100 Seconds to Midnight

"Where the light is brightest, the shadows are deepest." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe There are two ways in which I use Instagram - one is to post a photograph which appears on my page until I take it down, the other is to add to 'my story' and the post will appear for a day - but requires more effort to both see it and 'like' it.  So, when my 'Blue Skies - Happy Earth Day' story on Wednesday draws little attention and no comments I am unsure as to whether it just wasn't that noteworthy, or if in some way I have made an error of judgement and that a 'Happy Earth Day' is the very last thing the world was having on Wednesday and that somehow my enjoyment of it has instantly rendered me less empathic. Looking for evidence to the contrary, I took the book 'Braving the Wilderness' by Brené Brown down off the shelf and discovered that for the second week in a row I, (and now you) have inadvertently stumbled into the realm of Carl Ju...

Serendipity, n A combination of events which are not individually beneficial, but occurring together produce a good or wonderful outcome. Easter Sunday 2020, my plan was to get up and go for a run at 8 o'clock.  An extra few minutes in bed somehow eats up half an hour and I didn't set out until 8.30.  In another house, my friend gets side tracked by the (and I use the word lightly) need to complete another level on a game before heading out for her run, and in a third, another friend leaves exactly when he intended to. Somewhere a little after 9am these random decisions combine in an act of serendipity, our paths crossing at the point where our three running routes converge. Perhaps in different times we might have passed this off as co-incidence, we are all runners, we all live within 3 miles of each other and despite never having met either of them whilst out running before, sooner or later I was bound to meet at least one of them.  But when you are under lockdown...

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments The Invitation by Oriah As a dog walker I feel like it has been raining almost continuously since October and I have been waiting a long time for spring.  I know that it is bringing it's own problems with the number of people being outside but, waiting in line to gain access to the supermarket in controlled numbers, I was glad of the sun this morning.  It is also going some way to suppressing the feeling that the dystopian future, that authors have long since imagined, has actually arrived because in my head I can't quite equate that with sunshine. It is however, going to take more than some nice weather for me to believe, as some are trying to propose, that we are instead heading to some sort of utopia once this is all over.  A society where we are appreciative of what we've got, shop local, regenerate our seaside towns and re-evaluate how we view ...

I once had a friend who talked about jumping off the world, like it was some sort of roundabout, so you could stand still and catch your breath before hopping back on.  Over the past thirty years I have often dreamt of this, wishing it was reality. Never did I consider the option where it was the world that stopped, nor the plethora of emotions that would follow.  In the past week I've been anxious, worried, sad, cross, disappointed, downright gutted, concerned, confused, conflicted, grateful, hopeful and occasionally optimistic - my head's spinning and I want the chance to extract myself from it all more than ever. Sounds like social distancing has come at just the right time, except rather than sitting at home surrounded by the books I haven't read, my knitting and multiple art projects, I'm going to be busier than usual shopping for my 93 year old father and trying to work out where to forage for food now that the supermarket shelves are bare - with the notable e...