Roadmap to Compassion
Posted in Health7 mn read Recently, somebody asked how I found my way to The Fields of Kindness. This is, as much as it can be, my reply.
7 mn read Recently, somebody asked how I found my way to The Fields of Kindness. This is, as much as it can be, my reply.
4 mn read This chapter of my life, started on a Friday in April last year, 2022, when I had an appointment at the breast clinic. I wasn’t worried, I had had a clear mammogram three weeks earlier. However, while doing a self-check in the shower, I had noticed a small cyst like lump on my left breast, […]
5 mn read “Hello, Mum.” “Hello, dear. I haven’t heard from you in ages.” “I rang you last week.” “Did you? I can’t remember.” “It doesn’t matter. How are you?” “Bored and lonely. I’m stuck in this room on my own all day. If they take me downstairs, they sit me with a load of old people who […]
5 mn read No, I don’t actually love my wrinkles. At least, not yet. Which is why I am writing this piece, for anyone who has an ambivalent relationship with their own wrinkles. They are part of a body that is aging. Perhaps that’s why I’m not so keen – it’s evidence right before my eyes that actually, […]
5 mn read When Rose first asked me to write about sex and the older man, I wondered what I would have to say about it, and I suppose I may be an outlier, but I don’t think the six-second rule – yes, older men think about sex every six seconds too – has really changed over the […]
6 mn read Sooner or later you are likely to have an encounter with a doctor. Once you enter the land of dotage it comes with the territory, and very few get by without something failing to work in the body in some way. I know that the body is more than the sum of its parts, and […]
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 It is ten years since I published The Colony Room Club 1948-2008 book, almost nine years since Jan Vink and I took over the lease of the crypt in Tower Hill/Aldgate and made it into the Vout-O-Reenees arts club. It’s five years since I left that marriage. Four years post–divorce, we are still working together. […]
4 mn read I struggle with terms to define intimate relationships, especially regarding my own. Boyfriend seems a juvenile way to describe a relationship between anyone older than 40. LAT, or Living Apart Together, expresses how one does or doesn’t share space but feels emotionless. Partner is a way of describing a connection that, for me, too much […]
16 mn read Pamela Des Barres, 74, is a musician and actress known for being an American rock groupie. In fact, she wrote a famous memoir I’m with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie which details her experiences in the Los Angeles rock music scene of the 60s and 70s. It turns out that she’s been running workshops […]