In the last week, I have realised that firstly I am getting old and secondly that I am getting excited. Both are interlinked so I will begin with the getting old bit… I have had various allotments and growing situations over the last six years which have all become unviable for a number of reasons;…
Category: Life
Current Mood: Shit, so I wrote a poem
** * * * * * * * * * * * The dreams of death and dying. The emptiness inside. This place in which I’m hiding, whilst life carries on outside. That love and life and meaning, with which I just can’t coincide. When all I have are these dreams of death and dying…
2021 – What a hell of a year…
It’s been a while since I posted here, not because of a lack of good intentions but simply because there was barely enough time to breathe last year, let alone find the time to update my website. I returned to work at the end of 2020 to begin a PhD at the University of Nottingham…
#FurnitureFreeLiving
Last time I posted I wrote about my overall experiences of using space more flexibly; a process I have undertaken since we moved house and into a new property that was slightly smaller than our last home. The walls were a lot higher, so it gave me an opportunity to think about how we use…
Creative people in my life – Catherine Booker
In 2019 I have made retreat several times, including in May when I attended a mindfulness weekend, which I blogged about previously. Although it was not as successful as I had hoped, one of the most positive things to come out was me meeting Catherine Booker, a beautiful and very talented woman who creates wonderful…
My United Kingdom travels
In amongst all the Brexit anxiety and heightened awareness of the climate damage that air travel causes I have tried to spend more time exploring the United Kingdom this summer, rather than relying on the old fall back of a cheap package holiday. Time away this summer break has been particularly important. Last summer, most…
Derby’s food heroes
Having lived in Derby, albeit in two houses now for nearly seven years, I am reaching the watershed where it will overtake, in the next eighteen months, the places I have previously spent the longest in my life. I have had a rather nomadic existence up until now but overall I like Derby. It has…
People are more than their diagnoses.
“It was this prognosis of doom, this life sentence, this death before death that I instinctively rejected when the words “You are wrong” formed silently within me. With the wisdom of hindsight I understand why this moment in the psychiatrist’s office was a major turning point in my recovery process. When I rejected the prognosis of doom…
Moving on (written in April 2018)
The house we have lived in since we arrived in Derby in December 2012 has been sold and we are in the process of packing up to move on. We have been so lucky to secure a council property, just down the road from where we live at the moment. Although our current property and…
Dialogical practice
The idea of dialogue, in relation to my developing professional practice, and also within my research work, seems to be occurring more and more frequently. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a dialogue as either: A conversation between two or more people as a feature of a book, play, or film. ‘the book consisted of a series…