Being Outside More

I once found some writing in my daughter’s room when she was about 9 or 10 years old. She had been suffering from a heavy cold and had written, with great daring “Fuck germs!” She was outraged that her body had let her down in this way and was making her feel so rotten. I had planned for a quiet half term last week, and it was even quieter than anticipated as I caught the cold that my daughter had brought home from college. Irritatingly, I wasn’t even ill enough to be dramatic, a few desultory sneezes, a nagging dull headache and scratchy throat. Just enough energy to remain functional. Meals were cooked, dirty laundry was made clean, the world’s most insignificant errands were completed. When the high point of the week is collecting a new kitchen sink plug from Screwfix, it’s hard not to be gloomy. It was as if the energy diverted to my immune system to defeat this tedious low level virus had removed my capacity to carry the everyday worries and sadnesses. All problems seemed insurmou...

  The tide of rampant consumerism is rising, meaning the queasiness that used to be just for Christmas excess has leaked into many other festivals throughout the year. So much plastic tat, fossilised sea creatures transformed into fake cobwebs adorning front gardens, lurid orange ultra processed synthetic foodstuffs. All this has become such a banal background, accepted as a norm, but every so often you just have to stop in your tracks and notice just how absolutely insane this all is. I am a killjoy old witch, many dusty cobwebs lurk in corners of my house, making me always Halloween ready. Artificial autumn leaf garlands have been in the seasonal aisle since late August. Seasonal decorating is a pleasant idea, a way of marking the seasons, and festivals make life more bearable after all. But with my consumerism-sick anti-fun goggles on, I see how these things are squeezed of joy, monetised and sold back to us. Landfill in waiting. The storms have blown in and made me cantankerous...

  Sunrise where I live is currently around 7.40am, meaning that when my weekday alarm goes off at 6.30am it’s still very much dark. I pull back the curtains as I start my morning scribbling and see deep blackness, punctuated by the occasional golden oblong of a neighbours window, all on our separate morning routines. I feel the waning of natural light pulling on me, slowing me down, I’m more reluctant to reach for my notebook and pen. I think back wistfully to spring and summer mornings where I would start the day writing in the garden, and I miss it. The bedroom feels dusty and cluttered in comparison. Being inside always reminds me of domestic chores I should be doing. In a change to routine, one morning last week I was due into work earlier than normal due to a preschool outing. I sat on a bench in a park on the other side of the city amongst falling leaves and as I watched, the lampposts extinguished one by one as dawn broke. Hidden sensors in each had tipped them over from nig...

How to write the seasons without falling into a pile of cliches, heaped up like autumn leaves (do you see what I did there). I am struggling for words today, I have been mooching in the drizzle this morning, reaching instead for my phone camera to capture the changing colours. In cities we are encouraged to be disconnected from the seasonal turn, it can take effort to seek it out, it must be glimpsed as you turn a corner. If it happens every year, why the fuss? There must be some ancient button pushing going on in my brain, reacting to the ripe reds (berries and fruits for winter stores), plus all the flaming oranges and yellows, no wonder we reach for flickering campfire words, those old memories are etched deep. Once the only way to survive was to stick together in those evening gatherings, watching shadows play across faces. If you’re lucky, you might have happy childhood memories too, collecting conkers in the local park, kicking your new wellies through piles of crunchy leaves. Al...

On a bright Sunday morning in early October, I rode through the quiet streets to Arnos Vale , a large Victorian cemetery in East Bristol. I live only a 15 minute cycle ride away, but I had never visited despite best intentions, so when I saw a post recently advertising a mindful nature writing walk, it felt like the ideal opportunity. Our walk was led by Miriam Ricci PhD, who left academia in 2023 to focus on creative facilitation projects. We spent the first hour walking in silence, Miriam giving us gentle prompts at various points to focus on using each of our senses, and then sat in the community garden for a period of free writing. I decided to use these notes to make a poem. The cemetery is a beautiful place, grand Victorian architecture combined with absolutely wild areas. Definitely a place I would like to revisit. Arnos Vale Fingers outstretched, bumping along a lumpy stone wall The soft breeze in the trees overhead A large black cat, curled up on a headstone Too early for Hall...

A warm Saturday morning in September dawned, I felt the urge to celebrate the full moon, the Harvest moon. I knew I needed to be walking through fields, the romantic image of a lone figure in the landscape. I walk, therefore I am. The bus was noisy with a chattering flock of teenage girls who alighted at Cabot Circus, our glass-roofed city centre shopping mall, eager for retail opportunities and bubble tea. The green-liveried smoothly whining electric bus lumbered on, and after much meandering, came to the place where the houses thinned, the edge of the city. I had chosen a route from Whitchurch, once a village in North Somerset, now part of Bristol’s suburban sprawl, and Stanton Drew, home to a Neolithic stone circle. It’s about five or six miles, mostly following the ‘Three Peaks Way’ footpath. Pre-pandemic, when I was working three or four days a week in an office, I used to do this more. Pack up my rucksack and an OS map, lace up my boots and take a bus into Somerset, walk for a fe...