Tag: poem

small town life

At first sight, nobody has really had much chance to travel over the last fifteen months, and yet when I talk to people, it seems that almost everyone I know has managed a getaway or three – to Cornwall, to Wales, to a B&B on the coast, a caravan or country cottage… I begin to think I am the only one who hasn’t had a holiday or a weekend away since 2019.

In fact I have travelled a few times, by train, to visit my aged mother, but I’ve not stayed overnight. Each time, I’ve returned the same day to the same one-horse town in Middle England.
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healthy habits

The last week has been Mental Health Awareness Week and I’ve seen a great deal of conversation online about the benefits of nature, with experts explaining how spending time in green spaces, or caring for plants or animals, can have a positive impact on our mental wellbeing.

Many business and life coaches have taken to the parks to hold their sessions in the great outdoors and inspire new healthy habits in their clients. My social media feeds are full of posts urging me to pause and take time out to look at buds on plants and the burgeoning leaves on trees.
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small blues

Some fifty plus years ago, when I was a little girl, my mother made my brother a butterfly net out of a bamboo garden cane, a hoop of wire and an old net curtain. I don’t know how often he used it, but I suspect it wasn’t that often.

Whether he tired of it in the first few weeks, or whether it was when it came out of the shed on the second summer and he was off on his bike in the park with his mates, somehow, I managed to inherit it.
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monsters & fairies

There are stories that parents tell their impressionable children that remain with them for their whole lives. I’m not sure why I’m feeling nostalgic, but I’ve been remembering two such stories, one from my mother and one from my father.

Both are set in the dim and distant past, when we lived in Scotland.
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day after day

Friday was World Sleep Day and Red Nose Day. Yesterday was the Vernal Equinox, the beginning of spring, International Happiness Day and Persian New Year. Today is Census Day and International Day of Forests.

That’s eight days in just 72 hours and doesn’t come close to naming all the high days and holy days that other people celebrate. It’s really no wonder I am exhausted.
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