7 mn read Something horrible and unexpected happened during the first few days of our recent trip to Vietnam. My travelling friend, Ruby and I went on day trip – in a deluxe mini bus which took nine people but there was just us, a Japanese older man, and two 40 something Swiss men – to the famous […]
7 mn read Thirty years ago at 40, I was regularly travel writing for the Independent and without ever having done any yoga before, I found myself on a 10 day Ashtanga ‘holiday’ in Crete. And blimey was I thrown in at the deep end. This was before Madonna started doing it. In 1993, yoga was still recherche […]
5 mn read All this Living Apart Together – the joys of me being in the city and my partner being in the deep countryside – sounds blissful, and I’m not pretending that there aren’t wonderful aspects but that’s not the entire story. There are of course, the benefits of separation which means that we don’t slip into […]
6 mn read Old – English ald, of West Germanic origin; related to Dutch oud and German alt, from an Indo-European root meaning ‘adult’, shared by Latin alere ‘nourish’.
< 1 mn read I buy a new bra laced with dahlias. Calvin Klein. Dress is Indian embroidered olive green silk. Shepherd’s Bush Market. Candelabras are cheaply ornate. Car boot. Oh Lord, teeth have been savaged. Dental hygienist. Like a slow moving volcano. My sixtieth. Pause for thoughts about gifts. Unwanted. Suggest pies on laps as they drive to […]
7 mn read I am 64, and entering into the terrain of my own drawing-closer mortality – yet talking about death is still forbidden. Sex is so much more out in the open. Death is the last taboo
< 1 mn read Napoleon planted these pines, the soil is sandy but not a beach. I want to lie down, stare upwards like a child who hasn’t had enough clouds. The watery landscape keeps me upright. On cherche les oiseaux, mais on n’entend que les chants. The sky deceives itself. We talk (my French friends and I) about […]
4 mn read ‘For a poem to emerge properly, you have to avoid confronting it. You have to keep it in sight without looking at it directly.’ Fiona Sampson, poet, in Mslexia
4 mn read Flamboyance has always attracted me and as I get older, the attraction gets stronger. The etymology goes back to the Old French ‘flambe’ – a flame. Exactly.
< 1 mn read i.m. Sarah’s mum Stella hailed from startleland, uneven terrain was welcomed. She’d entertain with the intimate habits of the stag beetle, probe my knowledge of ‘Cargador de Flores’ by Diego Rivera, demand to be spoken to in French. La vedette made the everyday into theatre. Did I mention the Lalique obsession and the birdsong clock? […]
