scenting something

Yesterday a facebook friend was researching for some writing and asked us to share our three favourite smells and why they were our favourite smells. After some initial head-scratching I came up with more than three. I never know when to stop. So, in order of my remembering here they are: Fresh cut rhubarb –… Continue reading scenting something

The little things

Did I forget to post this? I wrote it as last year ended and I thought of the time I had been privileged to spend New Year’s Eve in your company, in a room full of people and laughter and music and hospitality. So I had written this and it may be somewhere on here,… Continue reading The little things

falling featherhouse

I’ve had to take it down,  featherhouse. It started to detach itself from some of the windows so I peeled most of it off. Not everywhere but mostly. Still fascinated by the feeling it gave of being inside an ice cube; the way  those tracing paper windows diffused the light. I sat inside the house… Continue reading falling featherhouse

featherhouse revisited

I signed up for Window Wanderland. Not Winter, not Wonder ~ Window Wanderland. It’s a popular event for dark winter evenings in different parts of Bristol, when people decorate their windows so that other people can wander along the local streets and admire the display, like an arts trail but without anyone coming inside, and… Continue reading featherhouse revisited

Red Flyer

A few decades ago, as a very young and single mother, I would occasionally  have panics about how to keep my three young children safe in an emergency; who I would carry, what I would carry. That was even before I read Yael Dayan’s Death Had Two Sons or watched Sophie’s Choice  It took me… Continue reading Red Flyer

Frozen breath

Defrosting; carrying slabs of ice from a freezer to the sink, where they stand stacked like flat icebergs slowly melting, and I wonder whose breath is captured here and frozen, from everytime we leant in to find chips and ice-cream and random bags of unlabelled stews which turned out to not be beetroot or curry… Continue reading Frozen breath

Angela Carter breathed fire into my soul

Sitting here on International Women’s Day, 2015, wondering which woman to nominate as an inspiration or great influence on me, and realising that there are far too many to mention. In my life I’ve had the good fortune to meet all sorts of amazing women; the strong matriarchs in my family, other mothers at toddler… Continue reading Angela Carter breathed fire into my soul