creativity of life.

I have left the river valleys of my home, and descended down to the Cornish seas, where folk will tell you if you've a mind to listen, that the sea was never mans friend. It may feed you but it can kill you. The pernicious addiction that man has to conquer this beautiful, iridescent, moon-led kingdom continues to drive people across it, seeking freedom, adventure, challenge and a living. In a small shop in a popular fishing village, I was told tales of cornish fishermen who riding the highs and lows of modern-day fishing, grow bitter and old. I heard how greed and a desire to make it big and leave the hardship behind, drove one young fisherman to his death. He was found dead on his boat having overdosed from despair or drugs or both. The sea, at the end of the earth where the land stops is a beautiful and cruel mistress. 

As I sat with my daughter alongside a cornish harbour eating freshly cooked squid and chilli with frites (very European), it all looked festive and idyllic but the locals look wearily on, as the grockles* noisily overconsume food, vistas, space and time. It's a sensitive balance between an economic influx of welcome income and an overindulgence. I see and hear all this but I too, look to the sea and am lost in dreams of pirates, adventurers, sea mists and smugglers. I find myself, craving a cottage where the gulls wheel and I beach-comb sandy bays with the salty winds curling my hair, as I live my days in the romance novels of the forties. All a wonderful escapism and not the reality of coastal living for most people.

When I found the blue door today, down some steps and along an alley where once, I was certain an Italian restaurant serving indifferent pizza used to be found, I was transported to the pages of Moonfleet and Treasure Island. This ancient door opposite the sail-makers loft, with it's tiny grille and studded planking, just by the harbour below the pier - what tales, what stories did it have to tell? What lay behind it? Should I knock? If I came back a day later, would it still be there? How I envied it the fascination it carried, I should be so lucky to age in such a way that when people came across me they were mesmerized so! As I stood there wondering, I could hear the strains of Elvis singing..."behind the blue door...'** and darker rum soaked baritones and basses thumping out lost sea-shanties with their battered tankards. 

What delighted me most was the faint glimmer of that lost child-like wonder that the sea had gifted me, that in a door I had found a shard of my buried imagination. What a treasure to be found down a harbourside alley.

*grokkel/grockle - interloper, incomer, foreigner, tourist.

**Yes, yes I know Elvis actually sang a song entitled The Green Door but interestingly it involves similar

"The Green Door" (or "Green Door") is a 1956 popular song, with music composed by Bob "Hutch" Davieand lyrics by Marvin J. Moore. It was first recorded by Jim Lowe, which reached number one on the US chart in 1956. The song has been covered by a number of artists. The lyrics describe the allure of a mysterious private club with a green door, behind which "a happy crowd" play piano, smoke and "laugh a lot", and inside which the singer is not allowed. 

A Prayer for the removal of bitterness

God Save me

From duplicitous christian men

With their self-centred, self serving

Self justification

Their needy validation.

God save me

From my mistaken belief

That their faith would be enough

To save me from my darkness

And their strength would nourish me

In my hour of need

That promises would be reflected in deed.

God save me 

From my foolishness

What a bloody imperfect fool I am

How could I not see that when he spoke

Of wanting to save this broken marriage

He didn’t mean the vows we took at altar

He meant the bricks and mortar.

And when he takes my money, and my home,

To preserve his social status

…And the woman with that shiny ring on her finger

Fresh from a luxury holiday in the Caribbean sun

–God, how that sting still lingers!

God Save me.

And God save him

From those as yet unseen imperfections

Which are bound to emerge, post-dopamine charge.

When he takes on her children -

Please let him not forget mine.

I’m sure her body is perfect

And she bears no scars

And will make a far better life-partner than I,

Whose faith is shattered by lie upon lie

Whose body is ruined

Who has no tears left to cry.

Dear God save him

From waking up lonely, 

Because you can lie to make yourself feel better

And tell everyone what an ogre they are

But she loved and cherished you when in need.

And you behaved like a son, not a lover

Treated her less a wife, and more a mother.

God Save me

From self-deluding christian men

You can keep your charity and good grace

Provide me with sweet, sweet revenge

Give me strength to endure

Soften my bitterness

Just take me away from all this

God Save me.

I've been thinking a lot about things that enrich our lives, alongside what gives us purpose or motivation, and whilst freeing up memory on my cloud storage I came across something I write last summer when my youngest daughter was taking part in her first ever Tall Ships Race. She is just back from Italy and together with a friend from the same school mentioned below, she drove around in a hired Fiat Panda exploring the culture and seeing Pisa, and soaking up the vibes of Florence before returning to crew in her second Tall Ships experience. Both my daughters have lived far more adventurous lives than I have, although my enrichment came from different experiences to theirs. 

There has been a steep rise in youth crime where I live in the South of England, it can be intimidating to witness anti-social behaviour but as our economic state and our out-of-touch government grapples with papering over the cracks and ignores the deepening rifts caused by leaving the European Union, as bills get harder to pay, food costs soar and pressures grow on ordinary people, the disruption caused by all this sees young people left without support or direction and can lead to acts of small aggression, destruction or frustration. This leads me back to enrichment, the extra icing on the cake, the opportunity taken that leads to new horizons, the moment that changes a person's perspective, how they feel or their next decision...

July 2022

I was thinking how great it was to see that we have a local girls' football team and giving some thought to some of the amazing things our young people do that rarely receive attention. Whilst it only takes one young person to drop some litter or, (through boredom mostly) commit small acts of anti-socialism to attract instant condemnation. From charity fund-raising to caring for a parent or sibling, to volunteering in the community, being part of a successful sports team, and even shopping for an elderly neighbour there are so many examples that demonstrate how wonderful young people are. 

During the cursed  'lock-down' we heard of many such acts by young people. I am missing these positive stories. I am sure young people are still doing these things.

My youngest was incredibly lucky to experience an enrichment programme during her time at her secondary school,  Wyvern St Edmunds' the culmination of which was a challenge to climb Mt Toubkal (4167 metres above sea level in the High Atlas Mountains). Encouraged and joined by her then, form teacher Miss Kirkham, a coachful departed from St. Edmunds. What! No toilets !!? the girls exclaimed in horror at the induction tal, "Yep' came the reply, "what goes up the mountain comes down the mountain". It was a life-changing challenge for many of the group who undertook it and I still remember how exhausted they all were when they arrived back at school - exhausted and exhilarated. 

That challenge gave my youngest the courage to successfully apply to become Head Girl, a role she thrived in, and this summer she is undertaking the Tall Ships Challenge 2022 aboard the Jolie Brise, currently somewhere out in the North Sea between Antwerp in Belgium and Aalberg in Denmark (amongst some of the largest cargo and container ships that I wish I'd never looked at on the Marine Traffic Tracker!). 

So thank you St. Edmunds (Wyvern St Edmund's) that inspiring enrichment programme has enabled my youngest to get over the sudden cessation of her known school life (no exams, no prom, suddenly no friends to be with every day) and to start at a sixth form where she knew no-one, where lock-downs yo-yo'd in and out and it has enabled her to see those challenges as possibilities, to look beyond the immediate horizon.

She is not alone, her friends have similar stories of growth and achievement. All different, all positive. My maternal pride has led me to digress a little, and I know that in life we don't all get the same opportunities and we don't all make good choices when opportunities present themselves. I also know, that in the parish that I work in; schools, parish councillors, the scouting and guiding association, churches, housing associations, Wiltshire Council - a whole host of agencies and people, are all working hard to find ways to provide more opportunities for young people to have things to do and places to go, to encourage and inspire their brilliant young minds and channel the phenomenal energy that young people possess. 

Covid took away so much, I hope we can continue to offer challenges and opportunities for our young people so they all have a chance to widen their horizons and discover that to climb a mountain you just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and eventually you'll get to the top.

If you're going to write then choosing to write about a broken heart is a dangerous gambit. It's passé, it's over-done, done to death, dull, disinteresting - ditch it!

But it happens, right? We've all had our hearts broken haven't we? 

People, in this post-pandemic era talk about social isolation and loneliness emerging as a result of fear of the outside world, fear of getting a terrible illness, mistrust of other humans who like rats become carriers of disease, panic of being in an arena where you have no control. It's not a million miles from the feelings attached to having your heart broken - the tendency to withdraw, isolate, leads to the same sense of loneliness. There's a powerful Ad campaign that was run in the UK in 2016 specifically targeting the elderly, the Loneliness Kills ad campaign was conceived and executed by Superdream, an ad agency based in Birmingham, United Kingdom, for Alone, an organization helping older people in need. It read, "Research shows that loneliness and isolation can be as harmful to someone's health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day." That's a shocking statement aimed at opening people's eyes back in 2016, the baton was picked up by Age UK and in Australia in 2019 they pronounced "Loneliness is a social cancer, every bit as alarming as cancer itself". When Covid19 arrived it became a tangible concern for everybody regardless of age or gender. Others became hyper-independent, hyper vigilant - refusing to rely on anyone but themselves, refusing to open their heart or be generous and giving in order to control the impact of their fellow humans on their own environment, well-being, and sense of self. Surely a negative action leading back to self-isolation and loneliness?

During the pandemic, people were stopped from leaving their homes, once the crisis eased off those habits formed from government-imposed 'isolation' continued for many. As we emerge from the crisis, people are ordering "Just Eat' rather than walking to a nearby restaurant, they're accessing youtube or Netflix or Amazon Prime rather than going to the theatre. We're becoming more like the people on the galactic cruise liner in the Disney/Pixar animated film WALL-E released in 2008, so used to pressing a button to get our needs met that our bodies become irrelevant, gradually unable to walk or dance. Okay. I'm not saying that when your heart is broken you become an obese slug (although that is a stage some broken-hearted people go through if Bridget Jones is to be believed) but there is no doubt that when you experience a huge let-down from someone you loved, or heavily invested in, either through loss and grief, or because someone actively left your life, or ghosted you, or simply could not return the love you felt for them, you have a physical response and often a mental response to accompany it. Something in you breaks... not literally or physically (although pain can definitely be a factor) but something so real in terms of your soul, your spirit - that you were crippled by it, unable to function. Your heart is an animate part of your body, philosophers and artists consider it to be the inherent centre of your being. The chemicals released through love or passion, the endorphins, the adrenalin sparking through your nervous system and cerebral cortex, cause your heart to beat faster, and this fact explains the link to symbolising love through the imagery of the heart; not just an intertwining of two souls in shared experience but also two hearts...beating as one. 

Experiencing a broken heart is a process, from which, some people heal and some people don't, choosing instead to isolate. Not perhaps in quite such a dramatic fashion as Miss Havisham, the reclusive jilted bride in Charles Dicken's story "Great Expectations". But the real and manifest ways in which the mind asks the body to respond to a broken heart are as diverse and unpredictable as the mind itself. In 1966 Jimmy Ruffin asked, "What becomes of the broken-hearted? Who had love that's now departed? I know I've got to find, some kind of peace of mind - Maybe.."

In this new age of self-introspection, self-preservation and insular leisure activities such as 'gaming' and 'online shopping' and the arrival of AI - will the act of 'broken-heartedness" be softened by the removal of face-to-face contact by augmented reality and the invidious growth of computer-generated software? Will love and connection become a thing of the past, an outdated, unrecognised symptom of society from a bygone era? Will Jimmy Ruffin's sought after peace of mind become a dull sense of inertia, a numb fantasy expressed through a third-party tool such as an online game or artificial avatar?

I've just been to the funeral of a neighbour. In the nineteen years that I spent living on the same road, I knew he was a 'rare bird' but I had no idea just how rare. His wife Ann was an expert at 'socialising' we shared an interest in theatre, and I was honoured when she sent her son over so that I could read a script he'd written, which was genius in its delivery but someone else had beaten him to it, in terms of genre and theme. I knew there was a military background and some interesting stories, but it was late in the day when I surmised that this kind, intelligent, articulate man was a Major General with an MBE and a CBE to his name. He was a humble man. I wonder if anyone reading this will realise the profundity of calling someone 'humble' in this day and age. It is a rare quality, it means that a person can separate themselves from their 'ego'. It doesn't mean that they are weak, or sycophantic or fawning. It means they are strong and confident in who they are and what they stand for, and that they lead by example. My neighbour was such a man. 

I live in a cathedral city, so the word 'Divinity' is often used in a religious sense. However, just before the coronavirus outbreak, we experienced an event that changed the city and heightened our sense of inner divinity, our fallible selves set against our sense of protectedness and immunity. Novichok (1). The death of a Russian resident and his daughter who died from exposure to a chemical agent, the discovery in the city centre of these two people dying from exposure to the nerve agent and the ensuing panic, security lock-down, rocked the sense of security across this small city. It exposed its inhabitants to the intensity of the worlds media, to see the place where you live held to scrutiny in the mirror lens of the wider world can be equally threatening. Subsequently, three other people also fell ill from exposure to the nerve agent and one of them, a mother of three, also died. The night of the first incident, March 04, 2018 I was nearby in a medieval church, built to serve the spiritual needs of the builders of the Cathedral, preparing for an International Women's Day event with local musicians and girls from local schools. We became aware of the incident when my two daughters and a friend went off to buy some snacks after the rehearsal and came back having passed the pizza restaurant where the two Russians, Sergei and his daughter Yulia had been eating that day before falling unwell. The girls reported a heavy police presence and a barrier blockading the restaurant. Later, as we got ready to welcome our audience and to light candles, rumours of the event started to spread on social media. We wondered who would come - should we carry on? The heightened awareness that accompanies 'out of the ordinary' occurrences, created both fear and fascination. Many people decided not to come, some came and then left, shaken by a sense of anxiety. Would a chemical agent be in the very air we were breathing, was it safe to touch surfaces? Was it too late? We were stoic, trusting the guidance of the police and distracted by the demands of music-making, worship and celebration.

Salisbury, is a place with a long-standing relationship to nearby Porton Down (known as the Chemical Defence Establishment in my father's time) populated by scientists and military, and local people connect to the site in a variety of ways. So perhaps in terms of a critical emergency many residents were pragmatic but as the coronavirus was later to demonstrate, dealing with the element of unknown and unpredictable is deeply unsettling.

This unexpected drama, threw a community into a temporary spiral of deep uncertainty. It is the stuff of fiction, the potential plot of a James Bond movie. We will never know the full truth behind this incident, it is too dangerous, too unsettling to be in the public psyche. Chemical weaponry is a callous and cruel concept that is as close to a sense of absolute evil as anything man has ever created. There is no divinity in the creation of devices or agents aimed at mass murder, only those without compassion, driven by greed, overshadowing in its excessive need to provide for 'self' at the cost of all else - only those people could conceive such an idea. There is no godliness in mass destruction and yet those that create such things are motivated by a sense of higher purpose, a sense of power as if endowed with a twisted divinity. 

Hard on the heels of Novichok in 2018 there followed the coronavirus, another man-made agent that had the power to kill. The parallels of which cannot be lost on those who have considered both events. We have lived, in a state of heightened awareness ever since. Not just here in Salisbury but around the world, as this biological infectious agent spread with devastating impact. We are now alert, but also weary from mentally and physically living in ways that we hope protect us from further attack but are new and awkward. Caught off-guard, yanked from our hitherto comfortable existence and forced by a need for self-preservation to live in ways that have swept aside the very elements of society that hold us together. Community, coming together, holding each other, celebrating, commiserating. We have become meerkats in the desert, watchful, and guarded, as we grope in the darkness of the unknown future, in our states of heightened awareness, reaching out for the familiar, attempting to re-discover and rekindle what has been lost. 

We all have the divine within; a spirit that makes us kind, dynamic, creative, passionate, gentle, compassionate, empathic, and god-like. Perhaps shaken by the realisation that other humans can ignore all that beauty and purity in order to create evil, we need to dive back into ourselves and re-discover our divinity to shine our light, collectively in the darkness. To honour joy, happiness, love, through sports, through art, through music. Life is too short to allow the grubby, the unkind, the selfish, and the cruel a permanent place in our lives. 

1 Wikipedia : Novichok (Russian: Новичо́к, lit. 'newcomer, novice, newbie'^[1]) is a group of nerve agents, some of which are binary chemical weapons. The agents were developed at the GosNIIOKhT state chemical research institute by the Soviet Union and Russia between 1971 and 1993.^{[2][3][a][5][6]} Some Novichok agents are solids at standard temperature and pressure, while others are liquids. Dispersal of solid form agents is thought possible if in ultrafine powder state.^[7]

Russian scientists who developed the nerve agents claim they are the deadliest ever made, with some variants possibly five to eight times more potent than VX,^[8][9] and others up to ten times more potent than soman.^[10] As well as Russia, Novichok agents have been known to be produced in Iran.^[11]

Hello. Welcome. 

I wanted to find a corner of the world to post my moments of inspiration (or madness). I hope you'll not just enjoy my literary leanings but comment and engage... life is too short, too fleeting, to pass by. Please don't be a bystander...