Breaking open your heart

I went to see Warhorse last night. In Woking. Not the most inspiring of  towns, but the theatre was fine, stuffed into a badly designed shopping mall that the English are so good at, shops crammed into odd spaces, compromised lighting and everything closed by six. The theatre was packed with school groups of loud teenagers trying to out-swagger each other, in their sweat pants and hoodies and Nikes, swooshing their hair, chewing gum, whispering behind their hands, being generally adorably teen. We sat two rows in front of them, and I stared, as I do, at everyone (luckily without my children to tell me not to). I love people watching. I love trying to imagine what people are thinking, what their relationships are to each other, whether they are in still in love, or whether they've given up. There were plenty of big necklaces, fleeces, and horsey women (I know this breed well as I am one of their ilk). There were plenty of family groups, plenty of couples who weren't speaking to each other. I thought about my friend Lucy, who has no boundaries whatsoever in a way that would be horrendous on anyone else but on her is lovely, coltish, affectionate. She would immediately start chatting to people next to her. She would offer to share her sweet and salty popcorn. She would make friends. I remembered that I was English and that the English aren't keen on that kind of thing. I remembered to move my elbows and not take over the arm rest on my right. "Do you have tissues?" said Charlie. "Why?" I said defensively. "Do *you* have tissues?" I asked rudely, like a teenager. "Well it might be quite emotional" he said kindly. "Oh, I'll be fine," I said, brushing it off, doing my best Kevin or Perry.

The stage was very plain, with a large swath of something that looked like a thick piece of ripped wallpaper in the shape of a sweet potato, which became an ersatz screen onto which pencil drawn animated scenes were projected: the village in Devon the boy comes from, the battleground in the Somme, horses galloping, drawn in HB pencil. A troubador woman in country clothes sings a ballad in a rich voice and the scene is set - a horse auction at a local town where our hero is bought as a colt by a drunken farmer who spends thirty nine pounds of mortgage money on the horse - a half draught, half thoroughbred. Joey. The farmer's son bonds with the horse and trains it. You know the story. I believe that my whole persona changed the minute the little colt, made of wood and metal and cloth, appeared on the stage. How does a puppet, so clearly animated by two or three people with sticks attached to it, move and breathe and flicker with something so closely appropriating life? How does the puppet colt look and move and twitch with such playfulness, such inquisitiveness, such a beating heart? I think I started to sob when the young horse makes a Herculean effort to show that he can pull a plough and didn't actually stop crying until most people had left the theatre. At one point Charlie said to me, "Are you okay, darling? Would you like to leave?" "No," I managed to sniffle back to him, my chest heaving, the breath caught in my throat.

Warhorse is transformative. You walk in as one person and leave quite simply as another. There is no doubt that a transformation takes place. For me, all the armor fell aside. It broke my heart open, as I think all good art does, to allow you to receive. It's also magic. You suspend your disbelief completely, as the puppeteers dance across the stage.

I've been listening to Michael Meade's podcast Living Myth today. I have a long drive every morning out to the horse, and this is an ideal time for listening. Today's episode is on gratitude and grace. "A broken heart is the only heart worth having," ie the eye of the heart is the seat of the soul (Cynthia Bourgeault has a book about this too.) Watch Michael Meade here. "Some people find it through a spiritual path, some people find it through creative arts, some people find it through making love, there's many ways to find it, but the idea is to find that which opens the heart...and that allows the soul to grow." - Michael Meade

But the idea of great art being transformative is a heady one. And perhaps that is why we pursue art.

Horses have an electro-magnetic field that is so huge, that just being a few feet away from them is transformative. (I just googled it. Ha ha.) My friend Angela, who is part of the morning riding crew said to me today, "how do other people deal with depression?" and I know what she meant. About three minutes after you are in contact with a horse, everything falls aside, all the petty worries, the little anxieties (the big anxieties), the tension, the tightness, the small things just disappear, melt into thin air, and you experiences wholeness; you experience your heart opening and you are suddenly part of a unity, not a tiny little lonely creature living with your own metallic worries, your fears, your rigidity. Suddenly, everything is possible. That place (also called flow, I believe) is where all good things come from. That place of vast abundance. So, greeting Bella this morning was hard without tears, after experiencing Warhorse. Horses give us everything they have. They allow us to -  and give us a safe place to - open our hearts. I think that realization was brought home in the theatre last night.

Gratitude, even momentary gratitude, is a state of wholeness. - Michael Meade

(Here is the Living Myth podcast The Necessity of Gratitude.)

So, I'm thinking that those gratitude journals that everyone poo-poos might be worth it. Just a few minutes every morning, to keep us on track, to keep us aligned, before the world sweeps us up in its dramas. 

Be safe everyone. I love you, LA.

Try to Praise the Mutilated World

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

-- Adam Zagajewski

(Translated, from the Polish, by Clare Cavanagh.)

LA is My Lady

I was born in LA. At least spiritually. Los Angeles is the place where I became the person I was meant to be. It was my golden triangle, the conversion of two cultures, not rivers, that created the person I was to become and in that birth, due to the perfect set of circumstances; a husband who believed in my infinite possibilities, and the scent of mimosa and orange and the blowing of the Santa Anas in the right direction. Therefore I find my heart heavy as lead and my eyes frequently full of tears when I witness the devastation to my beloved city as a result of the Palisades, Eaton, Sunset, Hurst and Livia fires (and more, I know.) My immediate family is safe, away from the current disaster zones, but our extended family and friend group has suffered so much loss; so many houses raised to the ground, so many people who have lost everything they own, so many people I have worked with over the years, and family too. The destruction is vivid and real and super close to all we hold dear. No-one we know hasn't been affected at all. Neighborhoods have been flattened as if by a hurricane, landmarks gone (I shall miss the silly fishy puns of the Reel Inn on PCH, the picnics at Will Rogers, the beautiful old storefronts of the Palisades.) And just by a small miracle the Laurel Canyon house we lived in and raised our family in was saved (thanks to the brilliant work of the Runyon Canyon firefighters and the perfect intersection of wind speed and direction). I cried and cried and cried yesterday and the English part of me felt ashamed. You're not there. Your family is safe. What do you have to cry about? It was something akin to grief. Massive grief for a world I love and miss and which will never be the same again. I cried buckets. Charlie sat by me and handed me hankies and brought me cups of tea and both dogs.

I found something I wrote ten years ago:

"I recited the litany of reasons that I loved LA: no weather issues, no need to carry a coat/an umbrella/gumboots, access to the ocean, mountains, trees, a world full of possibility, a vibrant art scene, sunshine, did I mention sunshine? It is a city I love. LA IS my lady."

And this:

"The entire canyon is scented with wild yellow mimosa. You notice it in the cool/warm mornings, now that the sun is up at six. It brings with it the promise of summer, of sweet long evenings, hinting at the myth of the canyon -- a place full of possibility."

There is no place like LA and all the films and books and tv shows and things that you read in the Daily Mail about the Kardashians and the film stars and the wacky people and the woo-woo views will EVER do it justice. It's the place where people go to be in their heart space and to manifest their dreams. It's full of abundance, of endless time, a multiplicity of possibility, of love and support and people who care about what happens to you, and are there for you and have your back. In the midst of the silly industry that we work in exists a huge beating heart, warm, embracing, uncynical, non-judgemental, guileless.  Like my father in law used to say to me, "come on in, give me a hug, you're my daughter."

My heart goes out to everyone who is going through unimaginable distress of finding themselves unhoused, and I will keep you, Los Angeles, my spiritual mother, in my prayers.

Happy + Optimistic 2025

 We have moved to substack in case you didn't know.... you can find us here

This is Pip the whippet who was clearly a Sphinx
in Ancient Egypt in another life.

Happy new year, my friends. The sun is out, quite miraculously, in West Berks, after the most tempestous, bi-polar of weather over Christmas and the new year. Yesterday it snowed and in the little wood between us and the church, when I ventured in with both dogs, it was positively warm, with steam rising through the pine trees, as if I were in a natural sweat lodge. Or Narnia. This morning the gale force winds blew out hundreds of candles on us as we walked through the farm. Now, sunshine. I'm at my desk realizing that zoom calls are really not my thing, darling, and that I need to simplify. I'm told not to panic, that the new year doesn't properly start till Wednesday when Aries comes onto the scene (reliably sourced via Kirsty Gallagher) and that this mad dash to give up things and start new regimes really isn't good for us. 

I'm reliably informed that this year is going to be great and that it is a year when more and more people are going to realize that we are all souls having a human existence. There is a shift happening and we're going to discover if we haven't already that we have six not five senses. (If you haven't listened to The Telepathy Tapes, do so immediately.)  Imagine how the earth will change when this news catches fire!

The best advice I have is listed here. Take what you need:

• Sardines on grilled on rye bread are the best high choline, omega 3, protein-rich snack. Also, delicious. Parmentier is best.
• Be patient. When you ask for something it will come to you but not always immediately. A bit like a 6 month old puppy working on recall (see pic above).
• Everything that you're presented with is meant for you and instead of asking why, ask what. Everything is a lesson of some kind, you know part of life's rich fabric. It's a puzzle for us to unlock.
• Start the day and end the day with a prayer or an intention, even if it's whispered under the covers when you're dog tired; what it is you would like and what is it that you are grateful for. Gratitude begets abundance. It's just the way it is. I say this little one adapted from Sonia Choquette: "Divine Spirit within me, move me in the direction of my highest good this day and the highest good I can bring to anyone I encounter. Move my mind, words, emotions, thoughts and body in the direction of my greatest success and the greatest good. Thank you for the abundance that surrounds me." For a long time I had brain salad, all kinds of ideas swirling in my head in a mushy ADHD lentil soup. Once I started articulating things OUT LOUD, things happened. And it got better.
• Water of any kind, drunk, swam in, bathed in, showered in, walked in, splashed on you, will help you. Take more than you think you need. Water is magic.
• Eat an orange. Preferably one with babies. Simple and perfect.
• Consider the things you spend your time on. Just don't do anything that you don't vibe with. Why bother? Life is short. We choose to be here to live out our years, so why not fill them with things that bring joy and meaning.
• Sound is everything. Now they've discovered it heals too. Find music and vibration that makes you feel happy. Find a sound bath if you haven't already.
• Let them. See Mel Robbins' new brilliant book, or her podcast interview with Oprah. Just that: Let them. You are the only thing you have any control over. You cannot change anyone else. You're not there to feel their emotions for them nor to control how they feel. The only thing you have any influence over is yourself. (It really doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.)
• Everything is conscious. It may not have a beating heart and it may not look like you, but it will vibe with you, so greet everything with love. Say hello to the birds, the trees, and see what they bring you. (It's only good manners, really, innit?)
• Radical acceptance. Accept the world as it is not as you would like it to be (which is a variation on Mel Robbins.)
• This one is hard, I know, but what you think becomes your reality.
• LOVE.

Good luck and please know how powerful you are.

Miserere

This is more about healing, which is the thing I'm thinking about most. It's understandable that this won't be for everyone. So feel free to swipe.

It's not quite light outside but I can hear the first birds on my left, through the window, despite Ola Gjeilo playing with great fervor next to me. Music is massively important first thing in the morning.There is a fragility to waking now. I want to not hold on too hard, but to save the mood, the delicious spaciousness of coming out of the dream state. Especially waking on a Sunday without a a lot of to do's already whirling around in one's head. I lay for a few minutes and do my checklist: puppy sleeping - check, Thistle snoring - check, Charlie breathing beside me, do I need any more sleep? I don't think so. Has the heaviness of yesterday lifted? I think it might have. Breathe? Oh yes, must breathe. But which breath? The double one. The one where you do a deep breath in and then another short sharp deep one at the top. I do this a few times for good measure. I know the breath will bring me back to equilibrium. I whisper "would you like some tea?" to C. I quietly pick up the little whippet puppy from his crate and we wander downstairs.. All Is Well. The puppy goes out, pees, he knows the drill now. I've left the heat on in the kitchen and the wooden floor is warm on my bare feet as I make the tea.

And yet, it might not have been so. Yesterday was not like this. Exhausted (a word I use all too frequently now) from being in the city, around a lot of people, shadowing as I do in my job. We are half people. We exist to make sure other people are okay, that their artistic visions are understood, that their worlds are illuminated for other people to see. These are good and lovely and talented people, and I have done this job for many years now, more than forty years, and the job is to uphold, support, enable and defend another's creativity. Perhaps it's the electromagnetic activity in the heavens, the solar flares, the aurora borealis, but my shadow job didn't feel like such a good idea. Somehow my body was done with the stuckness, tired of holding everything in, exhausted from being in a Medieval court, from playing the Fool, from the petty humiliations and unspoken slights and didn't really want to play the game any longer.  (I can hear the crows getting up, greeting each other, chatting, gathering around the oak now. We have hundreds of crows; a well-organized bunch). Despite good and kind people, and meaningful subjects, there was a pushing through, an extended effort, that you know means you're not in alignment.

As my father said to me twenty years ago when I first struggled with my job and wondering if it was indeed what I was meant to be doing, "you are lucky to have a job like this and to be successful at it." Yes I am. 

My depletion was so intent yesterday that I wanted to roll up in a ball like a pill bug, turn off my crazy mind, cover myself in a duvet and shut down. Maybe there could be plug in stations for human beings? Especially now everyone's getting rid of their Teslas. Rock up, connect and sleep for an hour or two while your body and mind and soul is replenished with magic vitamins, nourishing fluids and much-needed dopamine. Here's your little sleep box with its fluffy duvet, here are your headphones playing 432hz, here's your eye mask with just a little bit of rose-scented aromatherapy on it, and here are two smooth clear quartz crystals for your hands. Here is your prayer. Here is peace and tranquility. (Here are the two pink/white dahlias on your desk put there by your beloved; here is your cup of tea that he makes you every morning; here is the dog that sleeps at your feet warming your toes; here is the morning light where you can glimpse the optimism of the sun. Here is the morning when you feel strong and calm and loved.)

My exhaustion was so great that I cancelled my good friends who were coming to dinner. I love to cook I said. I do. I love the rituals of the dinner party. The making the house pretty, the hunting for flowers, laying the table, choosing what to make. Spreading books on the kitchen table, connecting again with the house, remembering that this is how we love, this is how we show people we care. But I had nothing to show and nothing to give. And because I am married to a beautiful saint of a man, he made salmon and vegetables and it was delicious, and I went to bed early with my copy of On Pilgrimage by Jennifer Lash. Actually I got into a hot bath and lay there reading and willing myself not to sleep, and watching the puppy chewing on the bath mat. It was the first time in quite a long time that I thought, ah, a glass of pinot noir might go down well now, in the bath, with my book. A perfect glass of reset. It was a bleak day. I wondered if I might be slipping into madness. Nothing really seemed to work properly. My house isn't in order, it's broken, I said to C. I think he thought I was referring to where we live. I wasn't. It's funny how dramatic one can sound when distressed.

So here's the elephant in the room (the baby hippo in the mud): I am actually one of those trite people that has self-diagnosed with ADHD. And boy, was it a long time coming. I am so proud of myself for not having done it years ago when it was really popular and all the cool kids were doing it.  But you know, fifteen years ago when I had a high schooler and a kid about to go to college, their diagnoses seemed more compelling, and important I suppose. The focus was on them. boom boom. And my husband was obviously neuro-divergent, as he had obvious physical signs - hyperactivity (which was both massively inspiring and exhausting to be around, total focus on new hobbies including all the equipment, an inability to sit still at all). Our family was loving and loud and chaotic, in the best ways. So with all this activity and furor (it's not quite the seven fishes episode of  The Bear, but you get my flow) and madness, it was (looking back) easier for me to sit quietly and observe. Or at least play the anchor in some way. I now know that this is called masking. Masking. Not just for those on the autism spectrum. My hyperactivity is in my head, not my body. (Although I did get frowny looks when I ran down the corridors in my heels when I was an executive at Fox.) How do you know, indeed, that the messy soup of thought that is your brain isn't the same as everyone else? How do you know that the way you're experiencing the world isn't the way everyone else is experiencing it? You don't. We didn't talk about these things. My time blindness was just laziness or something. My inability to leave the house, or go to a meeting I didn't want to go to? She's a bit crazy.  My desperate need for a glass of wine at 6pm to bring me back to a settled, calm state? Borderline alcoholism. My inability to face a crowd of people? Antisocial behaviour. My massive lack of focus while trying to write my thesis?  Too many drugs? Not being able to sparkle on command? No-one knew. I'd just hide on days like that. Fake illness. Feeling everything acutely, every single vibe in a room? I don't know. Growing up with a volatile father?

So rather like that joke about the nervous breakdown - I've waited patiently and now it's my turn - here I am, trite as hell, sitting with an idea that seems to fit all the weird behaviours of my life. I am not entirely alone. I've discussed it quite a lot with my therapist, and she concurs, or at least can see the thread that connects everything. And even said something like "that must have been a lot" and it made me cry. It's all been a lot, always, forever, since I can remember. And that's what I was told too. A lot. Too much. Or, in the immortal words of my matron, Miss Collier (who also had a broom named after her) "Bumble by name, Bumble by nature." A really lovely, positive thing to write in the book of a struggling, spotty, slightly fat thirteen year old. And you know what? Sitting with all of this, all the time, for the last few days: It feels like grief. It should be a revelation, and definitely things are shifting, but it sits like grief in my body, heavy and sludge-like, unmoving, stultifying. And the thing about grief is that it doesn't give your the opportunity to enjoy change, or the new season, the color of the leaves, sweater weather, because you're stuck in regret and the constant unfolding of the idea that you missed so much. Where is my summer day? Where is my ten minutes of swimming in the Aegean sea? Why didn't we barbecue the day the sun was out? Why do I even bother having summer clothes?

Yo-Yo Ma, man, he brings you back every time. Him and Bach, what a team.

Here's the word that goes through my head constantly: excuse. This revelation is an excuse for not being better, because being better, fixing yourself, is what life is about, right? Self-improvement. But here's a radical idea: what if you are perfect, as you are? What if all the weird little divergent nooks and crannies and rough edges and bizarre quirks are exactly what the universe needed, and every little crinkly line fits perfectly into the big jigsaw? What if the world needed something that was exactly the same shape as you? And that no-one else is even slightly the same as you. You are a note in the symphony, a note that no other instrument can play. (If you're finding this trite, you may not be my people, no offense or anything, but this is where I am and the simplicity of this idea is what is healing.)

And one more sweet thing. I met a young woman this week from Los Angeles, who was a light, a shiney light in the midst of it all, guileless, sweet, kind and good. And she shone so bright because there were no rough shadow edges. Every single emotion was true and direct and there was no guilt or shame attached to any of it. She was exactly as she was meant to be, in alignment, perfect, in her lane in the best possible way, so she brought shimmery illumination to everything that she came into contact with. My daughter in law is the same. It's not an English thing to be this way, or not in my experience. There is no shame, no guilt, there is just being.

Here is something beautiful for your Sunday morning. Allegri Miserere in the Sistine Chapel. Inspired by Conclave.

I do like a list. And here are a few things I would suggest if you're trying to overcome overwhelm:

• Nature. Get outside as soon as you can in the morning. Just having your feet on the grass will ground you, bring you back.
• Walk in the trees either on your own or silently. Touch and hug them. You can actually feel the energy, and it is good. Walk far enough that you suddenly forget you are walking.
• Water, either drunk or bathed in, is good for the soul. Some say water is the magic elixir (Masuro Emoto, for example, or author Elif Shafak There Are Rivers In The Sky)
• Sing or chant. Check out Krishna Das. If you'd like my healing mantras playlist, let me know and I'll send it to you.
• Breathe. I do 4-7-8 breath, or the double intake breath with a long exhale. Magic right here.

And one more thing that I love is this:

Greet everyone as if you love them. Try it. It's quite magical how the energy you give is the energy you receive. 

(Yesterday is gone.)

Love to you.

Thursday & rain & is it all too much

The lovely and smiley lady at the Whitchurch/Pangbourne toll bridge, who favors bright pink cashmere sweaters, and is always so put together at seven in the morning that she puts me to shame with my scrubbed face and pony tail and grubby jodphurs, told me on Monday that a nice gentleman had told her that this rain that we're having is going to last a month. I didn't believe her then, but here we are on Thursday and it's still going. The morning was one of those pink and optimistic ones where you actually for a moment glimpse who you are again. I remember taking Charlie's hand and saying something platitudinous like "I love it when the sun shines." This is what happens in England. A nation fixated on the weather. And because the weather is so completely and utterly crap most of the time, we are, most of the time, depressed and miserable and down in the mouth. Down in the mouth is such a wonderful expression because it describes not only the electronic speed limit signs that flash your speed at you with a smiley face or a glum face (and they're so effective you come sliding to a stop as if your headmistress is glaring at you), but it's also the face of the guy coming at you from the other direction when you're in traffic early in the morning on a grey day. Glum. I think that's the old-fashioned word for it. I tend to be jovial in traffic. I tend to smile and let people in and roll down the window to wave heartily when people let me in. Today, in fact, a man in a Lamborgini backed up under the railway bridge near Pangbourne High Street to let me through because there was a butcher's van in the way, and I felt somewhat triumphant. And it changed my view of men in Lambos, albeit it purple metalic ones (cars not men). This is the fundamental difference between the English and the Americans, though. Not the backing up of Lamborginis, of course, but the resting state. Americans have a resting optimism. The English, I'm afraid, have a resting liverishness. They are (I could say we are, but I choose not to, not today in the rain) a bit miserable, a bit full of shame, and a little down in the mouth. And I think it might have everything to do with the weather.

Stephen Fry who is very good on this stuff, draws the parallel between mental health and the weather. He doesn't say that mental health is affected by the weather but that it is like the weather, that even though there are clouds, one should remember that the blue skies are always there but hidden. He probably says it with a "hey-ho" too.

I would go one step further. I have noticed how different everyone is when the sun is out. How there is a general brightness and hilarity with the sunshine. How even the most grumpy of organs (Daily Mail, anyone) will give up their endless attack on the Labour government with a "Phew wot a scorcher" headline and a lovely picture of comely Samantha in her bikini in Primrose Hill.

I've been cheering myself up, somewhat childishly, by playing on repeat the clip of Keir Starmer calling for the return of the sausages in Gaza. It's very silly, I know, and it's a very serious issue, but I've been laughing so hard that I almost fell out of my chair. I can't help myself. It's the most English thing I've ever seen.

Yesterday, stuck between meetings at the elegant & welcoming Covent Garden Hotel in London I was witnessing (eavesdropping, let's be fair) a meeting between two English writer/producers who are responsible for a very successful show that did well on both sides of the Atlantic and an American executive and his cohort who started the conversation with "no-one needs to come to Hollywood anymore because everyone is in London" and then continued to blow smoke up the arses of the writers to such an astonishing degree that I wondered whether I should take notes for posterity (or posteriority). The man was so nimble, so silver-tongued and elegant in his flattery, that the Englishmen didn't really know what had hit them ("I don't suppose you've tried directing yet, have you? You really should." "Are you swamped with offers? You guys are such hot shit." "Man, this script is Fargo meets Shogun with shades of The Godfather. It's a masterpiece.") And soon they began to drop their English reserve and became comfortable with the warm, oozy feeling of being bathed in compliments. Their defences down, suddenly they behave completely out of character, sprawling in their chairs, their voices raised, and responding to the flagrant flattery like it's heroin. I felt a bit awkward. In situations like this I don't really know which team I'm on or who I'm rooting for. It's a little bit like when you're fourteen and you unwisely try to play your parent your favorite album. You just can't hear it through their ears without hating on it just a bit. I did this with Blondie's Parallel Lines after a dinner party my parents had with some of their best friends. David B, a lovely ex-arm man, picked up the sleeve and read the lyrics out loud in his aristocratic, rather mellifluous timbre "One way....or another... I'm going to get you, get you, get you...." You can imagine. Oy doyed as they say on Lawng Island.

In other news, what have we done? We're in puppy heaven (or hell). Pip is a sweet-natured-very good-boy, a little whippet. Charlie wakes up with him at three in the morning and takes him outside onto the lawn where they both pee. It's a male-bonding thing in a house full of women. I'm so grateful for this matey stuff, because it means I can sleep through. But omg, what have we done? We actually can't go out to dinner, or really do anything social together because of the puppy. For the next few months, we have to be hyper vigilant and hyper aware that every journey will involve a puppy cage. Everyone said to me, oh puppies are a lot of work. And I laughed at them. Ha ha ha, I thought. I can do this. I've had puppies. I'm a dog person. I know what I'm doing. No I don't. I've just managed to stop him gnawing on all of my favorite cookbooks, which I keep in the kitchen at dog bed height (the ones I like less or use less are on a bookshelf in the other room.)

It's been an insane few weeks. I've discovered that I'm one of those people that is super sensitive to the moon. I know, I know. Mock me now. But I am! I listen to Kirsty Gallagher and every day she says exactly how I'm feeling. I wake up intensely anxious and wonder what's happening to me. "Did we swap" I said to Charlie? "Are we in some weird Jamie Lee Curtis movie?" I'm the one who used to wake up with the massive burst of optimism, that would skip downstairs, breathe in the air and smile, and the bluebirds would fly down and land on my shoulder. What on earth happened? Has this happened to you? Have you been affected by the Mercury Chryon or whatever it's called? Have you felt like your head is exploding? 

And on top of this, I've chosen to migrate this blog to Substack, which is sooo scary and big and surrounded by Really Important Writers. I have complete and utter stage fright.  

We've emptied my mother's house. Well, a nice man called Hugo and his team did all the hard work and they couldn't have been more fantastic, but have you ever had to wade through reams of old photos, old books, childhood memorabilia, clothes, furniture, bedding, favorite Christmas decorations and be the executioner? Keep/Charity/Chuck. It's hellish. And even if you don't feel it at the time, there is an emotional toll that's hard to shake. Old scrapbooks, and Dawn Palethorpes's My Horses & I, my mother's battered French copy of "Le Petit Prince" and Norwegian sweaters, old albums, tablecloths from my grandmother, my father's old cufflinks, some of them made of coral from the far east, letters (oh, the letters and love letters from and to everyone in the family). And then the most beautiful dresses my mother made for their yearly grown-up trips to Barbados. I think they ran with a fast and glamorous crowd there, and my mother, refusing to be outdone by all the London Grande Dames who shopped at Harrods and Harvey Nichols and Biba, made beautiful long dresses, in groovy fabrics befitting of the era (1970s), a lot of them stitched by hand, lined in silk, with bows and ruffles and large blowsy silk flowers. There was a bar called Greensleeves, which is no longer there, where my mother was rumored to have said "Oh my goodness, this is the jetset." My father laughed about it, about her naivete, but I've always found it quite touching. She is and was her mother's daughter, and wanted to dress the part. There are pictures of her on the beach with the sunset behind her, rum punch in her hand, in a flowery, floaty dress, just slightly sunburned, her teeth white, her eyes sparkling. She was so beautiful. She still is.And so the only thing we can count on is change. We cannot lament the end of summer or say what summer?, because here we are, and the blackberries have already started to rot, and the Virginia creeper is glowing crimson on outside walls, and people are making plans for Christmas. The only thing we can do is to stay here, right here, in the present moment, as the days darken, and the crows become more insistent as they do their rounds of the oak trees before bedtime, and I suppose greet the blue skies with joy even if they are less frequent than we would like. I keep coming back to this idea that we have to

"Accept yourself as you are and life as it is." - Jeanne de Salzmann

As opposed to how we'd like things to be.  Again, one step closer to equanimity. One hopes.

Oh, and one more thing I've been thinking about. Do you ever feel that you are flawed? Do you ever feel that every day you have to somehow fix yourself?  I was noodling this idea at four in the morning and I mumbled something to Charlie, who'd actually just been pee-bonding with the dog on the lawn and was still awake, with dew-stained chilly feet. It's probably a particularly neurotic position, but I think I spend a lot of time thinking about self-improvement. Now, wouldn't life be so much easier if you came from a position of believing you were okay? Maybe it's just not possible to be a strategic comms professional and a  brilliant cook and a terrific gardener and a great rider and a voracious reader and a good friend and a thoughtful parent and a dutiful child and a responsible pet owner and an inspired thinker and a seeker and a writer and an artist. And maybe you can't have a minimal house (the new fad according to HTSI is merchandised clutter, or something like that - it's maximal to the max but in lots of very arty piles) and good handwriting and be able to throw together a watercolor, a mulberry cardamom cake, a boeuf bourgignon AND do the dance sequence from the opening credits of "The Perfect Couple." It's all so exhausting, isn't it? How much, really, is enough?

Honestly, it's enough to make me want to escape to a Greek Island with a book and a hammock. Oh but I forgot. I have a puppy. 

 

All the feels & quite a lot of other things including metal detectors

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

• Emily Dickinson

Delilah, our most petite and blonde hen with an indefatigable spirit, is missing. There is no evidence of anything that might be awry, no scattering of feathers, or God forbid, body parts. But she has not come out this morning to eat, which could of course mean that she is broody and sitting on a massive pile of eggs behind a tree in the garden. Charlie and I have walked and searched and whistled as we do, and brought with us sunflower seeds, her favorite treat, but nothing. It's pouring with rain, and her two compadres, Margot and Prune, are fluffing up their feathers underneath the awning by the back door, making disapproving noises. It's a sun awning really, but they like to be there, outside the dining room window, so I have reeled it out a couple of feet as shelter, and brought them something to eat and drink as they ruffle themselves up against the downpour. They are our happy band, our curious, friendly, intelligent ladies, who patrol the garden by day, and come sit by us while we have lunch or a cup of tea under the silver birch tree. But, there has been an infestation of red mites in their hen house, and I use that perfect tense optimistically. It's probably still home to a family of mites, and despite scrubbing, bleaching, power washing, spraying with mite killer, and rubbing great handfuls of diatomaceous earth into each crack and crevice (wearing yellow rubber gloves, gumboots, old shirts and dish towels around our heads), these tiny, mighty bugs are very hard to get rid of. Therefore, Margot and Prune sleep on the perches outside of their house (still within the protection of the cage) but Delilah has gone rogue and prefers to live in a tree (like that book by Calvino). Our garden is walled on all sides and where there are gates there is also chicken wire and we feel that it's pretty well protected. No bunnies (fingers crossed) and no foxes (one hopes fervently). The lower garden, where the raspberries, the apple and plum trees, the courgettes and pumpkins and spinach grow, is less protected and is surrounded by normal post and rail and barbed wire fencing leading onto the fields where the horses from the livery farm next to us graze.

But one of the results of red mites in a hen house is that hens a) refuse to go in side, and in extreme cases b) stop laying. Mine haven't laid since the day Charlie left for the Cannes film festival, which is early May, unless of course Delilah has a secret stash of eggs somewhere that we've yet to find. I live in hope. I blamed it on Charlie for months. "You're too bonded!" I lamented.

Delilah

Here's the funny thing about having chickens, even a few of them; one does become fiercely attached and protective. I love my girls.

One of the things that happens to you in late middle age (this is probably old age but that's just a step too far for me) is that you start to think about your purpose and why you're here. Think about it, you are a child and then you're a student and then you work your arse off trying to make something of yourself in the world, and then raising your own children while still working hard. The only stillness I can remember, the only times I haven't actually been working is either on a horse, walking a dog, or, frankly, slightly drunk at a party. The slightly drunk part, the squiffy part, the oh-aren't-I-sparkling part is what you needed to do, what I needed to do in order to deal with the stress of the work in the crazy business that I chose to be in, and still am in.  I wore "good at dealing with difficult men" as a badge of honor, without looking at all at the toll it was taking on my already traumatized little body. The habitually waiting for the yard arm to hit 6 or 7 depending on how desperate you were. ("It's cocktail hour somewhere in the world," my elegant east coast friend would say.) How satisfying to open the fridge and grab a cold bottle of white burgundy, filling up a glass. It was a sturdy companion to whatever you might already be doing (cooking supper usually) and became a daily ritual, come rain or shine. Now, when you take alcohol away (as I did six hundred and two days ago**) there leaves a really interesting space, a vacuum, a void, that needs to filled with something. And I've filled it with seeking. I've filled it with a great and intriguing journey of discovery and healing, and it's quite revelatory. You see, when you stop doing and start being, everything changes. Every little thing in your life changes, because suddenly everything is more expansive. There is spaciousness in your head, room to breathe, and room to feel. Everything shifts deeper inside, and suddenly you're not interested in surface things (I mean, let's not exaggerate, I love silly things too!) and you don't have time for any bullshit. I dread dinner parties where I'm sat next to a man who wants to talk about nothing. I laughed so much when one of my besties told me she was stuck at a dinner like this where she became desperate to find something to talk about when the man next to you turned to her and said "Do you Ski?" Later, walking out, she turned to her dinner companion and said "just remind me of your name - it's Johnny Clayton-Smith yes?" and he smiled and said "I'm the 4th Baron Leicester." We laughed and laughed. And yes his name has been changed for this purpose.

"Trust in the slow work of God" says Pierre Teilhard De Chardin. "Your thoughts become your reality" says someone else, mostly all the accounts that pop up in my algorithm on Instagram. I try to remember this. If you want anything in the world you have to trust that as long as you show up and do the work, the universe, or God, or the divine intelligent design, whatever you call it, will meet you half way.  But you have to have clarity about what you want. You have to be able to picture it, to imagine it, to bring it clearly into your mind, well defined and without fuzzy edges. And this, for me, is hard. My mind works in a very strange way; I see endless possibilities and options always. Here are a thousand ways you can spend your day, and each of them feels meaningful. Which one pulls you in the most compelling way? And how do you decide? For me, and maybe for you, I've realized that like one of those metal detectors with the very satisfying buzzing sounds that vibrates higher and louder when it gets near a treasure, my body reacts with a trembly fizzing sensation when it's near something that it vibes with. And similarly, it sends me an "I don't like this vibe" when I'm about to embark on something that isn't in my best interest. (It works very well near baked goods too, particularly croissants from my favourite bakery in Nettlebed). 

+++ I interrupt this transmission with this note. I just heard a bit of an inquisitive 'bok bok' sound outside my window. Delilah is back! +++

I believe it's easier to be in touch with this inner radar if you don't use alcohol, at least for me. The numbing effect of alcohol - and I say this with love as a years long fan - doesn't allow you to feel the bad stuff, but by the same token, doesn't allow you to feel the good, so all the tiny, fine tuned little hairs that feel energy are blunted. And in blunting them we lose our way, we lose sight of where we are supposed to be in the world and what it is that keeps us in alignment, in our stream, in our flow. (Wonderful piece in the Guardian on Flow here).  And stay with me here. In finding that track, that stream, where you're supposed to be, in completely acknowledging that you are where you are supposed to be, perfectly and beautifully aligned, and by not questioning that, just being in it, everything will miraculously become available to you. All the things you need. It's as if by being still and quiet and as Ram Dass says "Be Here Now" then everything collides and colludes to give you all that you need. Your job is to accept things as they are and not as you think they should be. This is equanimity.

I have a friend who is so connected to the creative project that she is working on that everything she touches becomes a tiny thread which is inextricably linked to the whole world she is exploring. Everything she tugs at reveals something even more marvelous and relevant and revelatory. It's quite inspiring.

This post is about hope and how it exists in the world. If you allow yourself to be still and be with it long enough. Our purpose here on this planet, for this minute of time that we have, is to heal ourselves and to put healing back into the matrix, back into the world. I think so much about the Maharishi Effect whereby the consciousness of a whole group of people can be raised by one percent of its population practicing meditation. ie similar to the Meisner Effect in physics, individual consciousness can affect collective consciousness. It's massively hopeful and it's something to hold onto when the atrocities in the world are flashed before our eyes daily in the media and we feel less than powerless to help.  And it's not just through meditation. There are very simple ways that you can change the lives of those you come into contact with in your daily comings and goings; smiling genuinely, asking people how they are, letting people through in traffic, calling a friend. Random, tiny things that will radiate out in ever-expanding circles.

There is no need to be afraid of it, to be ashamed of it, or to think it's not cool. We're not 16 (do you remember when being an enthusiast was about the most uncool thing you could do?) and so why not embrace it?

I wish you all a very happy weekend.

** I said a few weeks ago that if I cared about what people thought of me, it would prevent me from expressing myself clearly and accurately, so I stopped. But my intention is not virtue signaling. This is only my experience with alcohol and I know many many people (98% of my friends) who are lovely and kind and wonderful and effective and drink alcohol without it any adverse effect. You do you as the kids say.