Monks, Miniature Dachsunds & The Very Lucky Day

When I'm worried, I move the furniture. Today, I've lugged an old Georgian desk with three drawers in it all the way up the stairs (upwards, step by step in a wiggling movement, rounded foot by rounded foot) to my office. I've jettisoned the white IKEA desk, more fitting, I think, for an architect, and now I've balanced my laptop, a lamp, a glass of water on the desk from my parents' drawing room where the phone used to be. Behind it on the wall (in the house I grew up in) was an old and flattering mirror, with a pretty, rather ornate wooden frame, so you could look at yourself while speaking on the phone. It appealed to my teenage self. The desk is awkward and I can't fit my knees under it from my ergonomic chair, so I'm sitting cross-legged and facing the window and the thankfully blue sky. What it lacks in comfort it makes up for in solace and safety. I like that one of the drawers is filled with years of November paper poppies with green plastic stems. I've pushed the daybed against the wall, topped it with my rainbow horse blanket and the ancient Frenchie. I'm remembering to drink more water than I think I need.

The day started oddly. I dragged myself and the dogs down the field to the river at about a quarter to 6, in my Birks, through wet grass, in order to stem it (the oddness). Both dogs walked into the stream and drank. It started to rain. We galloped back up the hill. I did deep breathing exercises because I thought that might help the crazy thick energy. I know you're all feeling it too. Water with electrolytes, a cup of tea. Then 35 minutes of YogiGems. Instead of choosing a set of kriyas randomly I searched "depression" which revealed 30-minute kundalini yoga to remove tension and negativity. Having a tough time? Dealing with difficult energies or people? Bingo. I love her so much. The breathing helps massively. Then the ho-oponopono meditation. Then TM (with a nod to dear Pam Gregory and all the people who meditate at 7 for a harmonious and peaceful planet). I say it, along with my prayers, the lists and lists of people and animals that I must remember. I know, it's insane. It's like Daryl from Mallory Towers who says a prayer for the earwigs in the garden shed. All this just to put myself together in the morning. We are in the most intense of times. We are all holding on by a thread. I think this and then I chide myself for even allowing the thought. I remember positive affirmations. I remember water. I remember my to do list and the water device and the refresh the flowers on the altars. I do some more breathing. I think this is called magical thinking.

The first thing I saw on my phone was a message on The Hub, our local community What's App group, lovingly curated by my friend L, was 7.39am Looking for a male long haired miniature dachsund to mate with mine. She's coming into season shortly. Quickly followed by the helpful reply: Champ Dogs is a respected website for doggy dating.

I took the dogs to Yattendon to grab coffee and sit with people and my journal. C is in Brussells voting on films with the European Parliament. I live in the middle of nowhere and I thought to myself, today is not the day to be alone. Dear little Pip curled up in a ball next to me and I struck up a conversation with the woman on the next table, who has a five year old Spaniel. Eggs, coffee.Admiration for the lovely woman who runs it. I should do this, I think. How much more satisfying a life it is to give people delicious breakfast. Everyone loves breakfast. A conversation behind me about the viral meningitis break out in Henley and all the news crews that stalked the college. It was hard for the students as they were in the middle of exams. "Sky News was really aggressive" says the young woman. Yattendon has pleasingly green doors, a good little shop which tempts you in to buy things like Tunnocks Snowballs and bloater paste, a lot of people with dogs. On the way back I stopped in to see L in her nice shop. We really should have a secret handshake. "How are you doing with this, you know, energy" she said and I could've cried. "I'm doing everything I can" I said. I'm not sure I can let her in to my crazy morning routine, but no doubt she has one too. I see some adventurine. It's pleasingly green and both dull and sparkly. I'm wearing all green and it matches me. We talk about crystals and her beautiful amethysts. She tells me how to clean my crystals. She offers me sage. I say I have palo santo and don't say that I want to call it palo alto. I tell her that The Hub is the reason I've stayed in West Berks. All the lovely crazy ladies and their crickets bats, and teenage sons who need garden work, ten pound Zara dresses, chocolate Guinness cake, and questions about where to eat in Marrakech. I look at L and see a kindred spirit. I know she won't laugh at kundalini and have seen her save people from themselves when they're a little drunk in charge of the Whats App group. She is, I think, a Good Egg. Also the cafe across from her is being taken over by the pub so she's expecting an influx of people this summer. Good.

The police are doing their thing next door training their very howly dogs so that Pip lays by the bedroom window with one ear permanently raised. It's all very serious. Guns pointed. Men with stuffing in their arms. Grown up faces. All of that. They train on the grounds of the big house next door to us until it's sold. Sometimes when they include the ambulance teams too there are tents erected and hamburgers grilled. And they leave half eaten buns in the leaves, much to Pip's delight. I take him up the drive to pick up something from Amazon. The Julia Elliot book Hellions. I'm rather pleased. I think of my friend H in LA who married a man who did nothing but order from Amazon while she worked her arse off. I could never understand it. He also went on a silent retreat in real life ie not while away with likeminded people staying in yurts, and they'd turn up to dinner parties and only one of them would speak. Poor H would walk in and announce gently that her husband was taking a talking sabbatical  My friend Lucy said it was quite boring sitting next to him because he could only nod or shake his head. Thank goodness she is a good conversationalist. But, she said, he was apparently very good at sex, so I suppose grunting and moaning was allowed. Quite a good way to appear gloriously enigmatic and interesting, don't you think?

I'm not avoiding the subject. All my gang are talking about it. When I say gang I don't mean my friends. It's a bit like being in the resistance, you don't really tell people about it for fear that they may think you a bit mad. But my most straightforward and sensible friend J says that people don't mind because they know me and I've always been this way (which is true; I've signed my emails with "everything is connected" since about 1996) but it doesn't mean that you can out yourself. I sit at lunches and dinner parties and try to be witty and funny because I'm sure I used to be that way, but it doesn't seem to work so well. Either I'm the "intense" one - which is fair - or I've gone beyond the age where being eccentric is both charming and sexy. Poor C, after every single lunch we have here I say "Am I boring? I know I am." And he says "no you're not boring, my darling." And I look for cracks in his armor and hesitation in his usually Jeremy Irons-like delivery (I'm not joking. He sounds exactly like Jeremy Irons. I love it.) But my gang (Kirsty and Pam and David and Lee and whathaveyou) are talking a lot about this massive shift that is happening in consciousness. And that it's not just humans that are shifting, but mother nature, the whole planet. There are a LOT of earthquakes now, for example, and solar flares, and wars (at least 8 conflicts in the world currently, and 10,000 or more combat-related deaths), and disputes, and utter madness, things we've never seen before, certainly not in my life, certainly not from people in public office.

I've resorted to a happy patch. It's yellow and filled with things like Lion's Mane. Previously known as a dopamine patch but they were sued for copyright infringement or some such thing. I've stuck it on the most hairless part of my body per the instructions, which happens to be on the side of my ribcage. Actually it's called a Kind Patch. I hope it helps.

While I was illegally scrolling on Instagram yesterday, I came across an interview with a man who used to be a monk. He was tall, elegant, dressed in a button down shirt, chinos, wearing a hat. His skin was tanned and his eyes twinkly. He spoke gently, kindly, as you would expect. It made me want to do that so much. Not that we can hide anywhere when the world is turning upside down. But I wonder if that is spiritual bypassing? There are two approaches to spirituality, by transcendence or embodiment. Maybe the embodiment one is more challenging, and maybe it's the one we should be aiming for. Nobody said it was going to be easy, all of this. But I didn't know it was going to be quite so hard to own everything, to be responsible for one's whole self in this way. To be accountable for your behaviour and to acknowledge your role in what is happening in the world. We are all culpable for the strife, the wars. And, I think, I believe, until we see how much we are responsible (we are sovereign) the discordant stuff will continue. There is no-one else to help us other than ourselves. The blaming and shaming doesn't help. The judging doesn't help. Nothing is better or worse. We can't hide. There's nowhere to go. It's just us attempting to take the plank out of our own eye (feels a bit Monty Python, I know) and being ready to walk our sisters and brothers home. Preachy as fuck, I know. But I really don't have anything better right now. It's where I am. Or rather, it's the conclusion I've come to while trying to make head or tails of the whole thing.

PS Yesterday was the Luckiest Day of the Year because of the Venus Jupiter conjunct (they were closer together than they have been in many years). Therefore all people, even those who are prone to humbuggery, were expected to have a little bit of a skip in their step. I dropped my beloved at the train station early to catch the Eurostar and whizzed over the Thames via the Whitchurch Bridge to go see my horse, Bella, who's actually on gardening leave, while her lesion on the fetlock bone heals. She gardens her paddock, mowing the lawn extremely well with her short teeth (why the long face?). Jan, the lady who mans the bridge booth in the mornings, all cashmere and powdery and fragrant, was smiling as usual. "Today is a very Lucky Day" I said. "Venus and Jupiter are closer than they've Ever Been" (I'm prone to slight exaggeration; I do think it makes thing more fun.) "Oh, what a good start to the day!" she said. And I thought Yes! What a good start to the day. Think of all those people who will be driving through that toll booth, and she will be greeting them with the knowledge that Today is the Luckiest Day and all that Magic Juju will be sprinkled on all of them to bring to their places of work. Hooray. The road was closed and so I drove around Woodcote and Stoke Row, via Highmoor and Nettlebed. Bella was awfully happy to see me. For two reasons: 1) I'm the bringer of carrots and 2) I'm the itcher of her teats. It's almost comical, and she doesn't do it with anyone else, but every time I see her, after a few minutes, she lifts her near hind leg and cranes her neck left towards me as if to ask "Could you please give me a scratch?" And dutifully, I rub her teats and get rid of all the muck that lodges itself there, and she puts one of those horse smiles on her face where they stretch their mouth at you comically. "Well clearly Bella is having a Lucky Day"said Kathy. We had a little more Beauty Parlor which included pulling on her ears with a piece of sheepskin, and washing her eyes and nostrils with a warm sponge. She closed her eyes in bliss and then we wandered back to her field, eating some Tasty Spring Grass along the way.

The dogs were with me and I knew I had to find a place to walk them but with the Road Closed signs on our usual routes, we came back via Highmoor (after of course telling Tom and Marny at McQueen's where I get my coffee that this was The Luckiest Day.) I parked up down a byway, got the dogs out of the car and walked into the middle of a beech wood. Huge, old oak trees, mulchy roads, squirrels, and a criss cross pattern of footpaths, dotted with a few very pretty cottages. I met two women with a red labrador and a viszla and managed not to tell them it was a Very Lucky Day. Instead I said "Oh, I grew up with red labs. Aren't they the best?" On the left of us was a huge park field, with a few chestnut trees, a hay meadow probably, and on the right a pretty white gabled cottage that had a thirties feel. I realized I was on the Nettlebed Estate otherwise known as the Fleming Estate. There are 2000 acres of historic woodland including 560 acres of protected woods. (The legendary pond from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang isn't far off in Russell's Water). And then it happened, my brain went into one of its frequent vortices, which happens a lot when walking in the woods, where I started to imagine living in a cottage in the Chiltern Beechwoods of the Fleming Estate. How perfect! Close to my horse! Close to my friends! In the Chiltern Hills! Feels like The Faraway Tree. Check. I called Charlie who by now was actually on the Eurostar beaming through rural France. "I think we should rent a cottage on the Fleming Estate" I said. "I'm on the train surrounded by people" he said in his Grown Up voice. "But isn't this a good option?" I said. "We could live in the middle of the woods. It's beautiful here." "Are there any pubs?" he said. "Oh, masses." I replied. Sweet man knows me well enough to indulge me.

As I drove closer to home I gradually drifted away from my fantasy of living in a fairytale cottage on the storied Fleming Estate (Robert Fleming bought the estate in 1903 and his son, Ian Fleming was born in Joyce Grove Manor House shortly thereafter) and towards the awning man I was meeting at home. I parked my car and in the moment between turning off the engine and opening the car door, there is always a moment when the radio comes on. The voice on the radio said, "The Ian Fleming Estate has announced..." I love a bit of synchronicity. How was your Lucky Day?

Spring light

Hello dear friends, I talked to an astrologer the other day. A really good one. (It was fascinating, let me tell you!) And she said, what do you write about, and I said, well, I don't know really, it's sort of about how people relate to each other and how we're connected to the world. And she said, no-one has ever said that before. Usually people know their genre, which shelf in the book shop they want to be on, and how to market their ideas. Hmmm, I thought. Not me. If you don't mind the not knowing, please do read on. If you do mind, maybe skip it?

The world today is striped green and white as we come over the ridge on the tire track chalk path, wide swathes of fresh grass in between. To the right, beans planted in neat rows in the pale soil, to the left a hedge adorned in white hawthorne for Eastertide, and further beyond the Wessex Hills and the lovely mounds of the Wittenham Clumps, just across from the remnants of Didcot power station. The larks are loud, protective, and high above us the red kites, circling, not one, but three, now five. The sound of my mare's hooves on the drying ground. My dog close by. The mysterious Russian Oligarch's house perched on the hill in front of us. We walk around the little woodland between the fields; the branches are too low especially now that spring is here with its blossom. Despite the birds, the wind in the trees, the hoofbeats, the clank of the bit and the leather reins, there is a hush that descends out here. You're in a vacuum of quiet and peace. There is no rushing home, no anxiety about where to be, just the quietness of one foot in front of another. Synapses slow. The mare's neck is warm against my hand. The dog pounces on tufts of grass. Fat bumble bees hover a few inches off the ground. Time slows down. You're connected to all of it. We gallop home, the horse, the dog and me, in unison, side by side, dog and racehorse. My hands are soft. The mare feels soft. We're in a rhythm. And together.

Yesterday we walked in a wood in West Sussex, near Chichester. The little village, Graffham, is nestled against the downs. It's full of ancient paths cut into the downland. We parked at the church, and followed a steep upward path, chalk, dotted with tiny blue violets and ground elder. I pretended to stop to look out at the view, but I was trying to catch my breath. No such vertical climbs in West Berks. The dog came with us, hunting about, a hundred yards in front of us, resplendent in his dark green fleece coat, a necessity apparently for whippets who have no body fat and virtually no fur. I used to worry about him and now I know that he'll come back to me, since I've been riding with him. He has his side hustles, and then he comes back. Once when he didn't I took a painter friend's advice, and walked in the other direction and hid behind a large tree. He was most confused and cocked his head to one side, and it made me laugh so much, I jumped out to surprise him. But a useful tool for my dog training kit, I supposed. We came down through a tall pine wood, with a soft brown floor, and hardly any sunlight. This sucks you in and seals your ears. You can feel the blanket of calm covering you, all of you. I wonder why I haven't noticed this properly before. I wonder why when we were young and we walked through the bracken and hid from the dogs with my father I hadn't noticed this feeling of being covered with a quilt of peace. All the little mitachondria slow down and sigh and chill out. They have a double membrane, and I seem to remember something about consciousness being stored in membranes (this will need footnotes, apparently).  I say "astonishing" a lot. But that's what it is. It's impossible to be anxious in a pine wood with a dog. And what's to stop you sitting down in the wood?

On Monday after a long weekend of engagement parties and family lunches and friends for supper and general chit-chattery, and much love-lovieness, my social battery had puttered out. I don't know if that's what it's called, but that's what it felt like. I was so tired I could barely move, and threw myself in bed at about seven and napped for two hours, deeply. It was the day the clocks changed too, so I suppose that didn't help. It felt something like grief. For no good reason, I suppose, but my ex-husband was here and while we are the very best of friends, I'm sure it can't help but bring up the stuff that was left unsaid or unhealed. It doesn't feel that way. It just feels like tired. I watched him on Sunday morning sitting comfortably on my pink sofa, with the papers spread out around him, the huge jar of yellow forsythia in front of him, the sun and the tulips outside by the beech tree behind him, and he was soft and quiet for the first time in as long as I can remember*, and I offered him coffee, and it was all strangely formal, a new way of being together. It's been ten years, but here we are, and I'm back where he found me, living in the country in England, surrounded by dogs and blue and white plates and gumboots and mud and sunshine and apple trees. And I'm walking with him, and I'm saying hello to the birds and the goats and the cattle, and we're not in familiar territory. Well, I am, but he isn't. We're not in LA where we both know our way around, me sometimes better than him, because all I did was drive when I first got there so that I could out-Thomas the Thomas Guide, or because maps give me comfort, and the most soothing map is the one in my body. There is a shift, a weird dynamic dosey-do, and although we're not looking at who is where and although it doesn't matter, it feels like he's on the back foot, and that relaxing is required. Hence the newspapers. I've put flowers in his bedroom, ornamental quince and white alliums, and fresh towels, and even that seems strange in its formality. Here we are after having lived together for thirty years or more, being polite to each other.

* I wonder if this is the definition of relaxation; being able to be comfortably with someone who is not asking anything of you?

And it's not just California that brings optimism. He does too. Everything is commented upon with such sweet kindness and positivity. The house. The flowers. The countryside. The books. My beloved. He loves all of it. And he is genuinely happy for me. This has to be said. This is what I find so touching. He is genuinely happy for me. And like me, does not regret any of it. Today two men came into the bakery where I get my morning coffee after I ride. They both wore black baseball caps. I stare at people. My children are embarrassed by this. I stare at the man's hat. It has a BMW and a California grizzly on it. I say "is that a California bear on your hat" and he says, "yes, I got it at a driving school; I'd give it to you but my hair looks terrible right now." We both laugh. I drove home with my coffee and I thought about the man from the US, probably Southern, who was about to give me the shirt off his back. There is so much generosity and openness in the best kind of Americans. I am so touched by it. I drive and the sun whizzes along with me, through the trees, and I think about optimism and bigness and generosity and how much your day can be changed by a small gesture of kindness. He doesn't know why I love the California bear so much and it doesn't matter. It's so big.

So there's a mixture of grief at what was and a massive sense of everything being okay and more than okay as it is. That's the feeling. This house, I thought at the weekend, is even better now because he is here and we are okay, and even more than that, the three of us are okay. Just three souls who have probably been together many times, chilling on a sunny Sunday morning, looking forward to good friends who are coming to lunch.

I walked with a bramble man to the field behind the house to see if he could help with the years of neglect, not wanton neglect of course, but a patchwork of mended fence bits and overgrown blackberry bushes and gnarly old fruit trees. Two weeks ago the tree in the middle looked dead (we diagnosed it as living after seeing one tiny bud at the end of a branch); today it's bursting with white pear blossom. "Nice tree, that," says bramble man, whose name is David. He's wearing a cap that says Wellington International and it turns out that he's the father to a horse girl and husband to a jump judge. We walk around and survey and I realize that everything, absolutely everything including every tree is covered in brambles. I am overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. He is unfazed. He's seen this before in his bramble ramblings. He tells me wooden fences are expensive. He tells me he needs a digger. He says that a meter of briars all around the edge of the field once removed will bring much more grass. I'm impressed with what he knows. I feel I have to register my country credibility. I feel the need to say "my father farmed at the other end of the Chilterns" so I don't appear to be a Johnny Come Lately. Why do I worry about such things?

We teeter on the edge, don't we? I sometimes think that the world is going to collapse into the void like so much California coastline wobbling on the edge of the Pacific, rocks crumbling off the Palisades cliffs, were it not for a few great people, mostly women, who are holding up the sky. I thought there were just a handful of people (you know the ones; they check on you, they send out uplifting notes, they remind you why we're here, they offer to give you the hat off their head) but last night in bed, exhausted, as I was writing in my journal a long long list of who I'm grateful for, the list went over two pages, in scrawly black Tempo felt tip pen that doesn't do much for my writing but I'm strangely drawn to because it was the pen my father used. It's not duty so much as purpose, even divine purpose, the way that they light the way. And any time I'm lost or tired or fear that the light is dimming in me, I find them and listen to them or read them, and then shake my body out like a dog, hoping the light will settle over the unsettled miasma and push its roots down far into the soil and bring back that glowing feeling of being connected to everything, and being a small fractal part of the whole that reflects the whole unity of consciousness. 

Everything is Connected. I had it written at the bottom of my email signature for years. Like some hat tip to David Bowie or Echo & The Bunnymen from My Year of Living Dangerously and trying to sort out what on earth was going on and why we are here. Only Love. 

The sun pours in now. It floods us because it's so pleased to be out after being hidden away behind rain clouds. Let there be light indeed. It shines on the pelargonium geraniums in the kitchen and their shadows light up the white wall. The dogs lay next to me, golden bits glimmering on their fur. The trees are stretching up to reach it. Light is what we all need to find.

This is what you do

This is what you do: you spend the weeks of the new year scanning for signs of Spring, searching for new life; the tiniest green shoots, any hint of optimism. The world is asleep, almost dead, stone-cold and wet, leaden. You are weighed down with the waiting so that you forget that you are waiting. You forget what you are supposed to remember. You're in the fog of winter. The pointers sneak in stealthily, unheard, usually at night. And each one appears miraculously, snow drops, aconites, narcissus, daffodils, hyacinth. One day not here and the next waving madly from the ground in yellow and mauve and pink and white. "Hello! We have arrived!" It's as busy as can be. A fat bumblebee buzzing against my window, two yellow Brimstone butterflies, Blue Tits, yellow and blue and white, fat, too, playing together in the magnolia tree (did you know that their breasts become more bright depending on how many yellow caterpillars they have eaten), horses laying down in the field together, eyes closed, faces towards the sunshine. The tiniest beginnings of ornamental quince, hazel buds. Rose branches bent together in circular prayer.  Greenfinch, Goldcrest, Chaffinch, Wren. Skylark, Graylag Goose, Swan. Scores of Swans, heads down in flooded fields, as we whizz by marveling at the saturated water table, as we ooh and aah at the newest lakes. As we walk to the river and the path is a stream, and we stomp and slosh in rubber boots.

Tonight six planets line up in a cosmic parade: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Venus and Mercury. If you look towards the west half an hour after the sun sets you'll see them. I have a small telescope that I gave Charlie for Christmas and I shall line it up, like the boy in my Alexis Smith piece "Imagination Is More Important Than Knowledge." I am giddy. I stand on the kitchen bench to take pictures of the sunset because we haven't seen the sun for so long. An alignment of planets feels like an Event. It feels like a jolly exciting party. (And how lucky are we to still feel that sense of awe! How lucky are we to be alive right now in this universe, when things are dying and being reborn, better, stronger, with more love, more joy, more harmony.)

Outside you can feel it, the unfurling of joy. The trees stretching their fingers up towards heaven, pandiculating their trunks, reaching towards the sun. I can't contain it (the joy) as I drive home from the horse. I stop on the side of the road, confusing other drivers (on a lane that entertains about eleven cars a day, three arrive just as I pull over). I run along the road, jump up on the verge and I take a picture of five horses lying on the grass. Two are rugged. Three aren't. One has its head on the grass, sleeping. There hasn't been a lot of laying down on the grass since Christmas. In a world where everything is guidance, this too is important. The horses are saying, laying down in the sun, kick off your shoes and walk on the earth, ground yourself, literally ground yourself by laying flat on it and letting the earth's energies flood through your starved system.

At six o'clock this morning we still didn't know what the world would bring. Dawn could go either way really. We sat at the round table in the kitchen and drank tea - his with a lump of sugar, mine in my grandmother's white cup - and talked for the first time in a while because he has been away in Berlin, birthing movies into the world. I woke up with this thought: Words are Magic. Everything we think and everything we say will shape the world we're creating.  And that is what we're doing, sitting here, across from each other, with our tea, with the rosemary and jade and oxalis, the green candles and orange tangerines between us, co-creating the world that we're stepping into. We have no say in it and we have every say in it. "Every moment," says Eliot, "is a fresh beginning," and that's how we're starting today, not looking back at things we did in the past, but gliding forward, together, cognisant of the fact that there are maybe twenty more summers. Twenty more days that mark the start of spring, like this, with tea and sorrell, and the faint hum of Radio 3 which turns itself on somehow at about a quarter past six every day, and I have no idea how to make it not do that, or how to change the station, so here we are, captive, with Thomas Tallis and Ralph Vaughan Williams and the Tawny Owl that has been hooting first thing in the morning and as I go to bed for the last three days. Creation, Michael Meade reminds me, isn't an event that happened once in deepest pre-history, but something that continues to happen every single moment of every single day, little spiral fiddlehead ferns, bursting fractally into life. My ballet teacher when I was five, Mrs Behrens, told me that the arms never stop moving in dance, and the same is true. Nothing ever stops moving, coming into being, moving through the cycles of life and death and rebirth. 

Joy for the Spring that's coming in. Joy for the stuff that's been shed. 

And then it comes, this sun, bathing everything, begging for us to be out in it, making everything sing.

May you be well. May all people and animals be well, and happy, and at peace.

Some Thoughts on the Twenty Second

There is a fork in the road; one way is the path of love and the other is the path of fear.

Only good things happen on the twenty second of the month according to my mother. Understandably, as both of her children and her mother were born on that date. Twenty two is my random pet number for holding my breath or taking gulps of water or counting steps. I like its rather pleasing symmetry. But the weather in West Berkshire on the twenty second of January lists heavily towards miserable and the wet green branches and muddy paths, the flat grey skies and mossy walls are better experienced in person than viewed from the window in front of my desk. In it, it's fine. Outside of it, it's separate and doesn't beckon.

I have to gather reasons to be happy in January. I pick up things everywhere in the hope that they'll be useful. I speak into my phone on to my notes app when I'm driving, and write gratitude lists before I go to sleep. I also shove fistfuls of Vitamin D into my mouth. I like this though: 

"Every moment is a fresh beginning." - T.S. Eliot

Pam Gregory, who is an uber astrologer, in that her background is astrology but she is an all round wise woman and energy healer, one of the women I believe are holding up the world so it doesn't shift off its axes, believes that everything is energy (and science backs this up) and that your inner state shapes your outer reality. She chooses every day that it will be a day of happiness, or joy, or peace. Similarly, the lead monk in the Buddhist Monks Peace Walk, Bhikku Pannakara shares his simple practise by beginning each day with the affirmation "Today is going to be my peaceful day." He says you write it down, then you read it inside and then you read it out loud. By setting this intention, we plant a seed of peace in our hearts, and we continue to choose it no matter what life throws at us. (The late neuroscientist and founder of the Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism Jim Doty walks Mel Robbins through a similar manifestation technique on her podcast.)

This period leading into 2026 - now (and I say this with some urgency) - is all about choosing the life we want and stepping into our power to create that very life. It's no longer about the victim mentality of life happening to you, but rather the choosing exactly what you want ie, life happening for you. There is a lovely thing that happens when you realize that each one of us is a tiny little part of the whole, a bursting, blooming fractal extension of spirit or source or the great creative energy of the universe, or God. So we take responsibility every day and choose to live from a place of higher consciousness. Or at least, I suppose, we choose to be kind and not allow the coarsening of the world to do the same to us.

There is a lot of stuff out there, an endless pit of woo-woo philosophy and advice that would take you a few thousand lifetimes to get through. I have a read a lot of it and my criteria, although a little hazy, is pretty well marked (or boundaried). I trust people who have done the work and I trust those who have a clear academic background in science the most. But the intersection of science and spirituality is boundlessly fascinating to me. Yesterday for example I looked up "thirteen dimensions and string theory." It's butting up against each other all the time, and people are popping over to the other side in order to get a better view. I think (and I will admit to my own limited brain power here) that we are at the point where some questions just cannot be answered by science and spirituality (or, the notion of allowing that there are things that cannot be proved materially and that we have lost somehow our very keen gut and heart connection to the rest of the natural world) might provide some answers.

Case in point, Dr David Clements, a physicist who has advanced degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, and is now someone who communicates with ("channels") Pleiadians and Arcturians. Yes, I know. You probably saw the word "Pleiadian" and decided to stop reading. I was the same. But he is such a sweet and believable man, so grounded in science, and so self-deprecating, and makes so much sense, that it's hard to ignore. His conversation with Pamela Gregory is available on her YouTube channel from January 16 is utterly riveting.

The other astonishing thing is Season Two of The Telepathy Tapes. I think the shame around believing in this stuff has dissipated as I am noting many sceptical friends who are fully embracing this mind blowing podcast. People are allowing themselves to wake up so that they can witness the world evolving. Of particular note, the episode on creativity featuring Liz Gilbert and Ann Patchett, and the one ones on plant and animal communication. After I listened I couldn't get away from the feeling that I'm so lucky to live in a world where these things exist.

I was married for a long time to one of life's great enthusiasts. If he took up a new hobby, he fully committed to it and dedicated his days to it. Even if it was something I wasn't remotely interested in (going for hundred mile bike rides in lycra and cleats, for example) I was fully on board for his enthusiasm for life. It made Christmas presents a doddle. It's exciting to live with someone who is passionate about stuff. And often stuff I didn't understand. I learned to nod and smile at the necessary moments, because sometimes having something explained was even more complicated. My thirst for knowledge in the area of non-duality is something not really shared by anyone in my family, although I am grateful to them for being tolerant and embracing my eccentricity. It's not new. I had an imaginary friend when I was three or four, could feel ghosts in houses when I was ten or eleven, and had the full on psychedelic experience (woah, hay is just sparkling energy) by the time I was at Oxford, with my dear friend A, who has disappeared quietly no doubt into his beloved inner sanctum. Mushrooms weren't for partying; they were sacred. Always taken in the fields (Christchurch meadow), the woods, or, best of all on the wild moors of Ireland, amongst glittering verdure, sunlit heather, surrounded by curious, loving sheep. We knew it was about finding God although it was never said, and we knew that everything was connected. And I never forgot. I was a little disappointed that my philosophy degree didn't include more Huxley or Kesey or any of those cool guys, but there you go. I remember parsing the lyrics to "Over the Wall' by Echo and the Bunnymen and explaining to my aunt that it was about transcendence. Bless her for being so kind, and listening, wrapt.

My sobriety, I sometimes think, makes me dull. Occasionally I get the giggles and I relish those moments, but mostly it's me, drinking water, sitting at a table with my oldest friends while they drink delicious red wine and tell funny stories and I somehow seem to miss the point. It's awful feeling boring when you're used to being someone who sparkles. But it's also hard to have conversations about things you find utterly fascinating with people who think you are just slightly mad, not least because you don't drink. I think the assumption is that if you don't drink you judge those that do. It's the not the case. It's more about trying to match the energy, or get on the same wavelength. 

This new hobby, which isn't new and isn't really a hobby, could happily fill every waking hour and certainly does dominate car rides and late night reading. I am so sure of the goodness of it all. That it comes from a place of love, and that this is the way to exist in the world, with love, and through love. Slowly I'm finding my people, a network of women mostly who work with energy, or plants, or have a healing practise. I've stopped being self conscious and start inserting my research into conversations. There's a poetry group here, a sound healing forum there, people who recommend books, instagram friends I've never met who I know I'd love in real life. But rather like being a member of a secret society, it's not exactly something people want to speak about all the time. People like gossip, I've noticed. And it's something for which I can't really muster up any interest. Just this morning while waiting for the Oscar noms (in my day job) I realized that every single ad for every single tv show was so unbelievably awful that I couldn't believe that people watch such dross when there are so many other things in the universe of such mindblowing significance just waiting to be discovered. The world is a magical place, and yet we are pulled down into this swill with the American president in the middle of it. None of it means anything. It's Orwellian. All we need to do is start paying attention to what's really going on. All of the other stuff is just designed to keep us cowering. There is another path, and it's a path that involves love, kindness, nature, animals. And that's the path the Monks are treading. They're leading the way, all we have to do is follow.

If you're interested in a reading list or a podcast list, I'd be happy to send one your way. Sending lots of love to you and yours on this rainy, grey January day. We live in the most amazing, miraculous world.

 

A case for quiet and light

Hello from Boxing Day and happy holidays and merry merry my friends. Don't you love these days between Christmas and the New Year, when nothing is expected of you? We went for a long, long walk in the woods, with the whippet in his Newmarket jacket, red and yellow and alert, and saw other people similarly bundled up, with their dogs, their children, trundling along, with the crows above, skies white/grey, pines blue/green, one foot in front of another, realizing we're all doing that walking each other home thing Ram Dass talks about. Home for mince pies and tea and lighting the fire, and remembering this piece I wrote two weeks ago.

Last Tuesday night we went to our first Christmas carol service of the season. My oldest friend sings in the Battersea Choral Society and they do an annual Christmas concert to raise money for a local charity. I'd like to say we were gleeful on the way there, but it's funny what we bring to these events; reluctance, residual bits of work (because this seems to be the busy season) - anxiety for things that aren't done, worry about missing important calls - a bit of a sense that Christmas is only for children, a tiny bit of bah humbug, honestly. But we dutifully piled into the church, startled and happily surprised by the lights in London -- a wall of shimmery sparkles covering Peter Jones department store in Sloane Square, all kinds of jolly wreaths and twinkling baubles -- wearing our coats and gloves and hats even though it's not that cold. I wear my mother's double breasted brown tweed coat and one of her scarves, a jaunty red, covered in white horses (so hopeful), and I put on Christmas earings with red pomegranate jewels. We stumble into our row, where dear friends have saved seats, and we're a bit late, of course, and climb over people's bags and legs to get to our chairs. People are holding plastic glasses half filled with mulled wine and showing their teeth to each other. No doubt there were mince pies too, long devoured. Hello we say to our friends and the family of our friends and to the friends of the friends in the row in front, and we lean across each other and catch as much as one can, smilingly, hello, hello, are you ready for Christmas, is all well, making future plans of which 75% won't be kept, but are meant kindly and truthfully in the moment. The orchestra warms up. And the music starts. The nice conductor welcomes us. "He looks a bit like Sam Mendes, doesn't he?" I say to Charlie. "Well, I s'pose.." says Charlie. And the choir is there at the front of the church, men in black tie, women in black dresses, and sparkly things in their hair, different looks and hairdos, rows of black against the stone of the walls. I see my friend Vivien there in the middle, utterly poised and focused on the conductor, warm light on her face, her shoulder-length hair shimmering, her glasses perched on her nose, and I think about how I've known her since we were twelve when we sang in the school choir together in our blue cassocks (and Ian Dury at home). I'm so proud of her. I know how hard she has worked. I feel my heart swell when I see her there, with her book of music, immersed. The hymns come and some involve audience participation, the old favorites "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear," "Hark The Herald Angels Sing." We mumble in our chair, shuffle to our feet, sing heartily, with relief, remembering what it is to be singing carols again. We imagine we're children again, or think of our children, and nativity plays from Christmases past.  A funny reading; a woman reads a recipe for a fruit cake which includes frequent testing of the whiskey; brilliantly, she acts drunker and drunker, hiccuping up on the pulpit, the audience in fits of laughter. I hold Charlie's hand. I sing too loudly. I'm now glad we're there and glad that we're all there together.

And then "O Holy Night" arranged by John Rutter. It might be nice, perhaps, if you don't know it, that you listen to it for maximum effect. It's here if you'd like to.

It's a sacred song about the night Jesus was born, written in 1847 by a Jewish composer Adolphe Adam, adapted from a french poem named Minuit, Chretiens written by an atheist wine merchant, Placid Cappeau. There is a rumour that during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, there was a temporary cease fire when a French soldier stood up and began singing it in the trenches, which inspired a similar response from the other side. 

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining/It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth/Long lay the world in sin and error pining/Till He appeared/And the soul felt its worth/The thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices/For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn

There is a swell in the music, a crescendo, and the altos come in during the next line:

Fall on your knees, Oh hear the angel voices

Now, I don't know about you, but I burst into floods of tears at this point. Tears of relief, of joy, of feeling understood. It's the most powerful hymn.

(I said to my friend afterwards, "I totally fell apart during O holy night," and she said, thank goodness, "Oh I always do. I sob!")

So why do we sob? Why does this simple carol have just a profound effect on us? I would like to suggest that whether you are a believer or an atheist you can relate to the idea of falling to your knees, of literally being knocked to your knees as you give up trying to hold it all together. When you loosen your grip on the ironclad framework you've created to pin everything on, and fall to your knees, metaphorically or not, there is massive relief. You discover you are not alone. Somehow there is enormous strength in the idea of no longer holding on and yet feeling totally supported, as if you're not alone, that you're never alone, and that the universe, or God, or the angels in this case, have your back.

Fall on your knees, Oh hear the angel voices

Imagine everything leaving you, all the stress and the anxiety and the clinging to the small ego, just to experience the awe of the angels singing.

This emptying is what Cynthia Bourgeault calls "kenosis." I've always imagined this to be the state one achieves through meditation. That quiet stillness which allows you to hear what is intended for you. But it's easy to achieve by walking. Walk out into the trees, into the middle of a field, or just sit in your garden quietly, and it will come over you, the stillness. We are so busy! We fill each living moment with things. How wonderful to stop, to fall to your knees, to allow space for the angels. It's a childlike point of light that lives in each one of us.

The song continues

Truly He taught us to love one another/His law is love and His gospel is peace/Chains shall He Break for the slave is our brother/And in His name/All oppression shall cease 

There is so much anxiety and fear in the world and none of us are immune from it, even if we actively avoid reading the news. (I merely glimpse at the New York Times front page, but the crazy has a way of pulling you in.)  I'm aware that the planets are all over the place, that the world is chaotic, that peace and joy have been usurped by the cynical, the power-hungry, the greedy, and everything feels wobbly. Therefore, I urge you to take time every day for a little bit of quiet where you can feel still and just listen for a bit.

I am drawn back again and again to Mary Karr who writes about how she came to prayer:

Okay, I couldn’t stop drinking. I’d tried everything but prayer. And somebody suggested to me that I kneel every morning and ask God for help not picking up a cocktail, then kneel at night to say thanks. “But I don’t believe in God,” I said. Again Bill Knott came to mind:

People who get down

on their knees to me

are the answers to my prayers.

—Credo

The very idea of prostrating myself brought up the old Marxist saw about religion being the opiate for the masses and congregations dumb as cows. God as Nazi? I wouldn’t have it. My spiritual advisor at the time was an ex-heroin addict who radiated vigor. Janice had enough street cred for me to say to her, “Fuck that god. Any god who’d want people kneeling and sniveling—”

Janice cut me off. “You don’t do it for God, you asshole,” she said. She told me to try it like an experiment: pray for thirty days, and see if I stayed sober and my life got better.

And you can watch her talk about this here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUrz6tWfBxY

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On Christmas Day, Charlie was ringing the bells and I wandered over after meditating with Nigel at 8.30am  (a long walk, all of about 100 yards) to catch the nine o'clock service. The vicar was late. He often is. I'm not much of a fan but I decided to give him a chance because last year's Christmas sermon wasn't bad at all, and my view of him had begun to shift. But at 9.15am people were beginning to fidget. The man next to me, Derek, and I discussed dementia and old people's homes. Gwen, who was in the pew in front of us turned around and said "Oh I hope the vicar hasn't overslept." I was contemplating that the thought "you had one job" doesn't feel like a very Christian thing to ponder, especially next to Derek and behind Gwen at 9.15am on Christmas morning in a church built in 1100. He lumbered in a few minutes later and sped us through the service. There was no pianist or organist and he was clearly in a rush for the next service a few miles away, so half way through the first warbling verse of Hark The Herald Angels Sing, he shouted "Last Verse!" & of course we were all so surprised that we all dutifully obeyed. No chance of a Blessing of the Animals, then? And then in the call and response prayers, he started speaking the next paragraph just as we were speaking the "and with thy spirit" bit, which was a wee bit rude, don't you thing. By the time we got to the sermon, my arms were firmly cross across my chest and I had a "this better be good" expression across my face.

He did the thing that seasoned speakers do where he started to look from one pew to another, one face to the next, in order to try to connect, and refused to give him anything. I was having a Christmas Morning Mexican Stand Off with the vicar.

But then he said this bit about the light. About coming to a stable and experiencing the coming of the light in the form of the divine birth. And he talks about the light and how the light allows us to see things clearly and as they are. And how we need to see life as it is. And somehow I dropped my cynicism and I forgave Father Paul for being up too late last night because I remembered that the only way to find equanimity is to choose to see the world as it is and not as you wish it to be. Not because I am good person but because I remembered for a glimpse of a moment the person I'd like to be.

The only place to come from is love. 

The only way to be is kind. 

The only way to live is now. 

And to see things as they are, without judgement. 

Again and again.

 - Jon Kabat-Zinn

I think that we choose to walk in the light. I think we look at the finite number of days we have on this planet and we make a choice. Actually, I'm not sure we have a choice.

 

 

 

 

Notes from a Norwegian sojourn

i.               Heat

The weatherman has told us that it will be 32 degrees today on our little island in the Oslo fjord. I've used a Los Angeles tactic of shutting the curtains but leaving the windows and doors open so that breeze can blow through. Yesterday the skies darkened to a shade of indigo (I love that word, comes next to violet) and there was massive rumbling of thunder and flashes of lightning on the horizon. Daisy and I drove back from an ice cream expedition on Hvasser and she said, do you think we'll be struck by it? No, I said, of course not. And later that day I read in the New York Times that a Norwegian, an Olympian of a mere 49 years had been struck dead by lightning right outside of his hytte in the mountains.

On the rocky hill behind our summer cottage there are aspens which make the most marvelous and delicate rattling sound in the wind. They shimmer, really. There is rowan too, juniper, honeysuckle clinging onto the granite rock, little ferns, an apple tree that has seeded itself into the side of the face, nestled among the moss. We've propped up an old iron fire place outside. It was the inside the house before we put in a wood burner, and I can't bear to get rid of it. There are oak trees, dogs, an old fashioned grumpy paysan boy lifting his fist, a rooster, some hens all molded into the iron relief. It's leaning against the rock with optimism. We walk past and consider building an outdoor fireplace and imagine ourselves sitting around it on these long, light evenings telling stories or singing perhaps. We’d be wearing shorts and old button down shirts which live in the cupboards and smell of stale pine and sea salt. This dream is a bit silly, I know, because, well, it's going to be 32 degrees today.

No-one can find the vimple, the standard isosceles triangle shaped flag hat goes up every day, so we only put up the big flag on Sundays and birthdays. I love the red and blue and white of the Norwegian flag, and it makes me feel different than I do when I see the American flag or the Union Jack. It feels bold and bright and jolly.  You see them on the backs of boats too, flying bravely over the sea. The Norwegian flag makes me think of happy summer days, of Firkløver chocolate, of hanging out in the boat smiling. As my mother said to me yesterday on the phone, "If I think about it I don't think I've spent happier times anywhere but Tjøme." 

I've managed to lose the others to a boat trip. Not that I didn't want to go on a boat trip, especially one to Mink Island, where my grandmother saw the mink all those years ago, an island which only has good memories, but I did relish the idea of spending the day alone in this little cottage, sitting out back as I am now, listening to the sound of the aspen (populus tremula, I’ve learned), and the clink of the boats on the jetty, the seagulls, and to do nothing all day. What I love about this island right now is that everyone is doing nothing. Whole families of people doing nothing but pottering about in boats, lying on the grass by the sea in swimsuits, eating a lazy sandwich. I saw a man and his daughter, in a red gingham smocked dress with a white collar, not quite done up properly at the back, half the hem tucked into her knickers, sitting on a chair just outside the supermarket, counting buttons from her little embroidered purse. The father was as fully engaged as the little girl. Another mother with her son walked into the bakery with the golden pretzel sign hanging on a chain outside, as I left, to order boller (cardamom buns). People with little children get up early. It's the best time of the day. Everything is fresh and quiet, sunny but not yet hot, and full of promise. I've brought boller with raisins home and I've sliced one in half and put a bit of brown goats cheese it for my breakfast.

A greek salad with tomatoes and feta and dill and cucumbers has been packed, (I added some garbanzos and pomegranate seed) some chocolate, some apples, the delicious local spelt bread and butter, two bottles of water, in an old ice bag from LL Bean. And they're off in the boat, on the blue, blue sea. My ex-husband was awfully good at building up the supplies in the summer house. Special candle burning hurricane lamps which could double for warming up things. Useful trivets. Spare pairs of boat shoes. Mosquito spray. A barbeque chimney. Smart, efficient plastic boxes for fishing line. All from LL Bean of course. Funny how you appreciate these things so many years later. At the time it just seemed like so much more to pack.

C & I swam early this morning, before the people in the little house opposite our jetty were awake. Our neighbor was already in the sea. "Is it lovely in the water," I asked in Norwegian. "22 degrees" he said, also in Norwegian. Yesterday it was close to 24 degrees. The water was so smooth and calm that little pools of bathwater temperature water had formed, so that you could swim through hot patches that would almost halt your motion, and you'd lie on your back luxuriating in it. This morning it was more choppy. I swam with long, even strokes out towards the old fishing boat that hasn't moved from its place in the bay for years. You can stop and lay flat and stare at the faces in the clouds. The water is the darkest shade of navy blue, not grey or green, but clear, deep blue. It makes you want to put your face in it, to dive into it, to move like a seal. It holds you. You realize you don't have to move at all, that the water has you and it's all going to be fine. This is our favorite thing. Him. Me. The sea. The sky. That's it. All will be well.

I'm glad people are speaking more about recharging their social batteries. Mine is pretty flat. Two or three friends have used that expression and it gives me a sense of relief that other people too feel this way. I am sure it would seem rather dull to my younger self to see me now, sitting on my own listening to the trembling leaves and thinking about when I can jump in the sea. Probably with aging comes the sense that everything you do needs to be nourishing, life-affirming and that there is less time for confection, however sweet it may seem at the time. "Let the water hold you" a friend said, and it's that sense of relief when you realize you don't have to take action all the time, you can just zen the fuck out, and not do a thing and know that you will be okay. That's what it's all about; totally letting go.

 

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ii.              Heart

"And what exactly is that metaphorical thorn for you? It's madness to hate all roses because you got scratched with one thorn, to give up all dreams because one of them didn't come true, to give up all attempts because one of them failed. It's folly to condemn all your friends because one has betrayed you, to no longer believe in love just because someone was unfaithful or didn't love you back, to throw away all your chances to be happy because something went wrong. There will always be another opportunity, another friend, another love, a new strength. For every end, there is always a new beginning..... And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." - Antoine de St Exupéry

The joke is that I've created my own room here at the end of the tiny lawn we sometimes use for badminton. I have a pale blue hammock tied to two cherry trees, a table and a chair, a glass of water and my notebook. Nothing more is needed. We walked in clover fields this morning, the kind of grass that would cause my mare to do an Irish jig. Lush and bright green from the thunderstorm yesterday afternoon. I woke at five and meditated on the little bench outside our room, looking towards the sunrise, wrapped in a duvet and a pink sweater, remembering why it's important to get up early here on Tjøme to catch the magic. I am barely awake as I stumble out with my phone and take pictures of the sky, shot silk of terracotta, melon, marigold and tangerine, overwhelmed by the beauty. And then I fold my legs under myself on the bench and close my eyes. I am grateful to Bob Roth, who reads this piece from The Little Prince (above) at the end of the meditation. There is always a poem or a quote and it always aligns to exactly where you are (you are exactly where you are supposed to be) and I think of Cynthia Bourgeault, of Buechner, of Ram Dass and his golden meditation. We walk and meet a man with a doodle named Lotta. He, like us, has lived here in the summer for generations. He tells me that when he drives over the bridge onto the island his shoulders drop. He mimes this movement and I know what he means. I think of my grandfather swimming across the strait from Nøtterø to Tjøme with his doctor's bag and a change of clothes in his hands during the war. 

There is a necessary compulsion to map the island every year. It's a small island, only 24 square kilometres and still in the sixty years that I've been coming here, we haven't explored the whole thing. Always a new path, sometimes barely wider than a fox path, appears, as if by magic, and how can you not follow it?

 

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iii.            Nuvle

I love the nights when we make plans for the next day at supper. I love waking up with a plan. I love the excitement of an expedition. We decided to take the boat to Nuvle on my brother’s last day. And we’re going early. It’s a small island directly east of our bay and on the way to black rock where the good cod fish hang out, and it’s shaped like a croissant. I haven’t been there for forty years probably, but I have memories of my uncle driving us out in the big wooden boat, shirtless, with his tanned barrel chest, cracking open beers while we jumped off the boat into the sea. It’s known as a swimming island. And people take tents and stay overnight. There are smooth, rounded rocks everywhere providing shelter from the wind, and in the middle of the island is a verdant tropical bit (well not really tropical, but the flora feels unusual for an island in the middle of the Skaggerak.) We climb off the boat onto the warm rocks barefoot, as my grandmother suggested, and wander about, quite silently, my brother, my daughter, her boyfriend, Charlie and I, like a band looking for a tune. We’re children again, somewhat speechless, mumbling perhaps, in the quiet of the morning, with the sun low in the sky and no boats or people about. There is a teenage seagull viewing us. We don’t really know what we’re searching for, but we search nonetheless, awestruck really.

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iv.            Mackerel

There's an indelible imprint after a holiday. Your body has returned to ease. There is something incredibly powerful about being in a place where everyone is on holiday and doing very little. Lovely, bright marker-style delineation between everything. Work and play. Eating and sleeping. Reading, swimming, playing cards. Wondering about in Norwegian woods, stepping on pinecones, and picking tiny blueberries and lucky clover shaped sorrel that is sour in your mouth. Standing on top of the little mountain (hill) and looking out over the bay of tiny islands, all connected and yet not, like clouds in a mackerel sky. Everyone isn't just on holiday, they're on holiday without trying to prove anything. No having to be at the tennis club, or the smart restaurant, or the pickle ball tournament, or dressing to impress. There is some urgency. The loan 6am runner for example, or the one or two ski-skaters you see on the road to Hvasser. The people at the place we buy our bread and coffee who don't even have time to swim because it's the summer season. "We'll swim in October" they say, smiling. Every day is packed with what? Most urgently for me is the desire to explore, to map the place, to immerse myself in the magic of it all.

Maybe it was on my birthday, I don't remember, but one morning we got up very early to walk because we realized that by 9 it was almost too hot to go out to exercise unless you were in the sea. It's a familiar feeling. It's what we do in LA; 6am hikes with the dogs before the sun shows its face over the San Gabriels. We found a map app that took us round the back of the houses in Flekkeveien, towards Mågerø and we met a rather nice man with a doodle kind of dog called Lotta. He had thick white hair, cut smartly, and was wearing navy blue shorts and a white shirt. "Don't take the seaside path," he said, "I know it's tempting, but there is some dispute over whether it's allowed." Lotta wagged her tail at us as he spoke. "I've been coming here for a long time" he said, assuming, I think that we were tourists. "Oh my grandfather used to swim across the channel at Vrengen Bru [the bridge that connects us to Nøtterø] with his clothes on his head during the war" I say. I don't know why I say this. I have a need to prove I'm not a tourist. Also I like to brag about my Bestefar, who had a white moustache tinged with orange nicotine, and a captain's hat from the Royal Yacht Club.  "They've opened up the land at Mågerø, the forest this side of the King's house," he said. "You can walk there now."

Thus armed, the very next day we drove around the island urgently (for we were on holiday and such things were urgent) to get closer to this new forest. It's just across the bay from us, but longer by foot. If you imagine Grimestad bay as a circle, our house is at 6 and the forest we're talking about is at 11. So the car became the best option. We parked up and somehow found a path that went diagonally across a piece of scrubby ground filled with juniper and blueberries, between two houses, and wiggled up a little hill on a sandy path, between little rocks and gnarly tree roots until it began to drop down towards the sea. Fir trees, raspberries, silver birch and aspen, pine needles underfoot, some birds. Plenty of berries shoved into mouths. And then we found the sea stretched out in front of us, between the trees. The first bay we reached had a small sailing boat anchored in it, but as we followed the path along the sea to our right, there was a small swing comprised of old boat ropes and a thick dowel or piece of broom handle. I can't resist a children’s swing, so I swung on it as C continued walking. We clambered up a smooth rock and through some brambles, leapt over a small, dead but glistening snake to a tall cliff where there was a wartime concrete bunker, rigid and angular amongst the smooth, rounded rocks. He is very chivalrous and holds his hand out for me as we go up and down the rocks, but I learned from my grandmother many many years ago that you’re safer on your own because you know where your balance is, and if in doubt, scoot down on your bottom. Also, you are often safer barefoot.

The third bay shimmered and twinkled at us. It curved in front of us like a scythe, the sand giving way to brown seaweed and shiny pebbles in dark, warm colors, the size of my hand. The sea lapped gently in and out in a steady rhythm until a motorboat went by in the distance and I was aware of how the gentlest ripple can affect everything, gently shifting the sand, moving the pebbles, shunting the little yellow snails up and down the beach. (And thus it is with thought, I ruminated; just thinking about a thing can change it, as suggested in chaos theory. These are the things you think about while lying on your back in the ocean). We had left our swim things in the car and so we swam without. He walked in from the beach and I climbed down some rocks, carefully stepping over barnacles. He’s a walker inner. I’m a plunger. There was no-one within more than half a mile of us. C suggested that we should keep our underwear on for the King out of respect and I imagined all kinds of hidden cameras, but it didn't really bother us. Is there a nation on earth that embraces their nudity like the Norwegians? My grandmother swam naked every single morning, holding the steps (trappen) with one hand and her bottle of Bliw, saltwater soap, in the other. The sea was smooth and darkest blue, the sun reflected on it, so swimming was effortless, and the water held us. Time stopped completely. Nothing needed to be done. Nothing much happened. It was just us and the sea and the little beach and pine forest in the distance. Simple, elemental. We climbed out and lay on the warm rocks to dry out, pointing out animals we were seeing in the clouds. Isn’t it funny how you can see so much when your mind isn’t cluttered with thought?

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