Islands of Hope
Waters of Warmth Specks of seedlings are strewn across the empty plant pots on the balcony. The flowers or salad they held are now mostly long gone, with the exception of a single nasturtium and a sprawling and exceedingly hardy…
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Sunset, On Quite A Year
But the sun also rises. The air grips the lungs from the inside, mountain-cold and surprisingly dry, despite the thick fog weaving tendrils down streets and throwing a blanket over the valley. There are snow-covered peaks in all directions, but…
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Finally. Something different. This is not your normal, monthly newsletter — that will arrive early in December; this is a bonus, and something I have threatened for a while. The first in my series (Tales of The Lesser Evil) is…
Notebooks and Enchantments
Distillation and Colour November is usually a time of grey, of bleaching and the last of the chlorophyll leaching away as winter drags her blanket over all. Some stubborn leaves remain, to fall later in gale or frost, others have…
Invisible Roads
or, The Thumb of Self-Compassion The world is full of tracks and paths and routes, many invisible to our eyes, currents brushing the face of things, whispers, yesterday’s wind across the earth below. As I write, I am beneath one…
Once Upon a Time…
…Ten Years Ago, Today. This will be a long read. I do not apologise for this. This is a chapter of a life, a start, of sorts. A once-upon-a-time. But where does this story start? Where does a story ever…
The Sense of a Storm
Echoes and Foreboding It comes not through taste or sight, sound, or touch, or scent, but through something other, another one of our senses the majority somehow forget we possess. It is a pressing down inside, something foreboding, ancient, deep…
Seasons and Memory
Whispers and Seaglass No place has but four seasons, and Alentejo is no different. Summer, yes, of course it is, but it is no longer the days of the wildflower-rich, high-sun summer, nor the screaming swift summer, nor the misty…
Time and Magic
Magic and Time Time, at some points and places, stretches. Days seem longer, the mind translates the passage of the sun in ways which are not, perhaps, normal. When I was eight, my family moved to Stromness, Orkney. The month…
The Owl and the Pussycat
And other nonsense I, like so many others, have done the vast amount of my recent nature observation from the windows of our home. Here, in the west of Alentejo, even on the fourth floor, sometimes nature also tries to…