This piece first appeared a year ago, a guest post for an American audience. It belongs to the Pensionista collection as a mini-manifesto and also as a basis for a later feature on the lockdown experience of 2020 - and the coronavirus outbreak still running its course. Close the front door behind me, then turn… Continue reading Home Alone
Flower Power
February, 2020 The red smudge in the road wasn't blood - and too flat to be a cat or a hedgehog. It was definitely, however, something run over, that had once been alive. I could still make out the outline of a leaf or two and the squashed head of a flower - maybe the… Continue reading Flower Power
Theft
A silky square of material, to be worn around the neck, it looks like an innocent addition to anyone's wardrobe, but it isn't. I know, because I stole it. Central London, October 2019 I was half-way down Oxford Street when I noticed something flapping on my coat sleeve - a small scarf, the label still… Continue reading Theft
Moonscape
2019 - 50 years since the first 'small step'.... It had a dignity, an innocence even, the surface of the moon - before they came... A world with no seasons or air or wind or water - but a place with the power to pull oceans on earth from shore to shore... Lunar highlands -… Continue reading Moonscape
To the Touch
August, 2019. Lichfield Cathedral. The sisters lie together, sleeping in stone the way they slept in life. It's a fine memorial to children who died more than 200 years ago, commissioned by their distraught mother. Visitors are often drawn, not just to the small white figures but to the marble mattress that looks soft enough… Continue reading To the Touch
Washing-Up
He broke as many plates as he took a mop to, chipped most cups he encountered - but it was the pots and pans than really insulted his masculinity. Even the toughest of them had their surfaces scraped, leaving grooves in the non-stick or copper bottoms. No glassware was safe in his company. I blamed… Continue reading Washing-Up
Bad Vibrations
April 2019, a Ladies loo. We stand side by side at the basins, washing our hands - but the other woman's really scrubbing hers, like Lady Macbeth. As well she might, because she's about to commit a crime. I fish out a paper towel - a Handbag Essential; she turns to a machine on the… Continue reading Bad Vibrations
The Red Line
A soft, shrivelled thing lay at the back of the cutlery drawer. Dull brown now, but once a bright, organic orange. A dead carrot. No idea how it got there - so it was clearly a Sign my storage skills were in decline and that my cupboards could do with close inspection. There might be… Continue reading The Red Line
The Father
There's a headstone in Greece with my name on it. The stone stands on a hill - one of thousands - in a war cemetery overlooking the sea. Some of the men buried in this place are unidentified, but not the one who died of wounds received in action in 1944. The inscription is simple:… Continue reading The Father
‘Into the Sky’ and ‘part the Clouds’
Note: this piece was written for a T'ai Chi publication as well as this site. We're spaced around the room, some of us in socks, others in trainers or barefoot, following the flow of instructions...letting our legs 'sink down' or our arms 'float up'. When it comes to 'turn and face the wall', the newest… Continue reading ‘Into the Sky’ and ‘part the Clouds’
