British yachtsman, Alex Thomson, is currently competing in the Vendée-Globe; a round-the-world, single-handed sailing race. It should take him around ten to eleven weeks to complete it. I heard him interviewed on the radio one morning this week, just nine days in. I shivered with horror as I lay in bed calculating how many days … Continue reading Navigating the Doldrums
I’ve not been feeling well lately and so I’ve been moping around, achieving little. At least that’s what I tell myself, whilst successfully discounting those bits and bobs I am getting done between bouts of inactivity. Yet all I can focus on is the inactivity, which is very unfashionable these days, to be slothful, unless … Continue reading What Am I Doing?
Today, I am obsessing about spikes.
I had never heard the phrase before and then (how does this happen?) I came across it again within twenty-four hours. ‘Happiness writes white,’ he said. ‘When I am content, I have no inspiration. Ease causes the muse to fly.’ I didn’t want to believe it, that one needs to be tortured in order to … Continue reading Happiness Writes White
At first, I thought it was nighttime roadworks. Or an ambulance pulled in by the side of the street, its lights flashing. Largely, I’d pushed the flickering to the back of my mind, dismissing it as some sort of strobe lighting outside. That was until I heard the BOOM! Then I knew it was the … Continue reading A Terrible Beauty
Come on, seriously? July? Tomorrow? How did that happen? I know we all remark upon it constantly: how quickly the time goes, that it flies, disappears, but this year it really slipperdy-jippeted as the calendar dates danced away from me. I love a calendar. I love the ritual turning of twelve pages and plotting what … Continue reading Time and Tide
I can only let go by degrees. I can only accept change slowly. I think that is normal. There might be some superhumans who can adapt more quickly, but I imagine many of us are built in the same way; that we process change piece by piece, one thing at a time. For me, it … Continue reading Maybe Next Year
“What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won't seem important at all. And it’s curious that we can’t possibly tell what exactly will be considered great and important, and what will seem petty and ridiculous.” Anton Chekhov There are many apocryphal stories about people who have fallen out, rifts that have cut deep and … Continue reading Insignificant
My favourite time of the day has come to be the evening. A fluttering restlessness builds within me and I have to leave the house, take a walk out. Lately I’ve been scheduling my walk to get to my destination on high in time to see the sunset sky burn, then I watch it turn … Continue reading Let Evening Come
I wish it wasn’t true, but there is no teacher like adversity. And the lessons that come from sudden calamity are often the ones that teach us the most. The learning is far from over, because our shadowy visitor hasn’t just dropped in for the weekend, it has yet more to impart. It is not … Continue reading The Calamity Lesson
