Making pinch pots I posted on Instagram the other day for the first time in a few weeks. I hadn't felt the urge to put a photo and caption on there recently. Maybe it was down to the "lockdown wall" which I - and many other people - seemed to hit toward the middle of… Continue reading Simple Ceramics
Snow Angel...A blizzard of skylarks....Snowflakes big as a dogs paw...Snow... I find snow enchanting, the magical transformation it brings to familiar landscapes, the still silence, especially at night, of a snowfall. I don't spend as much time as I'd like in the snow (and there will be even less opportunity this year, obviously) . Our… Continue reading Reading: Fifty Words for Snow
Oooo hello! I am still here...grab a mug of tea and a digestive...I hope you are OK. Hasn't 2020 been weird, time wise? Wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey as Dr Who (in their tenth incarnation) might say. I've had weeks which seemed to last mooooonths, life buffering like a dodgy feed in a zoom call, and then the past… Continue reading What I have been doing for the past eight weeks…
Attention All Shipping by Charlie Connelly (Little, Brown) The shipping forecast is a national institution. In a former life I heard it regularly on getting home late after working the evening Box Office shift, or more usually getting home late after the after work drinks. I'd dream of a simpler, less hectic, seaside life and… Continue reading Review: Attention All Shipping
If you've been here a while you'll know how much I love to read (if you're new, hello and welcome) but I'm finding it hard to read anything at all during these days of social distancing and isolation. It's ironic really, most of my time I spend wanting to not be doing the thing I'm… Continue reading Strange Times: The Woods
I wrote this, or started to, a couple of weeks ago as COVID-19 approached, but before home-schooling, before lock-down. As the scale of the crisis unfurled on the news I went on a massively LONG walk, I couldn't stop my feet from moving ever forward, along the riverbank, over muddy fields and to the medieval… Continue reading Winter Notes Seven: Edgelands
Under The Stars : A Journey Into Light by Matt Gaw (Elliot & Thompson) If you look up at the sky at night from your front step, back garden or high-rise window what do you see? Try it now (if it's night, and it's not cloudy) are there stars? Are there loads of them, can… Continue reading Review: Under The Stars: A Journey Into Light
What is it about mist. It's a bit magical, don't you think? It's a cloud in a place where a cloud shouldn't be. Not inpenetrable, you can see quite far, yet it changes everything. It renders the familiar unfamiliar, messing with our sense of perspective and place. Am I on the ground, or am I… Continue reading Winter Notes Six : MIST
This semi-distant line of trees is an obsession of mine, mainly because I can't work out if I can get there without trespassing. Walk down the track, past the cottage and barns, and the path you could take is quite definitely NO ACCESS. Besides, that route may entail crossing a bit of river, but maybe… Continue reading Winter Notes: Five
A moment of joy on a gloomy January morning. Cycling along the short stretch of Thames Path (a journey I do 4 days out of seven), the meadow alongside is a small lake and two flocks of gulls rest there. As I ride by they lift into small murmurations, swooping overhead, I can hear their… Continue reading Winter Notes: Four
