My Name is Why

by Lemn Sissay (2/52) Proper wanted to like this book too. It is a brave book but I could not warm to it on first reading. The poems on first reading left me cold too. But I guess you have to realise that I have “skin in the game” and that might have coloured my…

Dear Reader, Hello 2021!

Hello 2021! We made it, not with a bang but a whimper but we made it none the less 🙂 How are you? This first book recommendation for 2021 was a gentle start to the New Year and carried me through Christmas secure in the knowledge that tucked away amongst the big ticket items was…

Hold Still: A Memoir in Photographs

On a break from work and still hurting from the arguments, I wandered lost into a used bookshop behind the Grove.  Running my fingers along the brightly coloured spines of each book, I let my finger tips guide me to my next purchase.  They caught on the cover of a beautiful, fat paperback – airport…

Mapping the Way Home

Mapping the Way Home: the Sufis and the Three Stages of Spiritual Awakening Food, body image and self-acceptance have run like a royal road right through my life.  Food is and was my safety, my comfort and my security, my north star through a difficult childhood adoption spent in fear of abandonment and fear of…

The Mid Summer Fire

June contains a great turning pointing in the year as the sun reaches its highest point in the sky, pauses there for a moment on June 21st and then begins the descent back towards Autumn and Winter. The date was marked by our farming ancestors as a date to remember that all would turn again…

Reading Matters: You, A Bike and A Road by Eleanor Davis

    Looking out from my desk at work through the long gallery of windows that line my side office –  I  find myself watching the wind catch the tops of the tree branches and how they exalt in the wind’s embrace.  And it stirs my soul: deep and powerful.  It’s the call of the…

Reading Matters: Just Kids Patti Smith

Just Kids – Patti Smith “When you hit a wall, just kick it in” O Patti  – you are the opposite of me and the sum total of who I could have been had I but dared to venture.  Watching you live your life with passion and intent,  tracking the path it takes you  –…

Orange and Pistachio Cupcakes

Orange and Pistachio Cupcakes! With a light satisfying texture and delicate orange, raspberry and pistachio flavour: these cupcakes have a distinctly exotic, North African flavour and are very easy to make. This recipe makes 6 buns. Ingredients Set oven to 170C 1 large or 2 small eggs 2 tbsp coconut oil or butter Zest and…

A Life of My Own by Claire Tomalin

“Life changes in the instant.  The ordinary instant” Joan Didion This book  “A Life of My Own” is a class act written by a very classy lady who has lead an extraordinary life built on the very ordinariness of life and I loved it. Slightly dull in the beginning with some early scene setting, the…

A Woman Submerged

A Woman Submerged So, for me, this very beautiful wall art (created by Sean Yoro and preserved somewhere in a bay East of Canada) sums up my real time experience of adoption. Not waving but drowning.  Not drowning but waving. Ahead then below. Below then ahead.  Submerged then free – ecstatically free – then back….

Chicken Harissa

And this recipe for chicken harissa is one of those things! Easy to prepare but here’s the thing – it has a high satiety content  – such that when the dish was finished all at the table felt full and continued to feel full from the time we finished eating (5pm) until we went to bed…

5 Books to Read in September

Book Stack time and yes, I did jump the gun a little by reading 99 Stories of God in August but I couldn’t wait and as I wrote last week, it proved to be the perfect holiday read  – it just tickles me,  see below. Ha!  And its all like that  – short , pithy,…