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. Â Not drowning but waving. Ahead then below. Below then ahead. Â 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,…
The Universe Project 