The possibility.

The potential.

The unknown…

The human spirit, we know is indistinguishable.

And love, the most powerful force of all.

It’s to these timeless truths that Easter seems to speak.

Tho of course, as with every single area of life, there is the dominant version of events - Jesus got crucified, died & then rose again - and the other version, which, hands above head - I’ll admit, I’m more partial to.

The dude never died, goes this version. Instead, he went off with Mary, a formidable woman in her own right, had children and lived a long life. Or at least, longer than the one we’re told.

Mary of course had her own scriptures which honoured the wisdom of the heart.

When these scriptures were discovered, pages were feverishly ripped out.

We’ll never know what truths they spoke to.

Or can we?

If we’re human, we all share something in common: a wonderful, spiralic muscle that beats and thumps and pulsates to the left of our chest: our heart. Spend some time focusing our attention on this mere hulking piece of meat, and whole adventures will be revealed to us. If we’d only trust them…

I think Jesus trusted his. Mary most definitely (the truer version of who and how she was). And I think if we all collectively trusted ours, at the very least: well that’s the thing - who can say what would happen. It’s surely an (wonderful) mystery.

And in a world where everyone is desperate to make definite statements about what will be and what won’t be - what of mystery? What of miracles?

Which is to say, I’m going to take a Substack sabbatical (I can’t say for how long, because I really don’t know!), as I seek to give life to another story that maybe, I get to turn into a book.

It’s been speaking to me & I’ve had false starts. But if I don’t turn to it completely, I might never come to know what it’s truly about. And to turn to it completely, I must release a few things.

When the journey begins they say: travel light. And I must say, tho I resist it, when I finally say oh go on, let’s…on a personal level - this unknown - makes my heart soar.

And it’s to hearts soaring, our wings spread wide, that I “say a little prayer” that we may each find ourselves turning to a little more mystery this Easter… as we resurrect the mysterious elements that make us who we are. And turn away from who we are not…

With much love,

Laura xxx

PS: Aslan & I - who wishes I’d give up all that keeps me from spending more time resurrecting our wild in the woods…

Spot the dragon.

-

Hello!

Every writer dreams of different things...

Me? Writing seems its most musical when it becomes a reciprocal relationship - i.e. it’s wings spread when the reader feels inspired to engage.

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• Click the heart at the end of the essay;

• Or, if you’ve just had your morning coffee, write a comment below;

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One of the joys of leaving London and moving to the country 11 years ago, was that my diary became completely utterly empty. I’d open it up, and would be greeted by pages upon pages of blankness and my heart felt happy and my heart felt good, and then after dropping off my daughter at nursery, I’d scuttle off to the woods with my dog Bongo, and dream not of what I’d do with my days, but instead, what I would not

Fast forward to the present, and my diary is a little bit fuller.

I don’t say this to show off, (altho I realise, that’s exactly what you think I am saying), however you are mistaken if you do. I do assure you…

-

The other week for example, I went out three times. Once out to dinner with Tom and some friends. Once out for dinner with Tom. And then another evening spent, in a way I’m going to leave a secret.

And its not just the nights that have been stirring, but the days are getting full as well.

Now, on one hand all this busyness is the sign of a life getting happy, and on the other, I am beginning to pull at the top of my t-shirt, for its beginning to feel claustrophobic and I’m wanting to return to the trees.

Of course, there’s also a hugely practical reason why I’ve been more social - our baby sitter, (Mum, we’re not babies, and we’re not being sat on, so why do you call Nancy** our baby-sitter?) has just left for 2 months back-packing and so I think what really happened the other week, is that I packed about a year and a half, (maybe even 2 years) of socialising into one actual week.

Now, that we have no one to look after the kids, Tom is free to do what he really wants: not go out. And that’s fine, but before I return to the trees, it’s suddenly spring time, and there’s so much I’d like to do.

Also, my favourite conversations tend to happen with strangers. Because with strangers, you can talk about anything and everything, but of course, you can’t admit that to your friends.

Also, now that our wifi has been cut off at home for about a month now and we’re apparently not being reconnected till 2032, the universe is literally forcing me out of my house, go on lass, be social, and so off I’ve been going to the nearest cafe to our home, which is a 93 second walk away to write there. (96 seconds if there’s traffic).

This isn’t a bad thing tho. As it turns out my brain is much more able to focus when I’m surrounded by highly impersonal noise. Plonk me in the noisiest cafe and you’ll find me there with an Olympian Zen like focus, sort of merging into my computer screen as I write. (Not technically 100% true actually, if you’re somewhere that’s meant to be quiet and people are talking loudly or walking about a lot, this causes me to growl. And quite loudly too).

At home, my capacity to concentrate is reduced. Fed up, the other day I made an impromptu speech to my family - altho I told Tara, our spaniel she was the only member of the family to be exempt from the lecture, - on account of the fact, other than her yapping when she is hungry, her capacity to socially humiliate all of us if we have to take her shopping by barking in a way that makes you leave your body and swear never to take her out shopping again, and also her thievery of family food on the kitchen table, she’s otherwise a pretty perfect dog. Also, one of the kindest in that apartment from all of the above, whenever she senses my attention is engaged elsewhere, she’d never seek to claim it. (Other then to come near by and sit beside me).

Everyone else tho, Aslan, our other dog included, was asked to heed my words:

If I am focusing on something, pls assume it’s important. Eve and Jack, you may tap me on my elbow and let me know that when I’m finished; doing whatever I am doing, you have something you want to say to me; or something you want me to do. And then because I’m trying not to be controlling, I tried to say in what I hoped was a neutral style, that Tom was welcome to find his own way to communicate with me - in these sorts of moments.

After this speech, I felt very pleased with myself.

And then carried on with my day.

With much love,

Laura x

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Photo by Joachim Lesne on Unsplash

~

Hello!

Every writer dreams of different things...

Me? Writing seems its most musical when it becomes a reciprocal relationship - i.e. it’s wings spread when the reader feels inspired to engage.

To this end, if you have the life juice to:

• Click the heart at the end of the essay;

• Or, if you’ve just had your morning coffee, write a comment below;

• Or, re-stack & share with your community - your actions will cause this writer from Brighton to do a jig down the street. (We do that sort of thing here).

And, if you’re considering subscribing, do check out what this newsletter has meant to other subscribers:

• “Reading Laura’s newsletter makes me marvel at her journey, exploration of self and life. Her zest for living and searching. For me, she is a natural wonder!” Tracy H.

• “Laura your words are so powerful, every time I read them, somehow, each time, they are right for the phase I am going through. I love your writing, and I love you helping us feel that indeed we are not alone with our experiences!” Natasha D.

• “Simply beautiful!” Julia M.

  Soar starlings, soar is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

~

I grew up on Neville Street, which is off the Fulham Road in London’s South Ken. When I was about 7.5 we sold our home, and then lived a nomadic life for a bit, living with my mother’s oldest brother Nicky for a while in his apartment in Knightsbridge and then with my grand-mother, at her home a few minutes walk away from Nicky’s flat. My mother then bought a house in Battersea, by the park, about a three minute walk from Albert Bridge. My son’s father, Tom, has an apartment over-looking the park, which is where we stay when we come to London. As a result, I have a sort of homing pigeon sensibility for this area of London. And one street in particular continues to hold huge memories for me, along which I still often walk: the Kings Road. It is here, that I often see a woman of such enduring meaning to me that my heart alights when I see her: Chelsea Woman...

Alongside Chelsea Woman, about 5 years ago, my two children and I and our two dogs Aslan and Tara, moved to Brighton. We have lived in 7 houses since moving here. As a result, I’ve had the great joy of meeting another extraordinary type of woman: Brighton woman...

Below, are a few observations about both.

The Last of their Kind:

You know you’re in the presence of a true Brighton woman, when they’re just that little bit grumpy with you. Whereas with a Chelsea woman, they can come across as distant. Not in a rude way but in a manner that lets you know this is a human who has lived their life knowing they are apart from others perhaps because of their wealth, their marriage, the schools their children go to, the houses they look after and run and manage. This means that whilst they may not know the struggles that most are challenged with, in terms of sustaining meaningful and satisfying careers, and receiving a salary that merits their effort, and indeed, covers their daily needs, they know challenges of a different kind, which have much more to do with endurance then most would probably understand.

As for their age, Chelsea woman could be 50 then again, she could be 60, or in her early 70s. With her, time has not so much been frozen, nor rejected in the manner of those in the grip of the longevity Gods, more simply that time has been told how to behave. In fact, for Chelsea time, and therefore aging, needs it to know: that for her, it doesn’t even apply.

It’s important to note that neither woman does fashion. Chelsea woman will be impeccably dressed, in her own way and style. Brighton woman wears clothes, for you must, but she isn’t bothered by fashion - she is too busy for that and frankly, genuinely couldn’t care. She is functional in what she wears, not thinking of how she comes across, whereas Chelsea woman is well aware of the impact sartorial choices create. She also has more time to think about these things on account of how her wealth helps her do with time what she wants to.

As for relationships, whereas some women shop with friends, Chelsea woman would never do this. Her day is not like that. People, come later on when they’re told to and meant to and one has prepared for them. One does not want to see people, before one is ready to see them. (Also, if you shopped with another, you’d have to adapt your routine - and why would one want to do that)? Whereas Brighton woman doesn’t remember when she was last alone. Her home and life, are always full of children, other peoples children, a husband, girlfriends, parents, airbnb guests who’ve stayed deciding life is better this way - her way, the Brighton woman way.

If for some reason, you’d like to approach either woman, the best way to do this is to be your own woman. Don’t do the insecure thing. Nor, the intimidated thing - you’ll only be eaten for breakfast. Be yourself. After all, Brighton woman has 10,027 things to do, so, don’t for God’s sake be the 10,028 thing to appear on her to do list. That’s all these women ask: although of course, is the exact thing that neither do for others. Unless, in the company of their own kind, other Queens. Relics of a by-gone past. Women who feel inferior, are a species that these Queens simply don’t have time for, nor particularly understand. They’re too busy ruling their own fiefdoms.

Work:

Brighton woman has a career. Most probably a serious career, along which she has steadily and unshowily progressed. Chelsea woman’s career is her life. Stage-managed, and directed with exquisite attention to detail. To have survived what she has survived, to have endured what she has endured - took much. And it’s this feature of the Chelsea woman that has contributed to a lonelier life then Brighton woman and gives her inner world a feeling of precariousness that most would be surprised to learn. For Chelsea woman believed in the fairy-tell and indeed ran away from so much, towards a life that wasn’t really hers. By the time she had realised her error in judgement, her children had arrived and because her heart is one that’s like that, she carved out a life where she could tend to all that she was required to tend to. Whilst keeping a huge part of who she truly is, kind of, a state secret.

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As for where both women live: Brighton woman will never leave Brighton. Sure, she’d love a bigger garden. But Brighton was where she was born and Brighton is where she’ll always live. Chelsea woman however has an escape plan and we’ll come to this in a bit…

Money:

Generally, Chelsea women have more dough at their disposal. So their home is more expensively done up. Brighton woman doesn’t particularly give a damn about this. They care about deeper, richer things. She is Brighton women after all, and is deeply engaged with life, in a sleeves-rolled-up-to-the-elbow kind of thing. Whereas, with these sorts of things, Chelsea woman, has lots of other people doing these sorts of things for her.

Self Image:

Brighton woman probably identifies with being good and right in a way that Chelsea woman lost illusions about many years ago: money, and a certain kind of husband does that to one. For with money, if there is a lot of it, you come to see how people behave around people who have money, for rarely is it ever true. And with a certain kind of husband, the kind whose desire is larger than their love of another, ouch is too smaller word to describe being a wife to them.

As for a tender subject: sex, for Chelsea woman it’s been years. For Brighton woman? Actually, it’s a subject she doesn’t like to discuss. One she’d be far less at ease with than Chelsea woman in fact - who would circumnavigate such intrusions into her private life in such a way that the person asking would feel as if their questions had been answered. It would only be when they realised, some months later, that they had not seen Chelsea woman again, that they might intuit the inappropriateness of the terrain they had attempted to cross with her. Brighton woman has hurts, but they’ve been pushed down, whereas Chelsea woman has simply pressed delete on her hurts and sent them off packing to Oblivia.

Aging:

Of the two, aging will hit Brighton woman the hardest, but she is too thorough a character to pretend she cares about this. In terms of if this is fair or not, fairness isn’t something that applies to either woman’s life - they have taken what they have been given, and crafted with it their own responses. Each is surprisingly mission bound in life. Hence their sense of duty. Serious as children, earnest as young adults: theirs were hearts who loved quite deeply. Along the way, both women’s hearts have been chipped, and trodden on in all manner of ways. As a result, they have learnt that the hiding of self is preferable to the exposing of it. (The later has proven to be too painful). Which means neither woman are very good at relaxing. Brighton woman may appear to be relaxed, but it’s more a conditioned response to a world that in some ways, has challenged her sense of things.

As for temperament. Brighton woman can express her irascibility openly; it’s one of her great charms. Whereas Chelsea woman would never openly express irritation. Whatever, or whomever has caused it, she will simply walk away from and then redirect it inwards, or on things around her, in a socially acceptable oh she’s just a perfectionist manner. Whilst lopping off the ends of pale pink roses for example, which she buys for £75 a bunch from the florist opposite Waitrose, or sometimes by the stand outside Chelsea Farmers market; whichever is more expensive.

Help, home & children:

As for their femininity, Chelsea woman’s is precise, curated and contained. Whereas, Brighton woman is tough ‘n serious and not into that sort of gender role, childish stuff. Who has the time after all? For femininity in the modern age, is definitely something that requires time. Of this, Chelsea woman has more at her disposal. Not only more funds to direct to expensive creams, retreats to go to, to detox, food that is organic and occasionally people to cook for her. But also, to take care of all the house-hold activities that can be so wearing to one. House work is done by her daily. As it is, in her house in the South of France, or in Tuscany before it was bludgeoned by the British. Wherever she goes, Chelsea woman will always have help, because help is to Chelsea woman what waves are waves to the ocean - impossible to separate.

As for Brighton woman, she has neither the funds, nor even the inclination, to ask other people to look after her home. She has children after all. On a Saturday morning, everyone chips in. And when they Air b’n’b the house, the children help with both the preparation and the cleaning after. Whereas, the children of Chelsea woman refuse to allow their house to be rented, in order that their mother might make a little of her own money. A refusal that actually never need to be vocalised for Chelsea woman has no intention of ever allowing another human being to sleep in her bed, nor use her plates, nor sit on her particular spot on the sofa. And also, where would she put all her clothes?

So, the children…

Chelsea woman’s are spoilt. There being enough funds and dysfunction at home for them to become so. The children of Brighton woman are not spoilt. They get stuck in. Are proud of their mother. See how much she carries if she is single, or much she has carried if she is re-married. The children of Brighton woman respect their mother, the children of Chelsea woman don’t really think about her - they’re too busy living their lives. Lives, incidentally, that she teed them up for with every ounce of her being.

However, Chelsea woman is not as attached to her children as one might assume. Protective yes, (both are fierce in this way). However, for Chelsea woman, motherhood is something that came into her life, and though she is immensely fond of it and has given her all, secretly, she has a secret, which we’re coming close to unveiling.

Men:

Brighton woman has never had illusions about men. Sure, she’s met some deplorable ones but hasn’t everyone? (She may even have married one, but thankfully, that was years ago). Now, she’s with a great, if slightly not really there husband, a good man. A decent bloke. They’ll stay together because beneath it all, they genuinely like each other. Whereas Chelsea woman and her husband stay together because well, that’s what one does. Besides, Brighton woman is so seriously busy - these women who have 23 sons and an immaculate home. A full time career and elderly parents to look after. Brighton woman is a through woman with a thorough life.

And yet, somewhere, beyond their brusqueness and business is a kindness - reserved for those who they feel are deserving of it. You can of course earn it, an arduous process that is by no means sure of success once you embark upon it. The reality is, Brighton woman opened up shop for friendship 33 years ago, in a manner most Danish, and since then, that box is firmly ticked.

Similarities:

Both share a surprising vulnerability: their relationship with other women. Though Brighton woman has more sustaining relationships in her life, that lends her a steadiness and resourcefulness to her life, younger women make her feel defensive for some reason. (And perhaps why sex is off limits as a subject). Whereas Chelsea woman couldn’t give two hoots.

For Chelsea woman, it’s her life of life, and the way she lives it that sets her apart from other women. For all that she relinquished for what she thought was her dream life, meant that all she acquired was not who she really was. For this reason, Chelsea woman can’t quite connect, for her soul is someplace else.

In general though, on the surface, Chelsea woman appears more open (on account of that lack of irascibility) to other women, though more honest to say, is that she is generally not as interested as some feel she should be.

On good days, neither are particularly approachable, on more disagreeable days both have their ways of keeping others at bay. Brighton woman’s are more diverse, anything from an agreeable smiling face that also says, please don’t stop me for conversation, or, a smile set that looks so dubiously like a frown, you’d be wise to cross the street, lest you get caught in the cross fire.

Chelsea woman knows how to avoid people - she’s been mastering this her whole life.

Relationships:

To their nearest and dearest, both are deeply loved; in the exact same way that people who used to love the late Queen, people who love Chelsea woman and Brighton woman love them. You love the Queen knowing you will never really know the Queen. You love the Queen for all she stands for. The Queen we know cares deeply; she just doesn’t show it. Instead, she’s learnt how to channel her many gifts into activities that in her mind, are important, but to an external observer, at times, it’s hard to see any obvious links between them. This doesn’t bother her, because she is not the type to explain herself. Should she have to, she will be forever suspicious of you. Who are you after all to question her motives when her motives have worked for millennia?

Unknowns:

Brighton woman and Chelsea woman do actually know each other. Every now and again, they meet up for tea. (I can’t disclose the location - because that would be unfair you see). But I can tell you that when they come together, the sound you hear and the sight you see - shining eyes and laughter - would make you lean against a tree and watch them.

And so:

As for your aspirations and hopes for both women- it would never occur to you to interfere in the way of life that Brighton woman has crafted for herself and her family. Simply because: it works. For this reason in old age, you’ll find her more or less in the same spot, with her children living close to her. A more relaxed smile will appear, and yet, she will become ever so slightly superior to strangers. In a manner, almost, just almost like the last of her kind, a creature known as Chelsea woman.

Who now, lives - well, no one truly knows…

For with Chelsea woman, your hopes are a little different. Because just maybe, you hope that one day she stops suddenly, whilst walking down the Kings Road, realising that her daughters and her sons (two of each) are living their own lives. Her job is done. She is free. Without delay, she places down those pale pink expensive roses, find a better home then me, she says to then, hails a black cab, which passes at the exact right moment she raises her hand, in a manner just like the Queen: palm turned elegantly outwards, index finger raised like a ballerina about to pirouette. Victoria station, she says through the window to the driver, feeling a tremble of delight at how just earlier that morning, as she had placed her purse and keys and phone in her handbag, so too, she had this inner prodding to place her passport too. And just like in the old days when she’d lived by this inner prod, your knowing her grand-mother had always told her. Mrs. Emily Parker of Brighton, the city where she herself had grown up, and yet had been one of the rare ones who left the city and never returned. Trust it, her grand-mother used to say. And for some reason that morning, she had. And as she closed the taxi door behind her, all she could think of was say goodbye to Chelsea dear. Say goodbye to here.

And the last anyone heard of her, she was boarding a plane to Ecuador, possibly Ghana, or maybe even deepest, darkest Mexico. No one truly knows. Although, if you wake early and head outside to listen under the vast endlessness and edgelessness of the open skies, you can hear her laughter dancing with the “rustle of the morning stars.”

Much love,

Laura x

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When I think of my grand-mother, I of course share her with my brother and cousins. I say the word, “my” and it sounds possessive. Yet, this is not quite how I mean to use the word, nor how I felt about her when she was alive.

She came into my life, in the most significant of ways, after my father, Malcolm Fraser died of a heart attack, brought on by an asthma attack during the summer holidays when I was 7.5 years old. After which, as a result that my mother was working incredibly hard to make enough money to cover our school fees, Deanie became a huge part of our lives. So that when I heard the idea that “the greater the curse, the greater the gift,” I can’t but think of Dean’s presence in my childhood as this gift.

Though I am going to refer to my grand-mother as my grand-mother in this piece, in real life, I called her Dean. Unable to pronounce the ‘J’ in her name Jean when I was little (she didn’t want to be called granny and as I was the first grand-child, she had decreed that everyone should see what I call her in order that everyone understand how she should be called). So it was, that as young children tend to do when they first learn to speak, ‘J' was pronounced as a ‘D’ and so Jean, became Dean.

That I ended up defining her nick-name, is rather fitting as according to Dean, she was also responsible for the name I would come to be known by: Laura… The story goes that that when I was a baby, it couldn’t be decided what my name would be. Frustrated, she put on Frank Sinatra’s Laura, to which both my parents replied: Oh! This will be her name.

And so it was...

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How she was:

Dean’s presence in my childhood was a great gift and one I enjoyed immensely. She who omitted such a consistent and singular glow, akin to the gold of the sun, that towards her warmth I couldn’t but turn. We often shared space not talking, simply being. In these moments with her, I was free to potter about, to explore, to be curious, to simply be. As it turns out, simply being with people I love and adore, is one of the most joyful expressions of loving a person I know of. Words are generally over-rated. Whereas silence, is an exquisite and, under-used form of communication.

There was also a way that my grand-mother was that was just so deeply pleasurable: the measured and specific way that she carried out each activity of hers, that felt akin to a ritual. Rituals that never changed. Hence why, just like the tide pulls in the waves and then sends them out to meet the shore, in my grand-mother’s presence, I could allow my actions to be governed by a force far greater, and more graceful then well, force itself - which is often used with children, partners and well you know how it goes... With my grand-mother, she was never bossy; she didn’t need to be; everything had its place.

These are the elements of motherhood, that I have most enjoyed and held precious with my own children. Though our evening routine is always having parts added to it, generally, our routine is as it was when both kids were born! There is a gentle rhythm, a peace, and a deep togetherness. (Not always, not always, just this is where we return to if things have got out of kilter because I know it’s our true resting place, how we most like to share time together. A deep wonderful togetherness). And because this part of our time has such a rhythm, when we are deeply in tune with each other, bossiness isn’t needed because there is such joy to each part. (Although a need can often override the flow of things. I.e. if one of my kids has something on their mind, or in their hearts that they need to unburden this can mean that change needs to happen which isn’t always appreciated by the other child! And frankly me sometimes too!) So these are rigid rituals, but then again, rigidity is a very good mate of bossiness, whereas when people are really together, really sharing a common purpose, it seems there is more space to be flexible with each other).

There were so many elements to the way she spent her time, that were deliberate, specific and highly intentional. Her gentle, measured strokes when she applied her nail polish - the colour of a setting sun stretched across the sky, - that I’ve not seen since, either in a bottle waiting to be chosen, or on another woman’s fingernails. The way she sprayed her hair with that gold bottle of L’Oreal hair spray. That sound, that smell and the feel of her hair after, which I was allowed to reach out and touch gently. Pouff, pouff.

The manner in which she laughed. A truly fabulous laugh. Head thrown back, lips parted, eyes closed and a sound that came out, akin to church bells ringing, and singing, that sort of thing. When your heart is just happy that this person who you love so much is laughing like that. You don’t need to know why, you’re just enchanted with the sound.

Then there were the silk scarves she kept in the drawers of the bed side table to the left of her bed, which overlooked the sea in her home by the sea in West Wittering, where I spent so much of my school holidays, and which, on your knees, you’d open and go through, feeling the material and sometimes too, sniffing them, for of course, they smelt of her.

The Vaseline in her top drawer, which before she fell asleep, sitting up in bed, leaning against her pillow, she’d lean over and open the top drawer, to bring out the Vaseline. Removing the lid, to place an index finger in and then wipe some across her eyes, for her eye lashes. The assuredness that this action did in fact make her eye lashes longer. That in the same way, someone eats the wafer and it is the body of Christ, that Vaseline did do whatever it was that my grand-mother bade it to do.

The way she kept her make up in the top drawer of her dresser, that overlooked the drive. When she wasn’t in her bedroom, she was still in her bedroom, for all her things were so full of her. Her make up in that top drawer, that I’d pull out, peer in, move things a little, only for them to fall back immediately into place.

Her place on the sofa in the sitting room. How no one, but my grand-mother sat there. That one time, some else did, not knowing, and everyone held their breath. It wasn’t that she would lose her temper, she almost never did. It was the sheer shock that someone didn’t know: that was her place. Her seat. No one else took it. Not so much a thrown, but a seat around which we all took our places - me, stomach on the carpet in front of the television, beside the fire, hands under my chin, shins up, feet wrapped around each other.

The one time I was present when she lost her temper it came in the form of a well articulated: Fuck, on the way to school one morning, with me in the back of her golden or beige - I can’t quite remember - BMW, reversing at the bottom of Neville Street, off the Fulham Road in London where we then lived. Fuck, she said. Or perhaps it was Shit. I can’t remember. Only that she had sworn. The shock of it: for whereas children tend to know far more swear words then their parents realise, children protect their parents from this ugly realisation and parents are happy to be protected. Grand-parents, by their very place in life, are viewed by the child as another species entirely. It is therefore shocking to the child to discover that not only do their grand-parents know some swear words, but on occasion, they also use them.

Extras:

Swearing aside, generally my grand-mother was a safe, and unconditional presence. She did my maths homework for me, not with me. Using methods that were not the methods my teacher had taught me. I wrote my ‘4’s like my grand-mother did, and not like my teacher. That turquoise ink that my grand-mother used in her pen. Again, no one since I have ever seen use this method. The type writer she had in her study that I was allowed to use after school and write very important things like my wish list below:

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Cheer-leader:

Write about it darling, she used to tell me. Write about it.

And sometimes, we used to even do this together. The story we wrote about life under the sea, about creatures who could talk and how proud I was of that story, and waited with excitement to see what mark I would get for it. And then my best friend, who was really a sort of worst friend, telling me one day that she’d been given the story back (I hadn’t been at school), and had thrown it in the bin because she didn’t think it would mean anything to me.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough of a sense of self to say to this person, damn you hoe, which bin? Or, to go to my teacher and say, look there was a problem and unfortunately, my essay was mistakenly thrown away, by any chance do you have the comments you wrote, or remember them? It’s just I wrote that with real joy in my heart, my grand-mother right beside me, and I’d love to know what mark I got.

Not having that self, I just heard not-a-friend say this, and sort of shrugged my shoulders and said, yeah, it doesn’t really matter.

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Tomorrow, another profile of two other women, the last of their kind: the Chelsea Woman & the Brighton woman will be released. Do subscribe if you haven’t already to receive it.

Below is an excerpt:

“If for some reason, you would like to approach either woman, the best way to do this is to be your own woman. Don’t do the insecure thing. Nor, the intimidated thing - you’ll only be eaten for breakfast. Be yourself. After all, Brighton woman has 10,027 things to do, so, don’t for God’s sake be the 10,028 thing to appear on her to do list. That’s all these women ask: although of course, is the exact thing that neither do for others. Unless, in the company of their own kind, other Queens. Relics of a by-gone past. Women who feel inferior are a species that these Queens simply don’t have time for, nor particularly understand. They’re too busy ruling their own fiefdoms.”

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With much love,

Laura x

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Every writer dreams of different things...

Me? Writing seems its most musical when it becomes a reciprocal relationship - i.e. it’s wings spread when the reader feels inspired to engage.

To this end, if you have the life juice to:

• Click the heart at the end of the essay;

• Or, if you’ve just had your morning coffee, write a comment below;

• Or, re-stack & share with your community - your actions will cause this writer from Brighton to do a jig down the street. (We do that sort of thing here).

And, if you’re considering subscribing, do check out what this newsletter has meant to other subscribers:

• “Reading Laura’s newsletter makes me marvel at her journey, exploration of self and life. Her zest for living and searching. For me, she is a natural wonder!” Tracy H.

• “Laura your words are so powerful, every time I read them, somehow, each time, they are right for the phase I am going through. I love your writing, and I love you helping us feel that indeed we are not alone with our experiences!” Natasha D.

• “Simply beautiful!” Julia M.

Photo by Cosmin Ursea on Unsplash

-

In our world, us humans hold dear every-day experiences that we tell ourselves speak to who we are as a people and also that allow us to define ourselves as different to machines and technology, because experience at a visceral level will never be something that either are able to do.

Really…

The way you walk into your son’s bedroom in the morning and caress his warm sleeping cheek, waking him with a kiss on his hot forehead, smiling and laughing as he throws his arms above his head, refusing to wake, bending down to cover his face with kisses: wake up my love, wake up.

A machine, or the latest technology will never be able to do this.

Nor will they be able to experience the way you sit with your daughter at the kitchen table over breakfast, listening as she presents a most reasonable and impassioned case for why dear mother, why she should be saved from yet again being forced to do something at school that chaffs at her spirit and is unfair dear mother, unfair. That being forced to do this particular thing will be a grievous error, mother. Mother, are you even listening? I am presenting a serious case to you mother, your daughter will ask with a smile on her face. I have presented a case to you mother, three salient points mother. And you sit, morning coffee in your hand in your favourite mug that you specifically chose because it reminds you of your father and of times in a house in your childhood that you loved with all your heart, because there, you were wild and free. And you sit there, watching your daughter and your heart is huge and bursting to see her spiritedness, her feistiness…And you feel your body relax as you sit, drinking your coffee, hearing your daughter present her very well articulated argument. For her, the joy not so much in a result being delivered, (tho at the very least attempted), but the absurd delight to revolt at the world over breakfast and the very real tenderness, in being heard by your mother.

A machine will probably never be able to do, or experience this either.

So too, what it is to rupture and also return with one of your dearest girlfriends. The rupture: during which you bump into each other three, four times over a year in the city you both live in, and rather then doing what some of us women do when we see someone we don’t want to see and so pretend we haven’t seen them: you turn towards each other as you pick up leggings for your daughter from Zara, or in the supermarket, or in the middle of the street, with a smile, for a precious half second, just to see each other, and then instinctively opening your arms to hug each other tenderly. A genuine hug, and then to pull away, smile once more and then walk in different directions; all of which is done wordlessly. Because you’re still both figuring things out. Then, one day - you can’t even remember who reached out to who - but there you both are, walking by the sea, with everything just as it was and yet somehow more tender, having had a year apart. So that when it’s your birthday and you’re sitting around your kitchen table eating chocolate truffles, this fissure can be acknowledged openly with others, not as a sign of a weakness in your friendship, but as a testament to its strength. A fact that causes you both to laugh, not bitterly, nor cynically, but in the manner in which women laugh when we really laugh: knowing something happened from which your spirit’s have both soared undefeated. And your children watch this and know this and them bearing witness to it feels good and whole and true. For break-downs can happen, do happen, will happen - but so too, can reconciliation.

This is another thing that a machine will never come to know, nor experience: the exquisite, bittersweet tenderness of being human with other humans.

However, though there are very clear ways that machines can never behave like humans, there are some places where us humans must be very careful that we have not started to behave like machines.

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Last week, a Tomahawk missile that was created on British soil, in Scottish factories, killed 150-180 girls in a school in Iran that had the great misfortune of being beside a naval base.

For those of you who don’t know, according to the UK’s Think Defense the Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missile (TLAM) is defined as a “precision weapon” that “allows submarines to strike at ground targets hundreds of miles (up to 1,609 km) inland with pinpoint accuracy.”

The command for this strikes comes from the highest of the low. In other words, though the US government is currently calling the blowing up of this school a mistake, by the very design of the Tomahawk that is impossible. At some point, some human must have appeared in the command chain, and also must have been aware that an instruction had been given to wipe out a naval base that at the very least, because of its closeness to the base made it all but certain that the neighbouring school would also be obliterated. Knowing how these missiles work - which surely, given how deadly they are, and that they are designed to be deadly, - means this person had a basic responsibility to factor in how much and who else will also be destroyed when the target was hit. In other words, when doing so, surely a pause was possible there?

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Some may argue, look this is unfair: retrospect is a privilege. Even so, red flags are probably waving if we find ourselves throwing our arms up in moments when accountability for our actions are sought and we say things like: I didn’t know… I wasn’t aware… I was just doing what I was told…perhaps we’ll also discover, red flags atop our ever-growing noses which, if we’ve said the above, will be shooting out of our faces in the manner of Pinocchio, all manner of birds coming to roost on it.

Alas, not a conference of wise birds, ones who can whisper to us great truths that elevate and evolve our responses:

“...if you lack the heart’s rich blood take mine.

Love thrives on inextinguishable pain,

Which tears the soul, then knits the threads again.

A mote of love exceeds all bounds; it gives

The vital essence to whatever lives.

But where love thrives, there pain is always found;

Angels alone escape this weary round -

They love without that savage agony

Which is reserved for vexed humanity.”

But instead, ones that instead peck and peck and peck so much that you forget who you are, because who you are is having to defend yourself so much. These sorts of birds come, when us humans behave more like machines then the humans who we truly are.

In other words, in moments where much inhumanity is happening, holding on to what makes us human is genuinely deeply important.

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In Reality Transurfing, (a book I share with a bit of reservation because it’s loved real in use by me, and the title… I get it, but all I can say is: honey, it works… ) introduced to me, the idea of ‘pendulums.’ These larger then larger forces in society that in essence require the energetic investment of us lot, of which there is (currently) no bigger one then war itself.

In my novel Shelta’s Way, set in Brighton during WW1 in 1914, Shelta, an Irish Traveller tells a local girl, Emily Parker that her mother told her that “war is like an enchantment.” One that comes from magic of the blackest kind, that’s been cast to convince all that it’s a moral answer that then gives permission to people to behave in the bleakest and most deprave of ways...

And yet, it’s also clear that simply saying no to a pendulum when a pendulum is in full swing, will most likely bring consequences. And often of a serious nature. (In other words, I don’t think saying no is always either possible, or even advisable).

As a Senator Kelly is discovering in the US, after releasing this 90 second video in November last year, joined by fellow whistleblowers Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, US Representatives Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, Chrissy Houlahan and Jason Crow, all of whom have served in the military, or intelligence agencies in which they remind those still serving in the army, or intelligence services that: “Our laws are clear: you can refuse illegal orders.”

To which President Trump and one of his henchman, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth have jumped up and down and sort of stuck fingers in their own eyes and then pulled out some of their brain cells to come up with a plan to silence them. However, their first attempts have thus far failed…

On social media, Trump threatened - as well as a reduction in the retirement pay that as a ex-serviceman, that Senator Kelly is due, - death. Literally. Though to honour the tone used by Trump when he labelled the above video a “seditious” act, telling his followers on social media, that it’s one that is: “PUNISHABLE BY DEATH!” (caps the President’s).

Luckily, the American courts disagree.

According to the BBC:

“US District Judge Richard Leon wrote in a scathing ruling that Hegseth had unconstitutionally retaliated against Kelly in seeking to demote the retired Navy captain…

…The federal government had argued Kelly should contest the case against him through a military process and not in a civilian court of law, but (in his ruling) Judge Leon wrote:

“This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees,” he wrote. “To say the least, our retired veterans deserve more respect from their Government, and our Constitution demands they receive it!"

And also, from the BBC:

"In his decision, which contained more exclamation marks than are typical in judicial writings, Leon wrote: “Rather than trying to shrink the First Amendment liberties of retired service members, Secretary Hegseth and his fellow Defendants might reflect and be grateful for the wisdom and expertise that retired service members have brought to public discussions and debate on military matters in our Nation over the past 250 years.”

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So, is there another way?

Ask any martial arts warrior this question and you may receive a curious reply.

Flow like water… they could say.

Or even: the obstacle is the path.

In other words: there are innumerable ways to say no.

What’s most important, is first to have the clarity that it’s what you want to say.

In what manner a person choose to say no, is entirely up to that person. Some will be led to say it directly - Kelly has both profile, reputation, relationships and political clout to be able to say it in the most public and direct of ways. However, his way won’t be the right way for all.

Veterans For Peace for example, is a US organisation that uses its platform to encourage ex-service man to recognise that:

“Our society today is one that finds violence acceptable and inevitable. In many small ways our culture teaches us that war is noble. To build a culture of peace, we will need to not only end war but also become a peaceful society within our own communities.”

The Friends (Quaker) Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) are using their culture, and their platform to directly speak to the illegality of the Israeli-US, British backed war, by reminding Congress:

“The U.S. Constitution is clear: only Congress has the authority to declare war. By launching military action against Iran without congressional authorization, the president has violated both the Constitution and the War Powers Act of 1973, undermining the rule of law at home and abroad. This unnecessary war of choice endangers millions of people across the Middle East, including tens of thousands of U.S. service members. We urgently call on Congress to reassert its constitutional authority and pass the bipartisan Iran War Powers Resolution (S.J.Res.104 and H.Con.Res.38) to prevent further U.S. involvement in this unlawful and disastrous war.”

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At the Christmas party for a UK based Company whose Foundation I played a part in setting up their pilot project in 2008 and 2009, I sat next to the Director of the company who had served in a senior role in the army in Afghanistan.

May I ask you what made you leave? I asked him. Sure, he replied, at one point, I could no longer feel comfortable telling friends whose sons had died what it was that their sons had died for.

At that point, he left the army.

At one point, must not those in the Army when instructed to slaughter innocent people, simply say: no? When an act of war places the whole world in a precarious position, must not someone in the command line, look into their heart and ask themselves: is the benefit greater in the honouring of this command, or refusing to play a part?

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In WW1, an American man, Alfred Bryan wrote one of the first pacifist songs: I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Solider -

“I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,

I brought him up to be my pride and joy,

Who dares to put a musket on his shoulder,

To shoot some other mother’s darling boy?

Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,

It’s time to lay the sword and gun away,

There’d be no war today,

If mothers all would say,

I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.”

Of course, nationalism storms to answer: but it’s an honour to die for your country!

To which, a poet has already given a reply…

“If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin:

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues.

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est

Pro patria mori.”

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So - is there an answer?

In the olden days, people shared truths through symbol woven into stories. Read the words closely enough, quieten your mind from it’s day-job, and a knowing will come of their true meaning. Us humans are here to live great quests, so say the stories, so you don’t want to treat your listeners like fools and drip feed them instructions for living. Fables and myths knew this, and so sought to share great and epic truths about living, told via the path of the imagination.

As a Mr. Einstein once said:

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”

Yet here we are, children of a mechanised society. Where 2+2 only ever =’s 4 and don’t go telling me nothing more…

And yet of course, too fusses over too, and more is suddenly available.

Which is to say: us mothers are a little bit more skilful than we realise.

So, come close, and I’ll whisper dear, stories that may be fables, or at least have truth where fiction lies and lies where truth presents itself:

Inside each of us is a knowing. For just as every human is born with a heart, and lungs that require oxygen to breathe, this knowing, is a sort of internal compass that from the moment we’re born, to that moment when we die exists with a functional and practical use. Because we humans are a part of nature, just as the wolf and the deer and every other wild mammal has a kind of sensing into their environment to guide them, so do us humans. The point of life is life, said Goethe, bloom and grow - you know - and look death and decay are a part of it, but essentially, if you’re here as a human, for the most part: bloom in whatever ways you’re called to.

After reading these sorts of stories to my children, I then do what stories seek to do: I teach, by the showing, never and not the telling. (Okay, that bit IS my imagination. I am a big fan of maternal lectures. Unfortunately, the older my children get, the less these are endured. So, I’m having to get creative).

Ai yi yi, the living: Come, lets go back to the showing…

I have a heart and I seek to listen to it. And what it tells me is that our hearts want healing for us. On both a personal and also collective level, on this planet we call our home. And just like cleaning our homes, learning to trust the stage directions that come from our heart, can seem like something we don’t want to do, or need to do, but in the end, find we have to. And actually, are fond of doing too.

This cleaning is useful, we discover, for it brings us in touch with our self. Our true self who may have been hiding for many many many years. For all number of reasons that we don’t need to get into now. It’s this self, that’s our connection to the universe. A self, who’s probably never going to instruct anyone to blow up someone else’s children. In fact, you can almost guarantee that the universe would never send a stage direction to a human that this will be an action that will bring about healing.

In simple terms, the more humans root and anchor and identify with something both grounded and earth bound yes, and also, with an intimate connection to the Divine, lets call it, the more, one could at the very least intuit, guess, that when and if a person is given orders and instructions that feel odd and obscure and off, that they will do whatever it is they can do to say no, in whatever way is right for them and those they love and care about.

For sure, as with anything underused, our inner knowing has atrophied over the years so that those of us seeking to reconnect to it, to replenish its life force, well, patience is needed. Humility too, because mistakes will be made and perfection will be hard to come by. Trust is at a low, doubt at epic proportions - nevertheless, just observe how you speak to your children…

Trust yourself my love. Trust yourself…

If each of us practiced this in our own small and private ways, what would be the collective ripple?

Well, I don’t have an answer, but as Rilke instructed his young poet, I am learning to live my question.

With much love,

Imperfectly, tenderly human!

Laura x

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PS: Just for what it’s worth, if anything at all, my tuppence worth is that if you do start tuning into your own inner wisdom (in whatever manner works for you), don’t expect the wisdom that comes from your heart, to have anything, directly at least, to do with Iran.

Indeed, whatever stage directions do come, may seem useless or irrelevant in size. Try not to be disappointed by them. Nor hanker after more important and aspirational instructions.

As any investor will tell you, small, consistent investments compound over time.

In this same manner, our hearts speak to us.

I.e.: Do this… Go there. Release this…

Or, perhaps even:

Don’t do this. Don’t go there. Hold on to this…

Just trust yourself - and do the cleaning necessary to discover who that self is in the first place. xx Laura.

Me? Writing seems its most musical when it becomes a reciprocal relationship - i.e. it’s wings spread when the reader feels inspired to engage.

To this end, if you have the life juice to:

• Click the heart at the end of the essay;

• Or, if you’ve just had your morning coffee, write a comment below;

• Or, re-stack & share with your community - your actions will cause this writer from Brighton to do a jig down the street. (We do that sort of thing here).

And if you are considering subscribing, do check out what this newsletter has meant to other subscribers:

“Reading Laura’s newsletter makes me marvel at her journey, exploration of self and life. Her zest for living and searching. For me, she is a natural wonder!” Tracy H.

“Laura your words are so powerful, every time I read them, somehow, each time, they are right for the phase I am going through. I love your writing, and I love you helping us feel that indeed we are not alone with our experiences!” Natasha D.

“Simply beautiful!” Julia M.

Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash

Dearest all,

The piece coming out tomorrow: Humans, not machines requires an introduction.

Please find this below!

With much love,

Laura x

Last September, a very dear friend invited me to join him at a house he had taken for a week in Cap Ferret, in France. Whilst drinking rum cocktails one evening and talking about this and that, in response to something I’d said, he replied: But Laura, if you care about everybody, you care about nobody.

I have since thought often about this… As it reminds of something I heard about twenty years ago, in a small, intimate talk that the playwright Eve Ensler was giving, in the basement of the Royal Albert Hall in London: As long as one woman has been raped, Eve said, then that is a ripple felt by us all.

from him hearing the wisdom:

Though each of the above statements speak to acdifferent truth, I believe they are wings of the same bird. From my friend for example, I heard: focus on one area where you have influence, and/or care deeply about, and let that grow and expand.

And from Eve Ensler: let your heart be huge and ever seeking, for us humans: feel most tenderly, even though we believe we’re singular.

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Tomorrow, you will receive a piece from me exploring how in times of acute inhumanity, us humans must actively stay human. To do this I argue, we must be clear what is that we’re saying no to. And then to say no in whatever way is right to your particular circumstance.

Below, is my introduction:

Healing, is much like cleaning your house.

At times a real deep scrubbing is needed; most probably one that you’ve been putting off, or praying that someone else will come along and do it for you. However, once you get into it, you find that it’s actually quite satisfying and not nearly as awful as you’d imagined when pouring all your energy into avoiding the doing of it, or making excuses for why you didn’t need to.

Then, there is the every-day cleaning that’s needed as a result of using our homes on a daily basis. If we don’t do this, suddenly there are dust balls everywhere, grime in the corner of shelves and clothes piling up to be laundered. However, once we learn to tackle everything bit by bit, create a routine and a rhythm so that the cleaning becomes as easy and as much a part of our day as anything else, what at first felt insurmountable, becomes practically simply a part of our every-day.

This is when we start to develop a little momentum. A spring in our step. Stay steady, and we start to realise: wow, we’re way more competent then we realised. We may even start to get creative, sensing opportunities as they arise to support our new cleaning mission. In this way, both the washing and drying machine are moved from downstairs, to upstairs in the family bathroom, by the sink where you brush your teeth. Suddenly, doing the laundry is easy. It’s geographically close to everybody’s bedroom. Suddenly there are no hills and mountains of clothes piling up downstairs, because all you’ve done is act on an inner sense of what could be improved.

Then there are the parts of cleaning our homes, that are much more fun and inspiring with contributions from others. “We’re all walking each other home,” said Ram Das. As is true for cleaning our homes. What this means, is that it’s helpful and also kind of joyful to engage the help of those you live with - your children for example - and then to work up the gumption to invite friends to do so as well.

For example:

This is your contribution, I tell my daughter as she takes our dogs out for their morning pee walk whilst I make breakfast. This is your contribution, I tell my son as he plays with one of our dogs Aslan for 5 minutes throwing a ball for him when he gets back from school and I’m making supper. And this is your contribution, I say, as my son wipes down the table after supper.

As for the friends, well, get them engaged too. (You could be a martyr, or even a Good Samaritan and do it all alone, but probably if you’re a mother and a woman, you’re well accustomed to doing things alone, so I don’t think you need to belabour this point any more).

The other day, for instance, my daughter had friends over and after lunch, I asked two to dry the dishes, one to put things away, and one to bring everything from the table to the sink. What would have taken me minimum 20 minutes to do alone, was done in 5 minutes in a manner that revitalised and was also fun.

In this way, slowly, slowly, cleaning is happening. So that some days, all that is needed is a little wipe here, a little brush there and a feeling emerges: everything is alright. Everything is all clear. Increasingly, rather then feel overwhelmed, or burdened, or or or, you’re simply in the moment.

This is healing. You know your no’s. Nope, this ain’t all mine. And you’re clear of your yesses.

As a result, you feel calmer. More joyful. And you enjoy being creative, understanding that instead of lots of money (always the dream tho), being thrown at things, (fun to do, if you can do), actually, small tweaks can end up creating pretty satisfying results. A bench moved from there to here. Some books placed there. A light moved upstairs from downstairs. Tweaks, that are forever happening as a response to whatever needs to happen in order for cleaning to happen.

In this way, cleaning is healing… Practical and, personal. Potentially even, quietly, satisfying. You may prefer not to do it, but doing it you discover, brings many rewards. Rewards that may not be aspirational to another, may mean nothing to another in fact, but to you - and your family - mean the world.

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With much love,

Laura x

Me? Writing seems its most musical when it becomes a reciprocal relationship - i.e. it’s wings spread when the reader feels inspired to engage.

To this end, if you have the life juice to:

• Click the heart at the end of the essay;

• Or, if you’ve just had your morning coffee, write a comment below;

• Or, re-stack & share with your community - your actions will cause this writer from Brighton to do a jig down the street. (We do that sort of thing here).

And if you are considering subscribing, do check out what this newsletter has meant to other subscribers:

“Reading Laura’s newsletter makes me marvel at her journey, exploration of self and life. Her zest for living and searching. For me, she is a natural wonder!” Tracy H.

“Laura your words are so powerful, every time I read them, somehow, each time, they are right for the phase I am going through. I love your writing, and I love you helping us feel that indeed we are not alone with our experiences!” Natasha D.

“Simply beautiful!” Julia M.

Now, without further ado:

I’ve taken up a new hobby: Crystal Ball Predictions. I’ve been practicing for a week and a half now and, I think, I’m really rather good.

The trick is, to have a clear question in your mind when you begin.

And because I’m terribly excited, I thought I’d give all subscribers a freebie of my newly acquired skills. Right, here we go:

Mirror, mirror, on the wall -

Oh bugger… I’ve got my online courses mixed up - that’s meant to be my new morning mantra from a different course I signed up to maybe around the same time: Life Skills As Inspired by Disney’s Villains. The only thing is, I’ve just remembered that I forgot to sign up for the Hot Flash Sale for the Crystal Ball Course, in order to be able to access the next part of the course. The thing is, that part cost money and I didn’t really want to do that.

Hmm, what to do. Oh, never mind. All roads lead to Damascus, or wherever it is. So, lets just take two...

Me: Mirror, Mirror, on the wall - who’s the fairest politician of them all?

Mirror: Oh thank God! An actual serious question. So kind of you to ask - how much time have you got?

Me: Oh loads!

Mirror: Oh, great. Well, before I can answer, first off: 126 years of history, in as brief-as-brief I can:

A mirror’s take on some recent British history:

Once upon a time, in a magical and ancient land, there were those known as the anointed ones: leaders of the land who on account of being better educated, better looking (not always true), and better born (whatever that means) then everyone else, these chaps knew politics was their destiny, and so as soon as they were born they identified as Conservatives.

Also, because one’s chums were already politicising and because one at the very least attended parties with Royalty, one knew that one only need look in the direction of Westminster, and a seat was one’s by next Tuesday.

However, even anointed ones must face the tumult of reality and so, things began to change in the year of 1900 when a man called Keir Hardie, who was neither fair born, nor fair educated, (altho unfortunately it must be said, did have some charisma. And as all charismatic souls have discovered, if you’ve charisma, looks suddenly become not so important).

Also, Hardie had something called convictions of the heart: he wanted to use the experiences of his childhood - of working in the coal mines and growing up in acute poverty, - to create a party that was for the worker. Not so much, I’m-Keir-from-the-block-and-have-my-own-private-coach-and-horses, but actually, I’m Keir from the coal mines and I know in my heart and my blood, the reality of most families affected by these lives, and want to do my bit to transform them.

Unfortunately tho for Hardie, such was his love of his fellow man, that when the First World War broke out in 1914 with the brothers of Germany pitted against the brothers of England, when he tried to reason with his country, not only did his message go unheeded, but he became a public figure of derision and mirth. And so it was, that one year after the war broke out, Hardie, a man whose lover, a Miss Sylvia Pankhurst declared “was much too big a man to make a parade of knowledge.” And who “despite the most tempting offers, refused to prostitute his talents in the service of the ruling caste,” and so “was hounded as a felon, and branded as an enemy of the race,” died of a broken heart.

At a time when grief was soaking the land, his was a death, just like many. Yet, even so, his party Labour, grew and grew in stature. So that, Mr. Hardie aside, between the years 1900 - 2000, the anointed leaders of the land found that they now had a new contender in town: and so Labour and Conservatives bished and boshed it out, with the Liberals, every now and again asking, (or finding themselves asked), to be included.

Then, 3 years before the century gave over at the turning of the new millenium 2000, in 1997, a man called Tony Blair became Prime Minister and the world as we knew it, in this fair and ancient land, began to change once more. For now, it was not only the Conservatives associated with diabolical behaviour, but Labour who became associated with sleaze and lies, and lies and sleaze and saying things quite empty. And so our fair nation, entered a period of politics known as Sleazy, Sleazier and Sleaziest from which we’ve never really recovered since. It was also during this decade, having torpedoed their reputation, that the Conservative party decided to try out cannibalism, and so, began eating their own.

Disgusted and fed up by their behaviour, in the year 2024, the British public voted in Labour to power, and a Sir Keir Drama-Karma Starmer came along, galloping in, on a car most blink blink donated, and a lot of people got very excited and honestly believed things would change.

Soon however, it became clear that change is simply a scientific reality about reality that politicians mention to get to power. Now, by this point, the Conservative Party had devoured each other so wholly and completely that no one was quite sure if they still existed because all you could hear at Prime Ministers Questions was chomp chomp; chomp chomp, ooh that a little bit crunchy.

And then, because emotional contagion is catchy, Labour began to do the same. And this is where things got interesting.

For in this space, someone called Nigel Mirage, sorry Farage, trotted along and with a smile resembling someone-else, shook his fist, stood on his podium and delivered his lines from a tele-prompter. MI5 leaning in closer, soon realised that it was in fact the very same tele-prompter that a Mr. Donald Trump had lambasted at a talk he gave to the UN. In other words, the special relationship had got tangled.

Now, whilst all this was happening, a fair prince (I’ve not forgotten your original question), appeared on the land out of nowhere. (He’d been hanging out with The Theatre of the Oppressed, practicing techniques most un-Westminster).

And even tho this fair prince was saying things and doing things which were showing things said about him were not exactly true, the former leaders of the land weren’t at all worried, because they know what you don’t know: The Greens won’t survive a day in this land, because the land is the land built by their forefathers, for their decedents, and in other words, will be eaten alive, just watch them.

Crunch crunch, crunch crunch, just watch and we’ll munch ‘em for breakfast.

Share

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Oh Mirror Mirror on the wall, if young Zack is the fairest of them all, is there any chance you can make some predictions?

Sure, just please don’t go calling me Cassandra…

Here you go:

Over the next 3 years, the Cannibals, formerly known as the Conservatives, will implode. No one will go to their funeral.

During their demise, the current leader of the Labour party will be replaced by a leader more representative of the original heart of the party. Because of this, at the next General Election, Labour will stay in power. (Keir Starmer will step down, and go into early retirement).

The Lib Dems will carry on being nice and good, proper as they should, but no one will know who their leader is, nor what it is they really care about. Mr. Farage, humiliated by his representatives losing all chances at gaining seats, will relocate to a golden palace in Florida, as Head Entertainer of After Dinner Party Games because in the olden days, Kings and Queens had Fools to entertain them, and a Mr. D.T. was keen to offer employment to the greatest fool of them all who thought that at one point, he was going to get to rule fair England.

And the Greens?

Well, because of the great blessing which is being misunderstood and not taken seriously, from 2026 to the next General Election they swell into the 2nd largest political party in Great Britain. Such is their growth, their messaging and their integrity (they don’t take money from anyone who funded either Labour or, the Cannibals), but discovered that true power is not money misused, but instead community re-connected.

In this environment, the Lib Dems grow in confidence and explore ways to partner and collaborate with the Greens. And Labour, instead of being threatened by the Greens, seek to learn from a party who genuinely care about this country.

And so slowly and gradually, Great Britain finally discovers what it is to be united in spirit. And what it is to have at the heart of government, policies rooted in the wisdom of nature - our true nature - of which we’ve always been a part. So that slowly, slowly this rotten system which for hundreds of years existed and spread like poison ivy, (the tentacles of poison ivy wrap themselves around that which already is), transforms in a middle kind of way: where a new era of collaborative and compassionate politics is co-created and enjoyed by its people.

With much Love,

Laura x

PS: For all those of you who love reading books by people who love the old and simple ways of this country, do check out the work of both George Ewart Evans who wrote about how life in the country-side in Suffolk changed after WW2, and also, writing at a similar time, The Heart of a Vagabond by Nancy Price, who wrote about her love of walks in Sussex.

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Eighteen years ago, for a period of about a year, I used to drive my then black Audi TT named Bullet, to Harley Street twice a week, for sessions with a Jungian analyst to work on my dreams. This analyst, I fell completely under his charm, and quite adored him. It was only by sheer grace, that my dreams, began to tell me - with some urgency - about truths about a sort of elephant in the room that meant rather then lean towards him, I began to lean away.

In moments of profound awkwardness, I would bring these warning, red alert dreams to the sessions with him, to discuss - as was my homework! I was so determined to do the work, to work with my dreams, that even it was awkward, sensing there was a truth asking to be revealed, I’d record these dreams, send them over to him and then we’d work on them in the sessions.

Which is to say, it was quite an extraordinary experience in trusting my own inner truth and in the end, unable to ignore the wisdom in the dreams, and the uncomfortable truths they were pointing to, I stopped the sessions. This is, despite the fact, - and here is a complex truth, - that that man is probably one of the most brilliant therapists I have ever worked with. It was only afterwards when I stopped having the sessions, that I discovered how open he was to his female clients showing their appreciation for him, in all manner of intimate ways in that very consultation room that I had been sitting in twice a week, and that he would later go on to be barred from practicing as a therapist in the U.K.

As I said, those sessions bring up complex truths for me - he wasn’t all awful. Indeed, I credit him with holding a space for me to meet very deep truths about myself in those sessions, but I think that space - of genuine, open longing for truth, to seek, you have to be so careful who you bring that too, because so many people will want to use that for their own advantage. Nevertheless, for a while, I was able, via the way he worked, to meet my unconscious in ways I probably haven’t even since. Yet, because it wasn’t a clean, nor a safe space, I also think he muddied quite genuine impulses within me that have taken me almost two decades to clean up, and reconnect to, so that once again, my path feels my own.

Nevertheless, having said all of this, one of this therapists gifts to me however, is the below story. I am not entirely sure if it’s originally from Chaucer, or if it’s a myth that Chaucer played around with. (You can read Chaucer’s version by searching for The Wife of Bath’s Tale). Either way, I have played around with the version I was told, so that it feels more fitting to both where I am now, and themes I have explored in my own life - the relationship between men and women, what it is to seek, and ultimately what it is to truly love another.

With much Love,

Laura xx

A story:

In a wild wood, King Arthur is riding one day.

His horse, a magnificent animal, shining white, walks with her nose gently sniffing the grass below, as the King rides in a relaxed manner, allowing his reins to go loose which means that when his horse stops abruptly, her head shooting up, he’s surprised and thrown from his seat.

After coming to stand from falling onto the grass, he looks up to find an old woman standing by his horse, stroking her nose and whispering to her.

“Hello,” he says. And then cannot help himself, as he has to make a little swallow on seeing her face as she turns to him: for it is one that truly terrifies him. Haggard yes, littered with pot marks and boils and a hairy lip most certainly. A smell emanates from her that is truly foul and her hair is a gun metal grey, slicked to her heavily lined forehead, like a field that’s just been ploughed. When she smiles, it’s clear she’s lost more teeth then remain. Her lips are thin, tight things and with every inhalation she wheezes loudly.

Yet none of this is what terrifies him. It is her eyes that do this - so cloaked in pain, so desperately far flung in some unknown universe, that even tho this old woman stands there, her eyes seem to say where she truly is, what she’s truly known: and so some part of her has flown far away, in order, that the rest of her can survive…

Not an unkind man, the King forces himself to come a little closer, tho everything in his body wanted to lean away, for the stench was overwhelming.

“May I help you Madam?” He asked her.

She laughed and cackled and wheezed. “Not bloody likely Sir,” she said, sniffing and then taking her fingers to her wet nostrils, squeezing them and then flinging away into the fern bushes, whatever it was that had poured out. “Actually, it’s me Sir, who’s here to help you.”

“How so?” The King asked.

“Well Sir, if you fancy your life, you’ll go back to that majestic castle of yours and tell your nephew, I’m to be his wife.” The King started, feeling irritation. Kind he was, but he was also a King and no one told a King what it was and how it was he was to do things. Especially, when they involved his beloved nephew.

“Yes, he’s a good fellow. However, telling him who his wife will be will -“

“-wise, for it will save your life Sir,” the old woman interrupted.

“Excuse me?”

“When he marries me, your life can continue,” she said coming closer. But if he refuses, or you refuse to tell him, it’ll be off with yer head Sir - and I’ll be the one who does it.”

Suddenly the King felt very young, and very unsure. And for a moment, all there was was the wheeze and the smell until he felt the familiar warmth of his beautiful horse beside him and composed himself once more.

“How will you kill me?”

“Oh don’t worry, I’ve got means to do exactly what I need to do. That part you don’t need to worry about,” and she looked at him, and a little bit of a life force sputtered like a far away firework in her eyes. The king shivered. Then wordlessly, he got back onto his horse and nodding at the woman, turned away, walking slowly, heavy-hearted back to the castle. As if under a spell, he found himself summoning his nephew and sharing with him the story of what had just occurred.

“My King,” said his nephew, “You only need to say the word and I will marry this woman. My life is in service to you, and I would not have a life should we reject this old woman’s words as madness. For you are quite shaken, I can see this. And this tells me you take her threat seriously.”

So, the King accepts his nephew’s acceptance of taking this hag for a wife.

And at a time later, the wedding happens. The guests are in shock when they see the bride and the King feels sick and everyone wonders: what will become of the kingdom, with a king who has sacrificed his nephew for his own neck? So that respect for their previously much adored King Arthur dwindles, just a little.

After the ceremony, the nephew and his new bride the hag are in the bedroom. The old woman is looking out of the window as the sun pours in and for a moment the young man is blinded. When he can see again, in front of him is a woman more beautiful than he even knew was possible. He looks quickly for his wife, by the window, but he cannot see her.

The woman in front of him, lightly touches the back of his hand.

“It is me - your wife.”

Tears come to his eyes, he is not sure what to say, but he listens as this woman tells him that a curse was placed on her, and that only by being married to a good man, would the curse be lifted. However, she shares with eyes full of not being sure, “the cure is not fully lifted. But you have a choice: would you choose to have me my true self when we are alone in our chamber, or, when we are outside in the world so everyone can look upon your wife and you can feel pride?”

The young man, takes both of her hands in his and steps a little closer.

“That choice is yours my love,” he tells her. And now it is tears that come from her eyes:

“Because you have allowed me to decide my own fate, I can be my true self both in the privacy of our bedroom and also out in the world.”

But before they can live happily ever after, he has to ask her a question: “But who did this curse upon you? A witch?” the man asked his wife.

“No, not a witch. Tho a witch is always blamed… a woman would never do this sort of thing to her own kind. It’s only if a monster has her, and then she is inclined to do all manner of cruel things, but if a woman is left to be a woman, she only knows how to uplift, look out for, empower and include her own kind in her life - and to share the bounty. We are mammals after all, and this is our way.”

“So who did this?”

“Twas a demon... many life times ago. For one thing that cannot be changed, is my age - I truly am as old as that hag your uncle met in the woods. Older still, younger never more. I was born so long ago. In a land where instead of blood poured over it, life sprung from it. One day, long ago, a demon tribe arrived and took all women and all the children, killing all the men. The most powerful demon, took the most beautiful woman, in that case, that was thought to me. But I was young and wild-spirited and refused to bow down as his wife. To punish me, he cast me out with this curse. So that for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of years, I have walked alone, rejected and further cursed by all and any who saw me. And in this way, I’ve always only been his.”

“Until now,” said the man. “And where is this demon?”

“Oh, the demon is everywhere. In every country, in every castle, in every land.”

“And what do we do to cast out this demon?”

“We do what it is you did for me. You ask each woman: who it is she really is? And how it is she really wants to live? And from here: life, will be quite different.”

With much love,

Laura x

Dearest all,

I am diving back into my new book, and so wanted to share ‘something from the archives’ with you: a trip Eve, Jack and I made to Barcelona last year.

The trip was made at a time my partner and I were fraying at the seams a little, and so I travelled solo for the first part, with Tom joining us later.

What I hadn’t realised, was that I what I was seeking was the freedom to be me, after a period of constriction and exhaustion. Not necessarily between us, but just, you know: life.

Anyway, Barcelona very much became that space.

And I am so grateful for discovering how healing taking intentional space is!

With much love,

Laura x

Barcelona

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My initial inspiration to visit, was Gaudi’s, Sagrada Familia.

It’s Lego in action, I said to Jack, pointing to the pages in the books I have at home about it. Look, look what someone’s done with their imagination…

And yet, though Sagrada Familia was what brought us to Barcelona, it was not what kept us there; organisation and I being only recent bedfellows. Still unable to shake off the habit that travel is best summed up in three words: adventure, freedom & joy!

(I do understand that for some, organisation leads to freedom, it’s just I am always too busy enjoying freedom to remember to be organised).

Alas, 2025 Sagrada Familia had to teach me a lesson, as on our first morning, my children and I fell out of the taxi, all ecstatic: Sagrada Familia! Sagrada Familia! We’re here! We’re here! Oh my! Oh my! Look, look, looook!

Only to discover that the only thing you’re looking at lady is the facts of life. Which is, in this instance, that if you haven’t prebooked a ticket the only way you’re getting in, is if you go on a guided tour. Otherwise, the next available ticket for all those who prefer free-styling, is in 3 weeks time.

Bugger.

Because whilst some would have just said, sure, lets be flexible here, the main goal is to get in, if a guided tour is our only option: lets take it! The thing is, my kids have absorbed a trait somewhere along the way, that the adventure of most things really, is in figuring stuff out for yourself. As such, the appeal of guided tours resided at sub-zero temperatures. And so, we turned away from the cathedral, and walked where fate would have us go…

…the tourist shop, on the other side of the road, selling over-priced key rings, pencil cases, wallets, animal figurines and miniature Barcelona FC pitches. Internally berating myself for my lack of foresight, I was lost in a dangerous place: sensing this, my children took wild and opportunistic advantage bringing things they told me were gifts for friends, and gifts for them, gifts for everyone: oh mum, we need this now and not later…

Huh? Wha? Oh… sure, yeah…

And then at the till, my son bought over one last item: a Barcelona navy blue and crimson red football.

Mum, I forgot my football, he said, looking at me with his conker brown eyes.

Hmm, yes, I said distracted. His eye-brows shot up, as a new algorithm formed in his mind: things working out, actually worked out. If you give them space for that to happen…

And that’s when our trip changed entirely.

Jack: and that £12 football opened up a new portal, through which we slipped and Barcelona opened up in a way that I never could have planned for. And yet, if you’re to read only one more sentence, let it be this: should you visit Barcelona with young children, sure book things, but to have the kind of trip where the city opens up and you find spontaneous, free and easy ways to connect with the locals, do yourself a favour and buy a football.

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As for us, as soon as we walked out of the shop, Jack dribbled that football, away from Sagrada Familia, down towards Las Ramblas, and towards and across and up and down, and not once did he ever lose it. He dribbled it through crowds, and stopped it with one foot at the traffic lights. Sometimes he’d kick it to his sister - and even sometimes, to me.

And this football, became the thing we shaped our days around. After break-fast each morning, we’d stroll out into the sun-soaked streets of Barcelona and with no plans, other then to walk and find somewhere for lunch, and somewhere after for ice cream, we were walking about.

Well, until Eve let me know that some kind of plan was needed.

Mum, what’s the plan today? She would ask.

There is no plan, I’d say.

But mum, the plan – what is it?

Occasionally, worried that she might be onto something, I scuttled away to my computer and tap tap tapped into it, looking for a plan. Friends on Facebook had made various recommendations about what to do, where to do it and how to do it: maybe I should actually check them out.

Having done so, I bought emergency tickets to Something That Was Planned so I could say, look: plans. One sounded nice: a sunrise tour of one of Gaudi’s houses: arrive early to avoid the queues. However, when we arrived there was in fact exactly what we’d all brought tickets to avoid: a long queue.

As I joined the line, Eve and Jack began to kick the football to each other whilst I chatted to a family, the ten-year-old son showing me photos on his father’s camera of the inside of Sagrada Familia. So we kind of saw it, in a way after all.

And then we got in and were handed an iPad which you hold up at whatever you’re looking at in the house and you hear information about it through your headphones. I must say, I could not have felt more hostile to that ipad if I tried… Because surely surely surely, Gaudi is one of the safe places where we do not need to be told what to think? Or to find beautiful.

I can’t but sense that Gaudi felt the same, for in one of the first rooms you come to was a life-size bronze cast of him leaning exhausted over a desk, his drawings scattered in front of him. I think that’s just him in the afterlife, appalled at our collective inability to simply allow things to be enough by marinating in their presence.

And so you have us all, standing dumbly in front of this extraordinary house which is begging us to use our senses, and the Spanish being Spanish, you can actually reach out and feel the sensuousness of the curved walls and the wood and the door handles; but of course, no one is, because their hands are on the damn iPads.

After this experience, allowing our days to unfold planless, is slightly more appreciated by my daughter and we didn’t go on the other things I had booked in that desperate moment, other then one other tour to Montserrat - a 9th century abbey, high up on a mountain range, outside of Barcelona which turns out to involve an hours coach journey there.

But didn’t you check mama?

Um no… there was a photo of a cable car on the website, so I just assumed it was the one near our hotel… And then we hear the tour, once we get to the top, will be 3 hours.

My God, we’re on the very thing we wanted to first avoid: a guided tour.

At this point, is when you feel the solo parent squeeze. But, when we walk into the cathedral, I’m speechless. And I just want to sit and take it all in. But here, my longings are different to those of my children and I must be honest, when I am on solo parent mode, you choose your battles, to win the war, and so I acquiesce and we plan our escape route.

Outside the cathedral, we find a woman who tells us we can indeed escape - via the cable car, instead of waiting for the train. So we say thank you and goodbye to the tour leader and then sprint to the cable car.

If it fell – would we die? My children ask, as we wobble our way down. I am laughing because it’s all so absurd and ridiculous. Being on holiday in Barcelona, everything that is planned not to work out and seemingly, a holiday that wants to say: just go with the flow. And then Eve sees mountain goats, and they’re what ends up making this particular part of the trip a success, an algorithm for successful travel forming in my mind: footballs, animals, nature… things to keep in mind.

After this, Eve is happy to accept, in lieu of actual plans, mini missions: Sweetheart find us somewhere to have ice cream…

Sweetheart, find us a really fabulous restaurant to have paella for supper…

Mission accepted, she beams and strides ahead every-time we walk the streets. Anything from a good fifty, to ten feet in front of me, to right beside me, holding my hand. But a lot of the time, that trip was all about that ball.

Other little things defined this holiday: the power of a napkin and a pen to fill the twenty minutes a paella takes from ordering it to ready to eat. Pedestrian cones on lining the pavement to leapfrog over. Streets to walk through and get lost in, spontaneous games of football with passerby’s.

Everything that was planned: such as a Barcelona FC game, that we’d also come to see and Tom had got us ticket for, was another case of how what had been organised didn’t work out as we thought. It was also the only time, during the trip that I felt vulnerable as a mother alone.

Walking up to the auditorium was extraordinary. Just as when there is a marathon, or some collective event, where people forget the illusion of I and me and my, we all walked, as one. My kids walked ahead, holding hands, and I felt we were about to experience something quite profound.

It was only when we neared the pitch and saw about 14 black vans for riot police, that a knot of anxiety appeared. When we got to our seats, the adrenalin that was palpitating in the room, meant I basically didn’t blink from arrival to departure. Jack sat on my lap and I scanned the auditorium wondering why oh why am I here? The away team, made up about a quarter of the audience. Placed on the other end, in yellow t shirts, their smaller size did not impact the fury of their pounding up and down.

But Jack’s hero Lamine Yamal was playing and we could see him. Look! Look! And then about 20 people in yellow, fluorescent vests poured down the stairs, onto the pitch, but instead of facing the footballers, they turned and looked back at us. I am a little out of practice going to football matches, so I don’t know if this is standard practice, but I couldn’t but feel that this act, of watching the audience for any trouble, actually provoked a wish to cause trouble. I gripped my children closer!

After about 20 minutes tho, Jack turned and said: Mum, I think we should go home.

Relieved, we all stood simultaneously, and exited quicker then a firework doing its thing on Fireworks.

As we left, a goal was scored and a roar went up that ripped the skin from my bones and as we passed the riot policemen I asked one, may I ask why are you guys here? Is there violence? To which he nodded. A grim smile on his face. And then answered simply: Yes.

I nodded and scurried away with my kids, to a taxi in the car park and back to our hotel, where we got under the duvet and fell asleep in that way you do when the oblivion of sleep is more welcome then whatever has come before it.

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Other favourite moments were swimming in the rooftop pool of our hotel. A cold water salt pool, mostly the other guests lying on the sun-beds around it, and avoided going in. It was Easter and so not yet that warm. So for about fifteen to twenty minutes on most days, I got to be utterly totally alone whilst my children hid under towels and had screen time and I pretended not to notice.

Towards the last two days, Tom arrived. When he did, I was in the pool, swimming underwater, and when I came up for air, I saw him and the children hugging. I stayed, shoulders submerged, chin just resting on the water, watching them as they hugged and they hugged and they hugged and I stayed, submerged and watching, and then I swam away.

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Life and the joy of it, is made up of so many splendidly simple things. Kissing the person you love on the mouth and hugging them and laughing and wrapping yourselves around each other at night. Looking into the eyes of someone you love, is one of the most profoundly reassuring and enjoyable acts of intimacy there is: celebrating when things are wonderful, and commiserating when things are not.

Life and the hell we make of it when things that could be easy, find themselves hard: how things can swivel in an instance. And so it was that in Barcelona, on that trip, even tho my kids and I were with each other every moment, because so much of our time was spent with them and that football, meandering through the streets, I often had time, simply to walk and wander off in my thoughts and because of this, insights and openings happened, that meant I got to remember what it was that felt I’d become so lost to, in a way that many mothers are always seeking to re-seed in the days that make up our weeks.

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Some other snap shots:

• Watching graffiti artists at work creating a scene with Marge Simpson and some 3D writing which tho it didn’t look like it said anything, the guy writing it took real care. Didn’t mind us standing there watching him. And to feel the freedom to stand and watch, just as Jack and I used to when we first moved to Brighton and set up the Brighton Graffiti Appreciation Society;

• How most apartments come with balconies instead of the mean straight down apartment blocks walls, in the UK;

• A young couple standing by the traffic lights - she leans in and tenderly kisses him on the mouth. Him shaven, a beautiful, monkish, devout almond shaped head. She with wild dread locks. Gritty, but a gentle kiss;

• Discovering Honest Greens! (Now open in London);

• The zoo in Ciutadella Park and on entering seeing peacocks who are allowed to roam free. This brings about an absurd amount of delight. It’s free! the peacock is free! Eve daughter squeals. And it is wonderful to see this bird free. It’s feathers shimmying. Its frightened, Eve observes and so we back away, giving it space. And we wander about the other animals: can any of the others have freedom too? What about the zebras? I ask. No, says Eve, they might kick someone.

Other football highlights:

• Spontaneous games of football with passerby’s. Men who I’d normally feel unsure around, their eyes light up when they see my kids kicking a ball through the streets. Eve is an excellent player with incredibly strong legs and Jack, although he has only been playing for a few months, has good enough eye-foot coordination that he can dribble the ball more or less no problem through tourist infested streets. As a result, we have a kick about with two Arab men whose eyes light up to see this young boy, so devotedly and earnestly dribbling his football through the streets. And outside a barber shop we play a spontaneous game of footie on the pavement;

• Another moment: 2 younger men outside the train station on our way back from Cituadella park. They themselves have a football which one of the men had dropped from his arms, and Eve had kicked it back. He had turned to look at her, impressed. And then seeing Jack with his football, he had his friend, both in their mid 20’s invite my kids to have a kick around, right there in the entrance of the train station whilst I stood and beamed and my heart sung: this is the life for me.

Bookshops!

Of course we visited Bookshops – our favourite, Backstory, an English Book-Shop where I bought Colm Tóibín’s, Homage to Barcelona which I loved and I loved and I loved. We bought too many books in fact. Loved them all and read them all; when not playing footie, or eating, it’s safe to say a book was not far from our hands.

The Return Home

When we get home and my children are arguing again and my daughter looks so tired after school, Barcelona, I call in my heart, Barcelona can you hear me?

Travelling with my children is wonderful and magical and worth it. I’ve seen them re emerge beyond stresses of everyday life. So that Barcelona is now an anchor; a somatic memory of all that we are as a family. And also, where I remembered who I am: a moment, walking in that freezing cold roof-top pool, having 15 minutes to myself, and just slowly, slowly wading up and down the around 10m pool. My arms trailing through the water. Where I got to feel into a woman who by her very nature is having far more fun being here on planet earth then I realise.

Women, by our nature, at least as it seems to me: our innate connection to our bodies, our joy and zest for life, eroticism, pleasure, delight, joy and passion - all of that for many of us, can all too easily get slam-dunked and mutated for a variety of different reasons and from a variety of different sources. For some, the sheer exhaustion of how much women carry in their daily lives is enough to do it. And in that pool, and on those streets of Barcelona: I got to remember. That to reconnect to who we are as our own women, it’s an experience that comes, with a very deep and great, and often too, utterly private smile.

And so I send this smile, this deep inner knowing of who you truly are, who we all truly, uniquely are, and I hope you feel it: and I hope you find a way to a space where if it feels remote, you can reconnect to it. In your own way, in your own style.

With much love,

Laura x

Some photos:

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I’ve finally cracked the code for travelling with your partner when you have different travelling styles: take your contact lenses out.

Now, I do have glasses but my son Jack sat on them in Ireland over New Years and stood on them over half term in Switzerland and getting them fixed, just hasn’t managed to hit the list of the Top 10 for Things Most Urgent, and so have just been following a path of wonky, wonkier and probably soon wonkiest at which point they will be unwearable and I’ll be forced to walk the 15 minutes to my opticians to get them fixed. So instead of wearing them, I hang them on my jumper, and without glasses or contacts, I can barely see.

Also, I am in almost bone fide mole status, as whilst lying in bed together in the middle of the day, the other day, I asked Tom to place one of my hearing aids on the side table beside the bed. He had done it the day before, and had worked out more or less okay, except this time, when he plonked them down, he plonked it in a cup, which then later had its interiors thrown into the bin.

So, I am one hearing aid down and also, without contacts have access to sub optimal visibility. I could wear my contacts, but we had friends over for supper last night and I don’t normally drink, (actually, I’m not entirely sure that’s true anymore - but, it did used to be & I think that’s the main point I’d like to get across) and after eating a huge plate of tiramisu, couldn’t fall asleep, and so when Tom came and woke me, I felt too groggy to put my contacts in.

But as it turns out, this ends up creating unexpected benefits; like suddenly Tom and I travelling together is Operation Coolio.

To give you some context, I am the person who calculates what is the minimum time you need to spend at the airport, and then I subtract some other subtractions and that’s when I turn up. I’m not really into queue’s, so in any queue situation I either zone out and pretend I am practicing enlightenment, or where there is choice to join a queue, I wait till it’s got rid of itself, and then I show my passport. So that then you just walk on the plane, when maybe 2 or 3 people are just putting away their bags in the overhead stowing compartment things, and you just go straight to your seat and you take off.

Tom, however, has found his own formula.

One where he factors in what is the most time possible we can all spend at the airport, and what is the earliest we can wake to get there? And then he sort of sort of time travels in years and decades ahead of when we want to be anywhere, and that’s when we get there.

Historically, this has created a lot of disgruntlement between us. But now, full of compassion, the universe has shown me the way. Sans one hearing aid and no glasses, I can’t see Tom’s facial expressions, and therefore am liberated from something I find genuinely hard to not fuss about: focus on Tom’s internal state, instead of being rooted in my own.

But because my beloved is now in a white out, I am just blissfully free to be unencumbered by worrying about what it is that other people are thinking or feeling, and what I have done to mess everything up etc etc etc.

As a result of not being able to see Tom’s facial expressions, or anyone else’s for that matter, I am free dear diary to just do what I really want to do: which is write! Which is to say, this blog post was written in the passport queue at Zurich airport, and also sitting at Pret in Zurich airport whilst my family sat beside me, chatting. Normally, I feel guilty about not being attentive. But because I can’t see any facial expressions, I am rudely sitting there, scribbling ideas down in my journal, and because I don’t care, they don’t care: oh universe I have found the answer.

Although, I did stop whilst on the actual aeroplane, because Tom doesn’t mind the kids on screens on flights, whereas I’d rather turn up at the airport early and queue for a decade, then allow my kids on a screen, on a flight that is anything less then about 4.5 hours.

As such, it seems that if I am to deprive them of what 98% of the other children on the plane are doing, I should at least be up for chatting with them. As it is, we have a lot of fun. In the last 24 hours, Jack has created 6 comics in his journal.

“7 actually mum,” he says, as he flicks through and shows me, reading me each one. And they genuinely make me laugh. And I like laughing. With my kids, with Tom, with our dogs. With friends. Strangers even. Laughing: it’s a good way to pass the time.

Also, Jack loves chatting.

“Shall we chat?” he says, and I put my book down which I picked up at the book shop by the BA check in line, This Is For Everyone by Tim Berners-Lee, The Inventor of the World Wide Web, except as it turns out, it’s not really for me because after reading the first chapter, I end up flicking through.

So, first of all, Jack and I chat about words. In one of his comics, he uses some words that I feel warrant a parental lecture.

“Hmmm. Can you come up with anything else then this?”

“No mum, it’s just a word. And also books I read use this word.”

“Yes, but I think you can be more creative.”

“Fine,” he says. “Doughnut brain.”

“Awesome,” I say. “Totally relatable. I have already had several cases of doughnut brain just this morning.”

And then we carry on.

Then Eve joins in, as we’re now chatting about rap. Jack starts reciting an Eminem rap, which has some genuinely unfortunate words in it. And here, even tho I can’t see anyone’s facial expressions, I begin to beg and plead because just maybe, just maybe, all the other families around us, will be wowed by the level of our chatty and humorous banter. And it’s not that I’m evangelical and want them to do the same with their kids, I just want lots of praise and adulation for doing it with my kids.

Then Eve shares a rap from Hamilton, and unfortunately this also has a swear in it.

“Oh my God, it has a swear word in it,” I say.

“Yes, it really does,” she says and then writes down the whole rap in her journal and points out the ******* word.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: why oh why oh why!

Then Jack recites another Eminem rap, this time with all the swear words bleeped out and then I’m really not sure what else we talk about, other then, in all honesty the time passes quickly. Trying to impress strangers aside, I want my kids to read, or chat, or draw, or write, or simply stare out of the window and day dream: anything but stare at a freakin’ screen.

I have this notion, that one day, when they’re older, they’ll look back not in anger but instead say: wow, mum, she really had a gift for teaching us boredom.

Anyway, what I really want to say is that the wonderful gift of not being able to see other people’s facial expressions and so finally discovering what it is to be in my body and not ruminating and worrying, I’m like that nosy neighbour who previously couldn’t help myself with all the curtain twitching: oooh fascinating. A double quick blink, hmmm, what did I do to make them do that? Huh?

Oh no! A frown. They don’t like me! What can I do to make them like me!

Except finally I’ve realised the perils of my way, and I’m out the house, in the garden, and oh boy: here is where life happens.

Because us folk, those of us who find when out with other people our attention naturally rests more on their experience their our own, we all have conditions that make it worse. Me for example, it gets far worse if a woman near me is very beautiful and cool looking and the men (I hope this is not disloyal, because obviously my partner is the most handsome of all, it’s just there are billions of people here, so I think I am being statistically neutral when I say, you know, occasionally you pass a man who can be factually deemed handsome, and I just want to seem impressive to these folk too. Or, you know: je suis nonchalant).

But when you can’t see anyone’s facial expressions, you are freed from all of this neuroses.

So that despite having barely any sleep, I am all ambrosial. Utterly relaxed.I am not wondering if Tom is stressed or not, I am not worrying about this or that. I am just in my own world, like a child who never had to stop day-dreaming.

Now, when we travel, Tom is superman. He does all the boring, heavy lifting things like get the bags out of the car, sort the hired car, get the luggage from the caracole etc, and so he will say things, like, you head off to the passport queue. And also things like, “Love, look its going to be a scrum, please don’t go to the book-shop.”

“But it’s a really good book-shop,” I say. “And also, I have a feeling, a feeling a book is there that I am meant to get.”

“But not the children?” he says.

As last night, high on tiramisu, and with my mother and her beautiful friend beginning to watch Gone With The Wind after some friends had come for supper, the kids were having so much fun, that they couldn’t fall asleep. This is also what Tom and I do differently. I can’t but just feel so happy when they’re laughing like that. They’re a pretty cool team, Eve and Jack, and well, as I said above, laugher has me at hello kind of thing, so whenever it’s happening, I really don’t want to interrupt it’s process.

I’d also started reading Frank McCourt’s heart-breaking book Angela’s Ashes last night which was by my bed. So incredibly beautifully written, and so so heart breaking I had to stop after three or four chapters.

So, because Tom thought i was being mildly ineffectual as a mother yesterday, I needed to show some beef and so said to the kids, right if you don’t go to sleep now, I won’t take you to get a book at Zurich book-shop tomorrow. It didn’t work, and they carried on jumping on their beds and sneaking out of their room to watch Gone With The Wind: my all time favourite film from childhood and as it happens, the same with my friend.

But now, we’re at the book-shop and my God, it’s really hard. Because of course I want to buy them a book, but Tom and I are trying to do this thing called back each other and not ever undermine each other, and so I have to stick to my word, but I just want you to know Eve and Jack, I really was close to crumbling…

Once reunited with Tom, we stand in the check in queue and I can’t see anyone, and because always at Zurich there is the fear of bumping into someone you know. Which is the worst thing as then you have to chat and that’s always intensely awkward. But now I have a legitimate excuse not to even wave at someone, should there be anyone I know in the same queue. (As Klosters and I go way back, my whole life in fact. Which means that pretty much on any flight home, you’re bound to bump into people like old boyfriends, or lovers, or whatever you call that sub strata of people who broke your heart and then you bump into them at the airport. Not that I have many of those encounters, which will of course make you think, oh she has many, but you know it takes just the one to haunt you….)

So, I walk through the airport, trailing Tom, my nose in my new book. And everything disappears. It’s just lovely. I am finally free. Not by achieving enlightenment but disrobing at least a little. Hearing aid, in the bin you go, and glasses, may you get broken. I feel so free and happy, it’s as if I am wearing one of those gorgeous gowns Vivian Leigh wears in Gone With The Wind, as I am not merely walking through the airpot, but gliding.

Introspection about others people’s thinking, and motivations and happiness and moods and so on, is really very exhausting. There are words for people like me: codependent, fawners etc. And I am working on healing all, but they’re the sort of things that take time. You have to go into your internal hard dive and basically completely re write the system

No human is more worthy then you.

Your needs and feelings do actually matter.

And you’re a person with your own destiny and don’t need to make anyone else’s more important.

You can still feel okay if people are grumpy and also, even if they disapprove of you, you can still chart your own course forward. That’s really the hard one.

But this removing the worse offenders: your eyes, is just so very very effective. Like a fast track to experiencing what normal people feel. Oh my God, I am finally feeling quite normal…

As we move through the 1st class bit, I can see just enough to see that Tom’s large Patagonia puffa is sticking into the face of the man in his seat.

“Love,” I say, leaning forward, “Your jacket is in this man’s face.”

And I tuck it out of the way. As I get closer, the man looks up at me and smiles. “Thanks for that,” he says. And I can tell he seems youngish and handsome. But I am free. I don’t need to fret about not being beautiful enough to receive his smile, or having fizzy hair, or food in my teeth. I just laugh and smile, because when you are free: oh it’s a much happier place to be.

When we’re off the plane, Tom gets all the luggage and says, why don’t you go off and get the kids some food from M&S. So we all scootle off and then go to W.H. Smith to look at the books and me at the magazines.

Another thing that was lost on the holiday, is my mobile phone. I ran out of battery on about day 3 and because I was on holiday, I thought, well I don’t need this and then put it somewhere, except I don’t remember where I put it, and despite the fact we all turned the flat upside down, none of us could find it. Perhaps it got worried about my hearing aid’s ability to handle it’s new life in the dust bin and followed suit. I guess, this week was the week things disappeared in action.

So Tom and Eve have an agreement to bypass mum and call each other, so that when he comes out, we can find each other (I’d leave it all to chance). And now Eve is in charge, and she and Jack march off, and I walk at a very slow pace behind them. For a moment, lost in the kerfuffle that is Heathrow on the last Saturday of half-term. I can hear not much, see only shapes; a white out in a city that’s snowless. I have a sense of where Eve and Jack are, and also knowing, because she has her phone, she will find Tom, even if they lose me, again, I don’t need to worry.

Which means for about one or two minutes, I am just there. Blissfully ignorant of the stress and anxiety and any judgments or poison darts or other peoples projections or issues or whatever it is that can sometimes be thrown your way. Maybe as a woman, maybe because you can be a bit different. Maybe because it’s all in your head: it doesn’t really matter.

And that’s where, at the end of Arrivals, Heathrow, near the glass doors that lead to the escalators that take you to the car park, I bend down, get my journal out of my bag and write the following finish to this blog piece:

I admit, if you are also looking for ways to discover who you truly are, beyond the expectations and so on of everyone, or all your worries etc, that if your eye-sight is perfect and you don’t need hearing aids like me, that this approach probably won’t be so helpful for you. However, you could always try a blindfold, and stuff your ears with wax buds.

But of course, that would just be strange…

With much love,

Laura x

A few months ago, I made a new rule: no more men in my bedroom.

My partner Tom, & my dog Aslan were exceptions who would be allowed in. However, all other men, were no longer welcome.

I was very strict with them all, immediately putting into action my new intention around other men in the bedroom.

Look, I said, I’ve thought about it short and hard and there are to be no more men in my bedroom.

They all looked at me blankly.

Then I took each of them & told them all to lie on the bed - for one last time - before carrying them all downstairs to my basement. Where all the women were, who actually, I’d much rather hang out with.

Now, some of the men were very heavy, and this made my task a repetitive one. With lots of trips up and down the stairs, as I carried them all piled up on top of each other, in my arms, up and down, and then carrying all the women - Decca Mitford, Dervla Murphy, Georgia O’Keeffe - up to my bedroom.

Come on, I said to them, we’ll have much more fun up here.

However, despite the best of intentions, old habits die hard and I’ve not been able to maintain my strict standards. Which means that slowly, the men have been creeping back into my bedroom…

Murakami was first, wanting to talk about a way of life he’s mastered that really is very inspiring and appealing and unfortunately, incredibly aspirational. Then a more recent acquaintance, a Mr. John Lash who is all about Tai Chi. And, I’ve finally got round to meeting, a Mr. Chinua Achebe who every time I spend time with him, makes me feel all nostalgic. Then there’s Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o with his wonderful thinking that make me want to find someone and talk with them all about his ideas. Now, normally this is Tom. Although, historically, I’m not entirely sure he is quite as excited by all these men and their wonderful ideas, as I have been. Or at least the way, I want to talk about them all the time.

And then, once 'I’d let some men into my bedroom, I found it harder to say no to all the others. So, a Peter Cozzens appeared, who I brought back with me to Brighton, after we met late one night, in W.H. Smith in Victoria station. He’s a beautiful way with words, and has been keeping me up at night, teaching me all how the earth weeps and I want to know more and be better and wiser and truer when I listen to the words that he shares. Then there’s Paulo Freire who’s been administering to me his theories of a pedagogy of the oppressed and who also talks of freedom and I think yes, I must learn what he says and remember what he says. Because, I do find him very inspiring. Of course, no one more then Mr Albert Camus who’s been urging me to create dangerously. (Although I must admit, to this, Jansson and Decca Mitford have simply laughed and told me stories about loving courageously).

But recognising I’ve slipped, earlier, I sat there in my bedroom, all these men piled up beside me on the floor. Oh God, I’ve let you all back in my bedroom. But before I sort of failed New Year Resolution beat myself up kind of thing, I stood up. Hands on waist in defiance sort of thing. Nope, this isn’t good enough. I must be firmer with you all: my bedroom is the place I get to be me. Bugger off. Stop being so damn appealing… The lot of you.

In other words: I’ve shooed them all off again.

Because, the thing is, after hanging with Mr. Murakami, I went out for a committee meeting for our local crescent and I sat there all depressed because I’d like to write novels too and God, my life and Mr. Murakami’s couldn’t be further apart from each other. On one hand, I’m a British woman not a Japanese man, I’m also a parent and he’s not and also: I really don’t like running. Of course I do do it - just only ever under absolutely essential conditions. Like being late for the school run for example. Then I run, of course. It’s the guilt. But run for pleasure? No, I don’t see room for that.

In other words Mr. Murakami has a sense of self and discipline which stand him very well. Whereas, both of mine slip thin on good days, and completely disappear on general days… also, I can only speak one language whereas Mr. Murakami also works to translate writers like Chandler to Japanese. Golly. He’s also cool and doesn’t care what others think of him and I really do care. Altho of course, I do wish I didn’t. Or at least not as much. And also he seems to have mastered the editing process whereas I’d rather eat raw liver for breakfast, lunch, and supper for the rest of my life than ever edit another manuscript of a novel I’ve written ever again.

Oh damn, I said to myself as I schloped home, I’m comparing myself to impossible idols again.

Right boys, I said as I marched once again back into my bedroom, you’re all being returned to the basement.

And so I swept them all up again. Tara, my spaniel lying on the new mini rug by my bed, ready for exodus Part II.

It was then that I had the afflatus: I don’t have to do this alone! And so, I called out to the women: Come on girls: help me out here. I’ve gone and got carried away.

And they said: honey, who hasn’t…

And we all laughed, shared some chocolate, and then Dervla Murphy said - is it time for beer?

Then a Mrs Karen Payne encouraged me to read letters between mothers and daughters because you know this stuff is as old as bread. Then Machaelle Small Wright schooched across and whispered to me of ways to bring magic to my garden. Wouldn’t have to spend a penny, she said, or not many, she assured me - just develop a relationship with the Devas. And I felt relieved, more help coming in all directions. Then a Mrs Margaretta Jolly shared letters from Women Welders of the Second World War and we all sat around and laughed some more. Then Decca Mitford and Tove Jansson looked at me firmly in the eye and said Woman, if not now, when? For God’s sake when? And I nodded my head and said: I know.

This got, a Ms Caitlin Matthews a little feisty.

For Gods sake Laura, forget about impossible ideals - remember Marion Woodman! Leave your father’s house! And, Reclaim the Daimin lover within. And I said, you know what: I am so ready to do that. But think I just need to tell the guys, because they’re sensitive beings as well.

And so I said to the guys, don’t take it personally - it’s just, I’m trying to be a woman you see.

You see, for so long I’ve looked to incredible men for inspiration, but women like me, if we’re really to sink into our bodies & reclaim the very awesome sense of humour and naughtiness and inherent rebelliousness that is the female spirit: dear gentleman, out of my bedroom you go.

-

But why? Why send the men down to the basement and why bring the women upstairs?

Well, I can’t say why why.

Only that: having done this I have a spring clean kinda feeling in my step.

Mr. Murakami, I love your writing and I want to live like you but that’s probably never going to happen. I’m a woman, a mother, and I had a completely different childhood which gave me a different sense of self entirely and so on, and also a different brain to you - so I think maybe it’s time I take you out of my bedroom

And if my eyes fall on a book, which is to think of that book and all that it’s about, instead of Mr Erich Fromm sharing with me his views on why we’re all so scared of freedom, I want to be urged onto life by the words of Dervla Murphy who is going for freedom in a way that makes your heart pound and your spirit soar. Yes! Go woman! Go!

Because here’s the thing:

My bedroom is my inner sanctum. It’s my sanctuary. My favourite room in a home where pretty much every room I feel is my favourite room, except my bedroom truly is.

Whoever I spend time with in my room, has me at my my open and tender and receptive.

And so, as I seek to slow down, to really live from a truer and kinder and more humorous sense of what my life is about, I feel if I am to seek wise counsel - let it be from the other women. Let those books be the ones that shape me…

So there’s that. No more men in my bedroom.

With much love,

Laura x

PS Happy Valentines.

“One the whole is divided, the parts need names.”

Chapter 32 of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu.

Dearest all,

I’d like to share with you, how I consciously work with the ‘slender threads’ in my life, in order to gain clarity on where I next want to go - in this specific instance, with Book 3, as my novel, Shelta’s Way awaits its line edit with my wonderful editor, from the couldn’t-do-without Cornerstones!

So, the other day, after dropping my son off at school, I am sitting in my white Fiat Panda with its red ears and I remembered how the previous day, the following old LP of a record of Schubert’s had caught my eye, whilst I was looking for books, with no particular book in mind, i.e. an open mind, in The Amnesty International 2nd hand-book shop here in Brighton.

Because I am in this liminal place of not being able to find one song I want to listen to on the playlist I always listen to, I thought, okay, well maybe that’s the universe telling me Schubert’s a good place to start. In other words, just follow the signs. I.e., well, in Amnesty International the other day, Schubert, (Schumann) stuck out and so okay, I’ll listen to Schubert…

And because my memory, is my memory, and “life has a good sense of humour,” and quirks always end up working out for you, I misremembered Schumann, and thought it had been Schubert). So, I select some Schubert, knowing I am searching for something else, not yet sure what that something else is, and as the rain falls around me, and the sky above me is grey and the traffic is stand-still, I get this wonderful opportunity to just sit and be and listen…

As I do, I think: wow, this is a little like Tai Chi.

In that it’s the whole that matters… thinking of a page I had randomly opened to, on a book I’d recently picked up from Snoopers Paradise, a treasure trove of obscure, arcane and awesome books, here in Brighton: The Tai Chi Journey by John Lash.

“Only when the Oneness is lost does the need for names and categories arise. That is why I do not like to teach my students the names of each of the 108 moves in the Tai Chi Chuan. I do not want them thinking in terms of the 108 separate movements. In Tai Chi there is only one move. When the student perceives this unity they are able to flow between the movements without stopping and thus their movements are more fluid and harmonious…”

It struck me that in the same way, you don’t listen to Schubert, or any piece of classical music, for each singular key, if a piano piece, or only the violin, or some other instrument - i.e. it would be perhaps very strange to try and only listen to one key and make that one key the most important, but instead, for how each unique part is actually apart of a larger whole. In that there’s a kind of ecosystem within the orchestra, a co-existence that creates the music we want to hear and listen to.

_

The Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki Roshi wrote a book, Zen Mind, Beginners Mind: Informal Talks on Zen meditation & Pratice which I thought of it as I listened to the music…

Beginners mind is a genuine blessing. It means I can listen to classical piano music in a state of blissful ignorance, aka openeness. If I like a piece of music… I like a piece of music. If I don’t, I don’t.

Certainly, at this stage, of wondering what my next book will be about, if there is anything that will help me, it’s beginners mind. I have no idea what form my book will be in. I have no idea what I’m listening for, only that I’m listening.

Because when you know, you know and you’re off; hound on the trail of a fox except without the horrible bit at the end. Just the joy and the head thrown back and the dog howl sent up to the skies where you’re just in the unknown and figuring it out and it’s just splendid.

I have an image in my mind - I won’t share. Simply because parts of me are superstitious, and Ernest Hemingway said if you talk about it you lose it. So, some things need to be held close, kept private and so on. 

As it is, Schubert isn’t my kind of music.

So I search for other classical composers, Bach, Debussy for example, but can’t find what I’m looking for. Then I Google composers whose ‘work speaks to the wholeness of the universe’ (what I care about) and I get some names, and go for the first: the Estonian composer, Arvo Pärt.

So I look up his music on Spotify and the first that comes up is Spiegel im Spiegel and that’s when I find what I’m looking for.

The whole thing took under 10mins.

-

And has anything actually occurred?

Well, on one level our human lives are about sense-making, as many wonderful people speak to. Anyone who is creating, at whatever level, child at play, a woman like me seeking to live out her dreams and write another novel, or a top top famous, renowned artist, a similar process is at work: there is the person, and then there is information and then, what that person makes of the information and how they offer it back up to their world.

For me, in this land called: well, where exactly am I as I look for clarity about what my next book is about, I now have some cool clues:

1. A visual image of what I want to speak to, via a video I found online the other day - where someone is doing exactly the very thing I wish to express;

2. A piece of music that speaks to the profound tenderness I want to evoke in this book - that I never would have come across had I not followed the very tiny, subtle, so quiet little inner senses leading me to where I next need to go to;

3. And by the time, I’ve written this post, life will also have brought me a quote that speaks exactly to the spirit in which I want to embody when I begin writing this book.

In other words:

Now I have some things to go on that my brain can pull up each time I get lost. The image of the video, a piece of music and a quote that encapsulates where I want to go.
All of which. can play on repeat, (school runs), look at, (when home), and think of (I've written the quote down in a few places I look regularly), every time I forget, or need reminding.

In this way, life is not only speaking to us, but providing us with such good companions along the way.

For it is true, on one level, look I am a writer who self-published her first book. I don’t know if I will even find an agent for my 2nd book, and I am beginning my 3rd book not even knowing if I will ever find a readership for the books and stories I write! Even so, there is such a tenderness to all of this. The more I learn to listen to life, the more I am aware of an almost unbearable exquisiteness to the feeling quality of life. You know when you really love someone, it’s very similar to that. You don’t even, or can’t even, quite express it, but you know it…And you keep on trusting it. And as my mother told me when I was a child, the more you trust your intuition, the stronger it becomes. And just look at the word - our inner tuition. Waiting to guide us, to where we next might go…

And the key to being able to feel it, experience it, is to listen for it.

And I write that as a partially deaf woman who wears hearing aids… the listening happens within… with one’s body… with ones inner being… this is where conversations happen that determine the shape of our lives.

With much love,

Laura x

"Spooky action at a distance."

Albert Eistein, on entanglement.

A local 13th or 14th century church I visit most weeks here in Brighton with my dogs, Aslan & Tara. Just to sit & be. There’s a table at the back, of second books and the other day these where the following books I brought back home:

Some for my son I thought he might enjoy and 3 for me. Most likely, books to open randomly and explore here and there, rather then read from beginning to the end. The payment system is you leave money in a hole in the wall, £1 per book. So I’ve started to leave £20 every now and again, knowing I will always find a book here or there.

_

Hello dearest all,

It’s been a little longer then I had planned, since I last sent out a blog, so a wee update:

First things first: my novel - Shelta’s Way… is a little closer to being on its way, as just this morning, I’ve sent it off for a line edit with my wonderful editor at Cornerstones…

After, I danced a little jig, had a bit of a chat with a family friend who’s staying. Tried to fix something that wouldn’t be fixed, and then had about a one or two minute meditation to refocus, and now here I am writing this.

Anyway, lets get off and talk about books…

If we can consider that there are books that will shape us and books that won’t, what’s the thing that makes the difference?

For some, there’s an obvious answer: the quality of the book. But of course, that’s way off the mark.

For me, it’s what we bring to each book we read that determines how we will receive it. And says perhaps why some books speak to us, and some do not. In the same way you cannot get on with everybody, at least I don’t think so, and retain a basic sense of authentic self, (altho, obviously I am a hermit and a Capricorn, and so on and so on), but some books that come to us and seem to share wisdom that holds us in deep fascination and others might hear of what we’re reading and sort of eye roll, ah, right, how… oh yes, is that the next bus?

In this way, a book that is shaping me -The People Named The Chippewa: Narrative Histories by Gerald Vizenor feels like a steady friend but the kind of friend that whilst you 1000% get, others don’t necessarily want to hang out with. However, on account of quite how well we know each other - and here we might even talk of karma, or fate, there being this sort of invisible knowing that exists between us we can’t but name, but feels as if we’ve met before, - rather then always have to behave as I do with other books, I.e. at least with the expectation when we meet that I will read them from the beginning to end, with these kinds of books, we start on any page, on any day, at any time.

Then there are the super sexy, fun, rock’n’rollers who appear out of nowhere - Dan Brown’s The Secret of Secrets for example which I read a few weeks ago after my uncle Johnny mentioned in a message that he was reading it & I challenged him to read one of my all time favourite books (be warned: I shall repeat this phrase: all time favourite several times during this newsletter), Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King.

(When my copy of Brown’s book arrived, I fell into a sort of heated obsession with it, and consumed it over a weekend, very much the absent mother as I did so).

As you can see from my copy, when I get into a book, I do two things: make small markers on the pages where there is something I either want to return to, or remember, and, write all over it.

_

As for if the book shaped me, it’s more that I had a lot of fun reading it, and I love the way Brown weaves in the current world into his book, with Musk, Neurolink etc all being mentioned. I.e. the great quest for the singularity - which everyone obviously has called a conspiracy theory for as long as anyone has been talking about it, but Waterstones and W.H. Smith simply call books you can buy if you want to. I also enjoyed the very fond way that he has made real people in his life, some of his favourite characters - i.e. his editor and his agent. And all the resources mentioned, actually as I write a book I ordered on account of it being mentioned in the novel, has just arrived. Istak' Bentov’s Stalking The Wild Pendulm: On The Mechanics of Consciousness.

Yet, for whatever rush and adrenalin I felt reading Brown’s book, when the energy calmed once again, I find that here I am, me and my self, gently plodding along, towards the next book that will come our way, expand my view, and teach me something new. Which is to say, whilst the tech world tries to convince us that the singularity is our world’s greatest leap, ah come on… my heart will always whisper to me, haven’t indigenous communities, (and pagans being our indigenous communities - yes plural), and all the great sages, teachers and mystics always known something far more truthful? I mean, instead of Musk we have Hyptia, in 415 AD, trying to point to the unity of all things.

The Impact…

Which is to say that it’s been about 2 weeks since I finished the book and can I say I’ve reflected on it at all? Not really. The fun of the book is that I can connect with my uncle and go into all sorts of conspiracy theories attached to the book, and also see him in one of my all time new favourite restaurants which I have only just discovered when having dinner there recently to celebrate a friend most dear to me. But for me it doesn’t touch on any deeper truth then Vizenor’s book speaks to, in The People Named The Chippewa: Narrative Histories.

And now moving on…

One book that I have really struggled to make sense of my own reaction to over the last few weeks, is really to do with the author. Who, I’ll be honest, just makes my teeth grate and all that. Mainly because he comes across as a tortured man and if there’s a lesson that my life has taught me, it’s that there’s no one more adept at torturing then tortured men themselves. As such, this other side of 40, I kind of run for the hills, or underground bunkers, or really anywhere that I can go to, to be as far away from them as I can. But unfortunately, I had committed to reading this author, and so I forced myself to read as much as I could, before the longing to be with the books that I feel really are shaping me grew so much, that I put the books down and said - there, enough. No more.

Which is to say, that the writing of Karl Ove Knausgård came back into my life recently, by way of a genuine note that sparked my interest, because it comes from a Substack that’s becoming one of my all time favourite places to go. Okay, here is a woman I respect and enjoy her point of view sharing an interesting insight about an author whose book My Struggle, I honestly struggled with - one of those books you go to after reading a review (maybe why I don’t read reviews anymore), where everyone from authors like Zadie Smith waxed lyrical about the way he writes, that it was exquisite and amazing and come on and join the party! And even tho I’m a Capricorn and don’t like parties, I sort of wanted to be included and join this party, and so, a decade after first coming across him, I asked for a recommendation and then ordered both: Morning Star and In The Land of The Cyclops.

(Okay, I am being a bit sour here, Knausgård did say something at the of the video shared on a note, by the wonderful whose Substack I encourage you to check out, as she’s creating a special corner on the internet called: Where Really Good Conversations Happen and it’s a lot of fun to hang out, and anyway, this video was a BBC short about Knausgård and at the end, he shares that he writes for the the joy of creating which is him at his best and most simple and true. And this is the thing with Knausgård, he says things and I think yes, and then I go onto read things and feel no.

Now, there is the possibility that maybe Knausgård’s writing can’t shape me, because I am, in the areas he speaks to, already shaped…

Which is to say, I find myself tired of a world where men can behave like - actually I don’t have a word for it. But you now, men who are a way in their work and applauded and then to the people - normally women - who love them, they pour all their self-loathing and scorn on and then back out into world, they sort of shrug and look bewildered and say, oh, but I am toughest on my self.

Oh puh-lease.

I have a theory that because men have been so unmanned over the last - well, where do you start really - when we created a culture where civilised man killed men of the land perhaps? I mean obviously that’s a big thing to say and I could say more, but I think there is more or less consensus that many men in our modern world, feel adrift from being men. That when someone like Knausgård comes along, everyone gets frothy because the violence he speaks to, the frustration and all of that, so many men feel but don’t want to speak to, because the trouble they’ll receive having done so, just ain’t worth it. So he’s a sort of poster boy for discontented men and of course lots of women love and adore and appreciate his writing. I guess, that’s just not me.

Which is frustrating, because in places, his writing is sublime.

“The sudden thought that the boys were asleep in their bds inside the house behind me while the darkness descended on the sea was so pleasant and peaceful that I would let it go at first, but tried instead to sustain it and pin down what was good about it.”

And you sort of think: oh yes! Because here’s the things - Knausgård does get it: the immensity of life, the transience… the agonies of being human… and the opening pages of Morning Star I was so excited. Him at his gentle, water lapping at the edge of the pebbles best. And then you turn the page, and he sort of gazumps you with his Linda-Tove hating and you just want to go, Oh Karl, why the big old face?

And I guess, this is what I bring to the books I read. Having lived through certain circumstances, I don’t need to be reminded of them in the books I read. Knausgård writes that he hates intimacy and he scorns the domestic ineptitude of his wife - yet, at least not in any of the writing I’ve come across - he never seems to be curious about what it is to be a woman who loves a man who loathes the very thing so many of us women love. Because to deny a woman affection and warmth and loving, is a cruel thing. Of course it’s a totally socially acceptable cruelty, especially when the man is “one of the most celebrated authors of our time.”

So, I find myself unmoved by his writing. If anything, wishing Ursula Le Guin and A.A.Gill were around and could turn their eye to his work - I’d be so curious to know what they say.

_

Le Guin once wrote in criticism of Spielberg (now I am going on memory and have just gone through my books of hers, and can’t find the quote, but will look again later and update this then) and essentially she had issue with the way the director was, in her mind, taking what is sacred and making it commercial. Giving it a bish and a bosh.

And I can’t but think of her words, or at least my memories interpretation of her words, as I read Knausgård too. He has taken what is holy, - a glimmer, a moment that befell him when he was young on a plane which he shares in one of the essays in the Cyclops books - and he sort of has a knack for making that which is the every-day tinged with a kind of sordidness, in that everything gets eventually twisted up in his own self-loathing; a poison which spreads across his page and pretty much always lands on Linda.

It’s not that I dislike his books, I just would rather focus on people and spaces and objects and works of art that point to al thats possible in humanity - and also hint, where we may have gone wrong. I love to learn when I read, and with Knausgård and I know this will be oh-god-what-an-arrogant-woman kind of sentence for some, but I just don’t ever come away from anything he has said having feel that great expanse of sky opening when you’re on new terrain and in the land called: I’m Learning.

Which is to say, in some spots, I plainly disagree with him and reject the way he reduces things as if they are certain. This is Knausgård at his dullest which brings all sorts face-to-the-table-angst moments, of oh why can’t I see what others see? which is when he is opining. Which he can for pages. Where he is best, is when he’s suddenly pulling up a scene from an every-day moment and you think, well Dylan Thomas would like this, wouldn’t he?

Except, unlike Thomas, I don’t think Knausgård seems capable of maintaining that space. He is in such urgency to either be opining about something again, or bishing and boshing about Linda.

Also, and look this could just be my own intellectual ineptitude, but sometimes I am not entirely sure that Knausgård is actually saying anything. Yes, he is bringing together words to form sentences to form paragraphs, but what is it that the chap is actually pointing to? As such I have re-read chunks of his writing again and again and again. Sort of I want to get this, others get this, but its like a kind of cognitive dissonance settles over my brain and instead, I come away thinking, strange…

For example:

“The place where differences are created is itself without difference, and to the human the undifferentiated is the biggest threat of all: in that space is obliterated.”

Well, firstly, he’s wrong.

For many people, the undifferentiated is the whole.

Or perhaps for others, the unknown.

Or even, the next adventure, or holiday for example.

As such, the above reads to me less as some powerfully insightful ending to an essay, (potentially about a photographer called Cindy Sherman, altho no doubt something far more impressive), and more an insight into the mind of a man who abhors the horrors threatened by intimacy.

“Obliteration,” is a rather violent word, which could also be replaced with a word like dissolved… or expanded… dissolved perhaps speaking too perilously close to the idea of entanglements. And unless you’re a mushroom, apparently they’re not very heathy kind of relationships, (especially if you’re someone called Linda). But I can’t but think of Linda, as I read her ex husband’s work.

In an interview with The Guardian she said in regard to how she was portrayed:

“I have made my peace with the books now but in reality I was so angry about what he wrote,” she says. “As a writer, I respect his right to use his own life as material and, objectively, I thought the books were very good. But on a personal level I was really angry about the way he looked at me. His view of me was so limited, he saw only what he wanted to see. It was as if he didn’t know me at all. Reading it felt like suffering a loss. Now I just wonder if maybe he’s one of these male writers that can’t really write about women.”

-

Of course, to tell myself that only some books that I read shape me and others do not, is both ignorance and arrogance - an entanglement if you were, that’s most likely to spawn denial. Just as when/if you might come to do psychedelics, or at least in the olden days when you were young and wild and open to all things, or at least most things, and the shutters and shut down places in your brain exploded open, and memories and dreams appeared, and death became but a place you could access whilst living, or in other words, as Dan Brown points to in The Secret of Secrets, our brain shuts out what it thinks will overwhelm; psychedelics open it all up. So just because we can tell ourselves, some things shape me; some things don’t. It doesn’t mean it has anything to do with the way life works.

In his exquisitely fine-tuned book, What I Talk About When I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Murakami explains that the thing with writing is you want to allow your consciousness to be able to bring out at the right time, whatever it needs from your life. However for it to do that, it can’t be used elsewhere. With this in mind, alongside his writing of books, he will do translations - which require a different part of his thinking apparatus. But other then this, he runs and he writes his novels. And in this way, all memories stored in those drawers within the larger storage cabinet of our brains, are preserved - until needed.

So it is, that with Mr. Knausgård, of course his writing has got into me, more then I’d like it to, sure. But it has. Has it shaped me? Well, unable to use the kind of mind control that Mr. Wim Hoff uses to expel all traces of salmonella from his system, after scientist injected him with it, of course it is possible, but I think unprobable.

In this way, as we swirl through this chaotic universe, unknowingly or knowingly entangled, despite whatever control we try to exert on our world, whatever comes our way will, to some degree or not, shape us. And so, as I tell my kids - just be really conscious of what you bring your way.

And now to end - a prayer I offer: that should any Linda’s appear in my own world, when it comes to it, may I treat them with more Grace.

With much love,

Laura x

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Dearest All,

The Eastern Mystics countered against definition of ‘‘all that is.” Whereas in our culture, amidst the gold-rush that is the world of online courses, and the legacy of our obsession with branding, us humans are generally advised to get ahead and do the exact opposite. In order to be known for something and therefore sell something, so the wisdom goes, the marketplace must be able to distinguish you from everything else.

Now, we may not all be rebels but there is no need to conform. Especially, when choosing our next book to read.

But Laura! What on earth does all that is, the Tao that can be named is not the Tao have to do with the book I read whilst tucked up in bed?

To which I can only reply: but dearest - what on earth does all that is NOT have to do with the way you choose your books?

This newsletter is here to champion the mysterious ways our universe works - something we can safely explore via our reading habits. The formula for allowing mystery into your life - aka wonder, joy & adventure - is just the same as choosing your next book.

The same elements exist: a willingness not to know, and a trust in the unknown. A readiness for inner emptiness which leads to more intimacy with the field all around us that we can more easily tune into when we’re not distracted by the thoughts inside our head.

In this manner, for one person a book is a book. To another, no less magic then the energy that surrounds a waterfall, or the scenes we create when we’re manifesting with the universe, something we wish to come to be.

Being led by this invisible force to the next book I need to go, is akin to saying to my heart: where next?

It’s the same force that the late Jungian author Robert Johnson refers to as an “invisible thread,” (the problem with it being invisible is that oftentimes we ignore it).

And why books can be so powerful, is that whilst the thoughts in our heads can override the insights that arise, we can find ourselves, via the very detached nature we hold with books - it’s outside of ourselves - more able to follow, or at least consider the wisdom we come across in a book.

-

For about 5 weeks now, maybe a bit more, my lungs have struggled, I’ve had chest infections and my rhinitis is ker-bloomin’and my throat wheezing like Old Man Marley’s chains in one of his nightmares Dickens story of meet your ghosts and live a better life.

All of this has come about as a result of perimenopause coming about last year, and with it ga-zonking my body’s ability to drop into deep sleep, as it seems to have a soft spot for progesterone which is exactly what we need to go deep when we sleep. Blood tests reveal mine is rather depleted.

Then, because we had an event looming over the end of last year, and which loomed over the holidays, my breathing and sleep were, it’s fair to say far from optimal! And as ardour my immune system sort of packed up shop.

Now, we’re on the other side of the event. The cloud has passed. Tho the after effects of this period, mean that my body has some symptoms that are sort of, tapping me on the shoulder saying well look, you’re going to have to deal with us now.

Now, last month, one of my dearest girlfriends and I decided to do a January detox, in order to look like we did when we were 20. Cough: feel more like ourselves.

Right, I said, when we decided to do this. Keto for me. Colonics. Green Juices. 8 hours of exercise a day! No cacao sweets. No this, no that.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

“Sweet Nothings,” said my daughter.

Which is exactly what we’ve called our Whatsapp Group for the detox…

But then, as my mother always says, “life is what happens to you when you’re busy making plans.”

So, with the chest infections, arose a pattern of asthma, which I more or less thought had been resolved, but has reared up these past 3 weeks. So that even with my ventolin inhaler, unless I stayed inside, I couldn’t stop the wheezing.

Anyway, this is all to say, no pilates. No exercise, or really slow shuffles of walks with the dogs. Not even basic exercise at home, because when asthma takes over you have the energy of, well no energy. Stair walking becomes an effort. Sit ups, sun salutations, or plank: forget it.

Through this period, in the back of my mind, over these weeks is a book I read about 2 years ago, when the whole family went somewhere east or north of London, I forget exactly where, and Jack and I camped at a hotel for 5 days whilst Eve did a dance work-shop and Tom returned to London for work. It was a funny place, and not much to do, so I seem to remember a lot of time hanging out at the hotel. And the book I picked up at the local book-shop was James Nestor’s Breathe. A book I loved reading and then even tho I followed some of the advice, as soon as we returned to life, I forgot most of it.

Now, like a ghost appearing, this book has been hovering in the back of my mind, this last month. It was the good advice my unconscious was trying to direct me to, and mostly, I just boshed it away.

And then I am at a hyperbaric oxygen session the other day, to try and help my lungs with the asthma, and I am having my third session, except this time, because I have another chest infection, my right ear can’t equalise in the chamber, and after 5 mins I am in pain and have to honk the horn you have inside to ask the owner to come and let me out.

But I have about 5 mins whilst inside to read.

And what do I read?

Well, before I went in, just outside the chamber are a couple of stacks of books. In the middle of which, is Nestor’s book…

(I’d spied it the first time I’d come, but ignored it. This time tho, I took it with me).

Inside the chamber, I asked life, as I do when I don’t want to read a book from the beginning to the end, to help me open the book on the page I ‘need to read.’ a mixture of just profound trust really that that’s exactly what will happen. 99 times out of 80, it does.

And the page I open up to - and it’s kind of helpful, as writing this my amazon delivery has just arrived, and through the letterbox has come my own copy of Nestor’s book!

Essentially, what I read in those 5 minutes turns out to be very very helpful.

Nestor talks about nasal collapse.

And that’s enough really, for me to do the research - and indeed just do the bloody work I need to to get well - when I get out of the hyperbaric chamber.

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As it often is, the ‘bloody work’ is work I already know I need to do. I just don’t want to do it. Mummy, can’t I have a nicer party to go to?

Back in my early 20’s, when my asthma was playing up in embarrassing ways, determined to not have to use ventolin, nor the steroids the doctors wanted me to use for my asthma, I found out about the Buteyoko Method and booked a private session at my then Ladbroke grove, first floor apartment.

From there, I learnt about the breathing method that Nestor mentions in his book. Essentially, exhale through your nose, and then after a few seconds, take both fingers to block both nostrils and gently carry on blowing and shake your head from side to side.

Us asthmatics: we hyperventilate. Overbreathe. And we struggle to dispel carbon dioxide. Also: we’re mouth breathers. Which Nestor writes passionately about is terrible for our health! Mouth breathing can be connected to everything from high blood pressure, insomnia, ADHD symptoms in children, & yes, asthma.

This method was pretty much magic. And also, the second tip: only breathe thorugh your nostrils. Which I began. And also sleeping with tape over my mouth at night. This is now a health craze, so ‘everybody does it.’ But I can assure you, that over 20 years ago I knew no one who did this, and at first, alarmed that I was somehow doing something potentially risky, I would always wake in the middle of the night and rip off the tape!

_

So, the other day, I start doing Buteyoko breathing again. Not as I had begun doing, in a deteriorated method over the years, but as it’s meant to be done. I started being more mindful of how I actually breathe in the day: yup, with me mouth hanging open more often then I’d like to admit.

And then I started to observe why. well, my nostrils. One of which my left, doesn’t seem to work at all. and because I’ve had rhinitis since I was 14 years old, I am more or less consistently bunged up.

A few years ago, I went to a doctor in london for a check up, as a cryoglossal cyst had appeared on my throat. When he tried to put the camera down my nose, it was so damn painful, he sprayed it with cocaine instead.

“Your nostrils are incredibly narrow,” he said. “I don’t always use this with clients, but with you I have to. This spray will numb the pain.”

And it did.

Not having done any cocaine since I was in my early 20’s, I must confess to hugely enjoying the after effects.

“I wonder if in all the earnestness of the inner work,” I whatsapped a girlfriend after, “I am somehow missing the point.” Given that whatever worries I had felt before the spray, had very much dissolved away, I suspect I have!

Anyway, for a few days now, inspired by Nestor’s wonderful book, I’ve been exploring how my narrow nostrils are impacting my breathing. Mouths are for eating as they say, nostrils for breathing. But if you can’t breathe through your nostrils, you’re going to need to gulp in some air from your mouth. And I can’t but think of my father, and also my mother’s father and eldest brother all of whom had asthma - what if something so simple as exploring is their nostrils were too narrow and not working properly, might have made a difference to the chronic asthma that affected their lives?

So I’ve been doing some home experiments, to create more space in my nasal passages.

Using small facial silicon cupping things I have, I’ve also been experimenting - and this is me, a mother-writer experimenting, so for God’s sake don’t copy! As all I know, you shouldn’t, but suffice to say, when those little sucking things go just to the left of the left side of my nostril, my God, I can breathe…

The wheezing stops.

And I feel calmer…

Fighting for your breath is quite tiring.

The whole physiology of asthma is constricted, shoulders up to the neck. It’s all angst. Whereas the physiology of those who know that their body can do what it wants to do: inhale oxygen, expel carbon dioxide is so very very different.

And yes, I could have gone to a doctor. They would probably have prescribed antibiotics for the chest infection.

And I may well seek out a specialist for the narrowed nasal passages, tho for now the impacts I’ve noticed on my whole sense of well-being the last 48 hours has been so transformative, I’m going to stick with the figuring out process a little while longer.

and I think this relationship we can have with our books, is really a fundamental relationship that we can have with our lives. One that doesn’t constrict our sense of who we are; but instead, expands and opens up our sense of profound wonder at the way the universe works.

With much love,

Laura x

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PS: in case you’re interested:

On James Nestor’s instagram he recommends this practice for all those who spend too much time sitting.

I am also doing twice daily neti pot rinses and bought this one from Amazon here.

And these are the silicon face cupping I’ve been using.

I am also going to have fascia release massages - and we have an AMAZING woman, Nicola here in Brighton who comes to our home. So I am going to ask her to work on my face and also neck in particular to explore natural ways of opening up the nostrils. (PS: had this yesterday and my lord - pls go have a fascia release massage from the what person you can find. I had a 2 hour treatment yesterday and it’s a game changer. Healing: is a community process!)

Thanks for reading The Way Books Shape Us! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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What others have to say about this newsletter:

“Thank you so much for writing your newsletter…I wanted to try and convey how much I relate to what you’re writing about in the newsletters.” Alex MH.

“Laura’s willingness to keep an open heart has…inspired me to be more full in the expression of my heart, in ways she probably doesn’t even know! Whenever we share our writing or our song, our dance or art, whenever we honour the creative fire that is, always burning within, it will leave a mark for people to follow; for their hearts in turn to recognise.”Charlotte H.

“I want to tattoo these anecdotes all over me!! All the blocks are familiar and I know them only too well but the anecdotes are fresh and new and heart led and I LOVE them. I will be practicing them all. So thank you sister.” Chessy T-W.

“Your newsletter cracked me wide open… so deeply mirrors the threads in my life that are pulling me this way and that, and is such a contagious beacon of light to that part of me that knows…” Eliza P.

“It’s quite rare that I come across writing that has a particular resonance that pulls me in… So far whatever I have read from you has had that effect.” Elspeth D.

“I don’t know what it is, but you’re writing so corresponds with recent episodes or experiences I’m going through. I really look forward to your writing Laura… I never feel quite so alone in my feelings after reading one of your emails. Thank you.” Natasha D.

“Simply beautiful!” Julia M.

Eve with her books.

_

Dearest all,

It will never cease to amaze me, the way life guides you towards exactly where you need to go! And how often that’s books!

Last week, I started reading Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Then, the following morning I took a visit to Waterstones here in Brighton with my daughter Eve, as she’d asked to go so that she could pick up some books with the money she’d received as a gift from family members over Christmas.

Whilst waiting for her, sitting on the steps that separate the adult fiction (where she now gets her books!) section to the new arrivals non-fiction section, I started reading How to Be Free: A Proven Guide to Escaping Life’s Hidden Prisons, by Shaka Senghor.

Searching.

_

And it kind of blew me away, as only hours previously, under my duvet covers I’d begun reading a book that I’ve had for years, and often wondered: when am I going to read you? Until just one day, it’s the exact book I want to read and so pick it up and my god, the way Achebe writes. the way he gets inside the head of his characters and gives you people, imperfect, whole people. I think in a way it’s the gift Ursula Le Guinn had. The way she conjured this whole world in Earthsea and Ged - one of the all time greatest characters ever created. It’s a narrative voice that reminds me of the way Anne Cameron wrote from the tempo, rhythm and intonation of the women she speaks for in Daughters Of Copper Woman, (my most gifted books to friends and also women I meet - literally - who for me, feel to carry an essence of Copper Woman!) It’s a tremendous book, which I picked up from my all time favourite 2nd-hand book shop here in Brighton for arcane, obscure and just life-changing books: Snoopers Paradise.

What I mean to say is that Achebe, by the nature of the way he speaks through his words chosen to bring you right into the story, it’s very powerful. That I’m drawn to two books within 24 hours of each other - Everything Falls Apart is a story which involves the killing, or the “sacrifice” of an innocent young boy, as ordered by the oracle of the clan and indeed not hidden from the reader that was inevitable as soon as we meet the young boy. And yet the detail that spins the story is how one character involves himself in the killing and from there, things start to fall apart - that offer up imperfect men who have played a hand in the killing of another?

Because at Waterstones, looking at all the books I haven’t read, the one that draws me in, that I’ve heard nothing previously about, is the true story of a man, Shaka Senghor, who himself shot and killed another man, and then spent 19 years in jail. 7 of which were spent in solitary confinement. It’s the seeming randomness that keeps me carrying on trusting that I will always find the right book to read that is going to share some extraordinary wisdom for me, the exact I either need in that moment, or offers me a nugget of wisdom in a larger exploration I am currently figuring out.

So, I am very ignorant about Achebe as a person, and also his other books, I have a vague sense about him, but not enough to write about. Other then to say, I think essentially this knowing that history is often told by the victors perspective, not those who have been vanquished, or colonised. And so essentially, the power of narrative - that he is somehow speaking to this.

Which is what made me pick up the other book I bought: Decolonizing Language and Other Revolutionary Ideas by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. Because it strikes me, and is an idea my heroine in Shelta’s Way, my novel offers up: that in the west, we lack the language for freedom.

Pre Christian times had it… and then it got banished, banned, swept away. If I wasn’t such a lazy person, I’d be learning Irish, which speaks to so much beauty and the interplay of relationship and being in a way that English can’t - becuase it comes from a mish mosh of influences, none of which are steeped in a worldview that says we are but alive on a universe both an yes, inherent ingredient is emptiness, shunyata as the Buddhists say, and what transforms that ingredient is relationship. When us humans infuse a thing with meaning, it’s whole nature has fundamentally changed. And hence the magic of story - to weave through the generaitons, meaning made from our ancestors and offered as a gift to our descendents. Here was a time adn this is what these humans did…

In other words, if us humans can be free to creat our own meaning - what if we had governments and systems that priotised this: how do we create cultures and systems that honour the birthright of all humans to both know their own true nature, so that they can ocme to express all the beauty in their heart, which myst in some way be channeled from teh universe?

but of course, we are all so trapped and weighed down and oh god that sounds romantic, but come on Laura, get practical…

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Senghor explains the seed behind the writing of this book:

 “I was free before I even got out of prison. I was actually free before I even knew I was getting out of prison. I was also incarcerated before I even went in. Because I had bought into a narrative that my life could only ever have very limited outcomes.”

So, really there probably is not a human on the planet who on some level is not trying to prise their self from the institutions and systems to which we are all to some degree, enmeshed.

And whilst privilege is having the resources to determine the nature, shape and texture and even aesthetics of our day, what so speaks to me about Senghor’s writing, is the main point so many people drowning in privilege can be put out to discover: for one can have everything they want, and be as miserable as a cat in the rain; the meaning of their lives has somehow become dislocated from that which brings them joy.

So, for all those who love learning to dance in the rain, below a few suggestions of some books & songs about freedom:

1. No Escape: The True Story of China’s Genocide on The Ughurs by Nury Turkel.

   I must be honest - I still have 2 chapters to read of this book which I read last summer. It literally broke my heart reading this book, and I found it so very tough. Nury writes with such candour and courage and devotion about how the Chinese are systematically deleting every aspect of self-hood to break the sprit of the Ughur population and also shows, how corporations and those of us who buy from these corporations - Nike, H&M, Gap, even Patagonia for example - are complicated in allowing slave labour to exist. There is so much more to write, but I am only writing briefly here now, for how can we love freedom if we are not to educate ourselves about all those who are truly not free?

2. Waiting To Be Arrested At Night - A Uyghur Poet’s Memoir of China’s Genocide by Tahir Hamut Izgil.

3. Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451. This book doesn’t get as mentioned at all really, in comparison to Animal Farm and 1984, but it’s the one that’s in my heart and really, when everyone gets devotional about A.I. I just think of Bradbury and all those on the other side of the river, clutching their books, and think to myself: with you guys, I’d rather be! If freedom speaks to your soul-spirit, do check out this book. Written in the 50’s.

4. One of my favourite quotes:

   Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

   “Freedom isn’t a gift given, but a choice made.” Ursula Le Guinn.

5. Another quote, is from a Janis Jopin song:

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    Freedom is when you have nothing left to lose. 

   I see it a little differently: in that freedom is when you have everything to gain.

6. This beautiful song by Nina Simone: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free.

7. Last quote, by Shaka Senghor:

 “True freedom doesn't come without the work…You’re aways going to be confronted with the work. You’re always going to have a thing to challenge you…”

Sorry for the slightly rushed nature of this. I am aware all my pieces sound as if I’m writing whilst running into my car before a school run, computer in one hand as I type, a dog in the other, and probably because I have never figured out the packing thing, about 23 bags of some nature on my head, carrying books of course as well. I.e. i write as if I am always in a rush.

I think this imperfection will probably always be a part of how I write. With all woeful grammer etc.

And another note: what are your favourite books, songs, quotes, interviews about freedom? Pls do recommend and mention any below in the comments, as I am always on the look out for something else to read!

Much love,

Laura xx

PS:

Books Eve is reading this week: (my daughter Eve has said I can share photos of her on this blog. My son Jack however has asked not to have his photos “on social media.” And so I need to chat with him to see if he is happy for his reading list to be shared!)

Eve’s list: (I can’t find the other two books she bought - so will update this when she’s back from school!)

• Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen. I asked if this was for school and she said no, but it had been mentioned and she was curious. She has started the book, and finds “Mrs. Bennet hilarious.”

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

• Lord of The Flies by William Golding.

My life has been one of those that has been sincerely blessed by kind men. Kind men are those men I’d say have a connection to their hearts, and can look at a woman and see her as her own person, her own thoughts and so on, and who know too the magic of simply sharing their pressence with her, can be so much.

It’s even true to say, that in my life, sometimes more than the kindness of women, I’ve known the kindness of men. Altho, being a woman, it will always be the kindness of women that’s longed for. For the simple reason, that I am a a woman, and no matter how kind a man can be, the kindness of men comes with a certain kind of shelf-life. Whereas a woman’s kindness, is more enduring.

Enduring, because it’s rooted in a knowing. A knowing that says: I know what it is to live and navigate systems created by men, and what it means to be a woman in our world trying to express herself within these systems.

_

I’ve always taught my children that a person with an open heart is a kind person. That mean-mindedness, or spiritedness simply says a person’s heart is closed. (And yes, that we can all be mean and come on look at mum and she was mean the other day, and so no one is innocent of this potential. A hand can be used to caress… or slap; to draw an image that inspires, or one that hurts…)

And also, that women who tend to be more open-spirted to other women know who they are. They’ve looked inside, have come to know and work with their own shadows and foibles, as they know what makes them glow. They’ve made peace with both who they are and who they are not. Whereas a woman who has not done this ‘work,’ around her is a fragile carapace made up of what can be spoken to and what cannot. And to the degree that that woman has social influence, all I can say is ai ai yi, these women if their hearts can only permit a certain reality, can be as cruel as the night can be dark.

Of course, what really brings magic to any setting are men and women with both kind hearts and courageous spirits. And the other day, whilst waiting for my daughter in the car, I was scrolling Substack and came across this beautiful post by which summed up the essence of a relationship dynamic that most speaks to my soul:

“The West has produced astonishing things. Miserere is one of them.

For centuries, this setting of Psalm 51 by Gregorio Allegri was guarded and sung only during Holy Week in the Sistine Chapel. It was not concert music. It belonged to a place, a season, and a people ordered toward repentance and heaven.

What it embodies is worth recovering. Male and female voices working together in distinct, complementary parts that form a single unity. Sacred music set apart from the common, not because the common is bad, but because holiness requires consecration. Everything arranged so that beauty lifts the soul upward.”

“…complementary parts that form a single unity.” Oh that sets my heart alight!

Now, I say all of this as I currently find myself reading 2 books, Lara: The Untold Love Story That Inspired Doctor Zhivago by Anna Pasternak and Raise Your Soul: A Personal History of Resistance by Yanis Varoufakis which very much continue this theme in the books I find myself drawn to recently, of imperfect humans, in imperfect times, who nonetheless devote their lives to what they believe in.

(Pasternak’s book, I picked up last year from our local Oxfam, 2nd hand book-shop for £3.99 which has been waiting for the right moment to be read, and Varoufakis book in December last month, in the wonderful City Books, in Hove).

However, whereas Decca Mitford and Dervla Murphy’s stories both humbled me tremendously and just opened my heart up, I finished Pasternak’s book last night with something of a fury in my being.

That Boris was brave is not in question - for his country, his “motherland,” for his friends, fellow authors who were losing their lives for their profession. For the book he would spend 20 years crafting. But for the women he loved - it seemed for them more a curse to be loved by Boris then a blessing.

Pasternak’s great love was his art.

He grew up with a gifted father and a gifted mother and theirs was a genuine love. A shared appreciation of each other and the gifts they both brought to their lives. Boris’s father was an artist, who illustrated Tolstoy’s books - a collaboration that was both intense and also devoted. His mother, though she drew in her passion to focus on motherhood, an established and accomplished pianist.

However, when Boris came to choose his own life-partners, he couldn’t seem to see the women in his life as anything other then women he must have in that moment, as a result of intense infatuations which meant he didn’t mind if they were already married, and even if their husbands were his best friends - as was the case with Zinaida Nikolaevna Neuhaus, who would become his second wife - and serve as the inspiration for Yury’s wife, Tonya Gromeko in Dr. Zhivago.

The poet Rilke suggested that:

“The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. 

A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”

-
Something that Boris was not able to allow - for the woman he claimed to love beyond all others, Olga Vsevolodovna Ivinskaya and who would inspire him to create Lara, the heroine of his book - her needs so very much took a back seat to his own, if at all even allowed in the same vehicle.

Which is to say, what if Boris had been able to encourage his lover, the woman he loved to be her own person? And indeed, perhaps too, find a man who would give her the very status - marriage - (Which Boris did not want to give for then he would have had to relinquish the very domesticity that his second wife offered him, which gave him the freedom to focus on his writing) - which most probably would have saved both her, and her daughter, from being sent to the gulags for a second time after Pasternak died.

Due to his global celebrity, and a bizarre amnesty delivered by Stalin which declared that Pasternak was a “cloud dweller,” and therefore immune to the fate of other writers, the Russian government couldn’t arrest Pasternak, and so instead they took his lover to the gulags - twice, in punishment of Boris daring to (in Olga’s words):

“… (break) the rules of the age in which we live; the rule that requires you to ignore realities. And he had usurped the right, claimed by our rulers for themselves alone, to have an opinion, to speak and think one’s thoughts.”

But was Olga free to speak and think her own?

Not once, in all her years in the labour camps did she ever betray the man she loved. When he died, she was arrested again, and, two weeks later, this time the KGB “came for her daughter Irina.” Olga was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment, in a labour camp in Siberia of which she served 3.5 years of her sentence, released when she was 52. Her daughter served 2 years.

Boris’s great-neice, Anna, the author of the book writes that if Boris had made Olga his wife, she would never have been so vulnerable to the authorities making an example of her.

And of course, in his life Boris made attempts to look out for Olga. But not enough, and not in enough acknowledgment of the realities and vulnerabilities that she faced as a result of being Boris Pasternak’s lover. And is not to love a person also to want for them to truly know what freedom is?

And there is Varoufakis’s book, Raise Your Soul.

Dedicated:

“For the fearless women who turn whispers into soul-raising roars.”*

*How I think of those who subscribe to this newsletter by the way :)

Where you have a man who is both very clear in his mission, in his life-work, and also acutely aware of how this impacts the women in his life, namely his wife.

Writing about the impact his work has had on his wife, the artist Danaë

“…everyone who looked at Danaë saw a privileged woman upon whom society was bestowing more opportunities. But anyone who cared to look more carefully would have noticed something else: a deepening loneliness caused by the realisation that privileges were bought at the expense of the majority of women. Yorgo (Varoufakis’s father) had felt the double burden of being the only man who knew this about Anna (Varoufakis’s mother), and of contributing to her isolation through his politics. It was the same with me. I was the only man who knew of Danaë’s isolation from her privileged social milieu (who had all distanced themselves from Danaë on account of Varoufakis’s political work), and I was contributing to it through my political choices.”

As he goes on to write:

 “Stalin would have been proud of those who silently and efficiently attempted to purge her. Through gritted teeth, Danaë carried on.” 

And she did. 

She carried on crafting a life that was hers. Loyal to her husband, even to her children when they were forced to choose between her husband and their friends who were distancing themselves from the couple, she carried on, crafting her own life. Something Olga was never permitted to do. Boris swept her up and folded her into his life. Focusing on his needs.

No relationship is perfect, and I don’t know either person, so who knows what it’s like in private, but at least, what’s being offered here, is a glimmer that hints that there’s a strong chance that both people here are afforded an equal right to experience love and freedom and expression in their lives.

Theirs is a shared destiny, where their love of their country, Greece and also ‘doing the right thing,’ in their eyes, they can meet more fully - the fall out of that - because they are both making the choice to do so.

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Anna Pasternak writes so clearly and beautifully about her great-uncles search for truth. Ultimate and also of his time. To some extent the relationships in his life fell too the way side, because as his own son commented, “you don’t stand in the way of genius.”

But as is more understood now, rarely does genius stand on its own. And also, someone precious to me said recently, “Laura when you care for everyone, you care for no one.” But how much do mothers know this already? For is not the same true that when a person externalises their focus what of the fate of those that person is said to love the most?

With Pasternak, his wife tended to all domestic affairs so he could keep his mind on his novel, and his lover allowed him to use every aspect of their relationship and time to serve the creation of the book - she typed up the manuscript, conversed with him about the novel, the characters and indeed was the inspiration for Lara. She allowed herself to be used. That was the compliment.

Whereas with Varoufakis you have a sense of him seeking out his own expression of honouring the truth and freedom he seeks in his life and for others, via a truer relationship with the women in his life. And indeed an honouring of how they have shaped him.

And so, a few more books about courageous women. I hope they inspire you as much as they have me.

And do believe in yourself dear mothers… our times, like all times require women with courageous spirits. AndyYou never know when the time will come to “roar.” And, as every mother innately understands - there are many ways to roar. For whilst the lion knows but one - the loudest - motherhood has taught us the loudest way is not always the most powerful.

With much love,

Laura xx

What others have to say about this newsletter:

“Thank you so much for writing your newsletter…I wanted to try and convey how much I relate to what you’re writing about in the newsletters.” Alex MH.

“Laura’s willingness to keep an open heart has…inspired me to be more full in the expression of my heart, in ways she probably doesn’t even know! Whenever we share our writing or our song, our dance or art, whenever we honour the creative fire that is, always burning within, it will leave a mark for people to follow; for their hearts in turn to recognise.” Charlotte H.

“I want to tattoo these anecdotes all over me!! All the blocks are familiar and I know them only too well but the anecdotes are fresh and new and heart led and I LOVE them. I will be practicing them all. So thank you sister.” Chessy T-W.

“Your newsletter cracked me wide open… so deeply mirrors the threads in my life that are pulling me this way and that, and is such a contagious beacon of light to that part of me that knows…” Eliza P.

“It’s quite rare that I come across writing that has a particular resonance that pulls me in… So far whatever I have read from you has had that effect.” Elspeth D.

“I don’t know what it is, but you’re writing so corresponds with recent episodes or experiences I’m going through. I really look forward to your writing Laura… I never feel quite so alone in my feelings after reading one of your emails. Thank you.” Natasha D.

“Simply beautiful!” Julia M.

Some graffitti out and about in Brighton.

_

To begin: I’m going to present you with 3 strands…

The 1st: Recently, I’ve been coming across more and more articles on Substack speaking to Armageddon… the end of systems as we know them. Nothing can be done apparently; the inevitable is coming.

And now the 2nd strand: A few years ago, I was part of an online cohort who met for a year, for twice monthly zooms to explore our relationship to Source. Towards the end of the year, one of the men there, in response to something that had been suggested, replied, with great respect for the essence of what was being held in the group, that a few of us “whole-heatedly rejected” a notion being put forward. (Which I can’t even remember what it was!)

I got an absurd amount of joy from that phrase. Both from the way it was presented - in a fun-spirited, warm-hearted manner - and also, the hearing of it. And I find myself remembering that moment every-time I come across an article - no matter how beautifully written, or sensitively phrased, - that speaks to the inevitability of where we are as a culture. In other words, it ain’t looking good Pinocchio…

And here’s the 3rd: Earlier this week, Tom took me to Listening To The Land, an event in Oxford celebrating the “reciprocal relationship” us humans have with the land. This amazing day, was a sold out event, and what had been created was so special. It was just unbelievably lovely to be there.

When we arrived in the city, Tom was talking to the gentleman, who was manning the reception desk of the hotel where we were parking the car, and in this space, my eyes scanned the books stacked neatly behind him. Old-school books, traditionally bound, in that smart red burgundy colour that you hardly see anymore. One more or less immediately caught my attention. Because it’s not just the land that’s speaking to us; books so hanker for a better conversation with us too…

_

Now lets weave these 3 strands together!

- I spent a lot of 2025 disheartened. Here, on the new frontier that is 2026, I cannot but admit to feeling on the other side. The single reason being a sense of agency and safety in my home and for the people I care about, where previously for many years, this has not been the case.

Stephen Covey of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People encourages readers to focus on “their circle of influence.” The more you do so, the wider this becomes. And so I begin 2026 with a sense of hope in my heart. A sense that life’s not perfect, but if we dare to face the challenges that come our way in our lives, to look those fears in the eyes, to be willing to learn both the worst aspects about us and also the best, we begin to to create a life that feels a joy to be living. Because joy comes from the meaning we make and the freedom we feel in our hearts.

In other words, the way we decide to meet our personal challenges has a direct relationship to how we feel about the larger challenges our collective feels. And motherhood gives us so many moments to meet our fears! And so we have all these direct experiences of having committed to trying our best in this area of our life, and so a sense that we can apply everything we learnt from these experience to every other area of our life as well.

As such: to this supposed collective end-of-times feel that is being written about, I reject, whole-heartedly this notion that this is a given.

As a wonderful man, Patrick Macmanaway said at Listening To The Land this week, we are “manifesting agents,” and the work is to be in a state of “grace,” so that we can co-create our destiny with the Divine… or life, or God, or whatever the word is that you give to this principle… this energy… this force.

I think the work of getting clear who are real self is matters, because in these times, which are all times in that leaders have always been corruptible, chaos has always been a part of life, destitution and hell have been around for a while as well, it matters so much that we can create lives that are deeply meaningful to us, as this is when we are at our most effective.

This is why my theme tune for this year, and probably beyond, is the below - and carried out in the exact manner really:]

-
And now, the 2nd strand!…

Which is to say, that as I get clearer on this in my self, I feel life respond. And so as I stood there, in the reception area of the hotel, I asked the gentleman if I might have a look at one particular book.

“No, that one, to the left of the book by Hemingway,” and he pulled it out and passed it to me.

And below, is the book he passed:

And below are the two pages that ‘spoke to me:’

When a book is speaking to me, I will hold it for a moment - a second or two - close my eyes, tune in to myself, the area around my solar plexus which is kind of like a radio frequency for me, i,e, the area I dial in, and i wait for a very tiny little twitch, or sort of movement in this area. And then I open the page at random and read whrever first my eyes fall. 99% of the time this method works, occasionally, as with this book, I need to search more for where I feel a sense of aliveness. That’s all the information I am looking for. Us humans: are our own makers of meaning that passes our way…

Above, is the 2nd book this week that has ‘spoken to me.’

I picked it up in one of my power spots here in Brighton, a 14th century church I visit most weeks, and has a book section at the back, where you leave some money and can take a book home. The heading made me smile, just because I was so deep in thinking about this idea of Armageddon being mooted around in various articles I have come across, and so I couldn’t but buy it!

_

So why do I share this? because I think that just as with our land, it’s fair to say that life is speaking to us. And so for me these books, as obscure or too woo woo tho they may look, the message I read when I looked at them: is carry on searching for true self dear human! carry on! Life, reality as we know is a co-created event between the divine and us humans. Don’t take other people’s given as your own, keep growing your heart, keep tuning in… keep manifesting the reality that you want to see… So the question is always, oh golly, life is talking: but are we listening?

And look, I say this to you as a woman who wears hearing aids. So I understand that listening can be bloody tricky! Nonetheless when there is so much trying to interact with us, to be in relationship with us, not simply in this one-way, western way of relating which is conducted in a formal, look let’s not beat around the bush, I’m in control here and you are this thing, whether a person, place or thing and the question is: what can I extract from you? What will you give me? Life doesnt seem to speak like that! Instead, with beautiful reciprocity. The waves roll in because of gravitational pull yes sure, but how can we be so sure not also because of pure pleasure? And of the joy to be witnessed?

So maybe one of the reasons that I’m so deaf, is that I’m so distracted having so many wonderful conversations elsewhere…

On any given day, my children are always asking to be seen just for who they are, not who I think they are - but to truly see them, I need to listen, by being quiet and observing them, witnessing them, not so much to their words, but the feeling behind their words. The vibe around them. The way they are, they the way they’re not… and in these moments, I have the possibility to hear what they’re trying to say.

Our dogs too; they love to be included in a good conversation. Yesterday, Aslan, seeing how happy I was dancing in my kitchen started leaping about with me like a hare on his hind legs his tail wagging, and that smile he does. And we danced together, he and I. (Until he head-banged me and we had to stop).

And our home, ours we call Tatamala: houses that dream so that humans can dream, and every night we include our home in our grateful fire and appreciation circle that I do with the children before bed. Or at the moment, really I do because I sense I buggered it up by sharing it as a way to be helpful on this blog and ever since I have, my kids haven’t wanted to do it!! (Mr. Hemingway said, “If you talk about it, you lose it,” and I think of this often as I attempt to grow this blog!!) Altho, when friends are at ours, after supper sometimes we will do a Appreciation Circle together & then my kids will join in. We did it for my birthday the other day, and it’s one way to make my heart go soft! Because it’s always an awkward thing sometimes, to express appreciation and in a genuine way towards each other but once someone goes for it, everyone wants to take part and the kids, they listen, really listen to what’s being said and you can feel it; the air around you becomes sacred. So, for us, our home is a living being. And that the more we treat our home as one, the more this is what it becomes - via the relationship and the way we interact with it. A sacred place that found us, just as much as found our home. And books, dear wonderful books. And our nervous system is speaking to us - my God, our inner systems: if only we would focus on what they’re trying to say, as much as we do our obsession with external ones systems… So, at least from where I am looking, we live in a deeply alive, vibrantly so, universe.

The only question is, are we willing to listen to what it wants to say?

With much love,

keep trusting yourself… & keep exploring and fine-tuning who that self really is as well,

Laura xx

PS: If you feel to share this, pls do. I have a novel I am looking for an agent for, and they all ask about your audience, so I am so grateful for those who share with a girl-friend.

Some more graffiti I saw this week:

What others have to say about this newsletter:

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For some, New Years Eve is the main event; for me, New Years Day is the bit I get excited about. And this year, Tom, eve, Jack and I went to Ireland, Co. Kerry and stayed in a hotel, that we’re already planning to return to…

To celebrate New Years Day, we headed to this waterfall that we’d discovered a few days previous - we had 5 days in Ireland and each member of the family was allotted a day each to plan as they liked - returning to the waterfall, which Tom had taken us to on his day, had been my request!

The trip was everything you wish for when you go away: we returned closer as a family, spirits renewed, inspired & excited about the year ahead, with some memories in our hearts that I shall be keeping as precious.

One of our favourite discoveries was a local restaurant that Tom found in the nearby town, Kenmare, No.35 where we shared some meals where the reverie caused by the food was just so good, that other then to reach out our forks and ask if we could try the other person’s food, the only sound you could hear from our table was hhmmmm, mmmmm, ahhhh!

It brings pretty epic joy to my heart to be at this stage where the fussy eating is melting away, (well with my children, at least with other people’s cooking…) and my family can sit at a table where someone is eating lamb ragu (even that they’re ordering lamb ragu!!) whilst another person, is having a paradisical moment eating black sole and another, is communing with the most insanely sublime pasta that’s ever been created.

It was just lovely. The sharing, the joy, the can we come back tomorrow? And the manager was just perfect. He met each person, adult or child in the same way when you entered the restaurant. And because Kenmare is a town where everyone knows everyone, you can ask questions like:

“Do you know anyone who might have some knowledge about Irish history?”

“Oh yes, Lucy down at the silk shop, or have you met John at the book-shop yet?”

It was a restaurant where people were on dates, there with their baby, or families with their kids like us, or even grown-ups being grown ups, eating food that’s good.

We loved it so much, we returned 3 times!

As we did a local book-shop, just across the road from No.35, ‘John’s’ bookshop we called it, on account of the owner who we enjoyed some good conversations with. Tom mostly on our first two trips, with me too distracted by all the books to remember my manners… The actual book-shop wasn’t huge, but the scope of the books was mammoth… (Actually reminded me of another super awesome book-shop, where the size of the space seemed to sharpen the instincts of whoever curated the space, the book-shop at Kigali airport, in Rwanda), which I still think of because it was one of those spaces where you enter and are soon lost in wonder, as you realise you’ve found Shangri-La.

John is the kind of person who lives and breathes books, so my family felt we’d all found kin. A poet, who on our third trip there, he and I shared a good chat about publishing and writing and making a living from writing and he pointed me towards a brilliant book that I shall forever be grateful for, that opened my eyes on so much.

I actually had to borrow some money from eve on our third trip, as I was empty and when we came to pay for the books, I was about 8 euroes short, and so went to put one back.

“No,” John insisted. “Take it.”

“No way,” I said.

And then we went back and to and I asked if he would still be open at 5pm as Tom would be back then and would be able to pay the rest. John explained he had to leave on the dot.

“I can put the money through the door,” I said.

“I very much hope you won’t,” he said with a smile; he was trying to give me a gift - but I felt it wasn’t right to accept. “Please, take it.” He said, his Irish kindness to my British awkwardness.

As it was, Tom arrived around 4.45pm and went over to pay my debts. He said after that John had refused the money for himself. Instead, he donated it to a charity close to his heart…

This kind of act touches my heart enormously. In part because John and I had already discussed the finances around trying to make a living from writing, and also, selling books, and this act of generosity it just makes my heart feel tender. I can write on account of the fact that I am in a partnership with a man who looks after us. Most writers don’t have this privilege.

Pretty much what my family and I look like most of the time around a table.

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As for the book that John introduced me to…

…I read history at Trinity Dublin, and honestly was a very arrogant and lazy student; an attitude rooted in sheer ignorance and one that I’m ashamed to have carried. I use to roll my eyes at how embittered the Irish professors seemed towards the English in my lectures because I had no idea - nothing in my British education had taught me how us Brits have behaved towards Ireland - so, I genuinely loved this book as I wanted to learn more about the Famine years. What really happened?

I especially love learning about San Patricios, an Irish band of soldiers, who formed, after immigrating from Ireland to America during the Famine in 1847, arrived in Boston to a pretty hostile welcome. Unable to secure a job but with the US army who told them, look come fight for us and we’ll give you pay and also citizenship once all is fine and dandy. But the thing is, the people they’re meant to be fighting are the Catholic Mexicans, under the orders of a “Protestant slave-owning commander.” In other words, in spirit, and in experience and history, the Irish find their hearts with the Mexicans, whose land the Americans are pillaging like kids in a sweet shop.

So around 80 Irish soldiers desert (more to follow), the American side and join their brothers, the Mexicans, and even tho they lose, and experience the standard behaviour of all invading countries - rape of local women, the intentional ruin of sacred buildings, the killing of civilians, intimidation, incarceration - the Irish, along with some Scots and even German immigrants formed an artillery force of about 200 soldiers who came to be known as “the San Patricio Battalion, or the Battalion of St. Patrick.”

Another book I picked up from John’s was the autobiography of Dervla Murphy, Wheels on Wheels. My God, if you’re a woman who loves reading about incredible women - read it.

I must be honest: I am a terrible skimmer of books. But recently, books are coming my way where pretty much every sentence has me captured. With Dervla’s book, Tom even commented, “You seem to really like this one!”

The why, is mainly for private reasons, but what I will share is that Dervla’s story genuinely pierced my heart. In fact I can’t think of another woman, whose story and indeed the manner in which she shares her story, has so moved me. It reminded me too, that the who we think of when we think we know a person, is so rarely ever accurate. Especially if they are in the public eye. Previously I thought of Dervla as this intrepid, awesome woman, who took her daughter on these wild travels that most adults wouldn’t even have the guts to do. And when I read her travel books, which I have come to lately again over the last 6 months, I have felt such a longing for how over protective we have all become of our kids. How in trying to be different to the generation of mothers before us, my generation have sort of lost our sense of humour with parenting. But what Dervla’s book made me appreciate, is how far Dervla had to go to create a life where she could experience the freedom her soul yearned for. And indeed was introduced to her, in a childhood most lonely. I cannot think of another woman I’ve yet learnt about, who lived with more quiet courage and endured so much in the first 30 years of her life in such a strangled way then Dervla Murphy and then the way she chose to then follow her dreams: my God, really, you won’t know the magic till you read it…

A magic, which is part of why I am always so grateful for books and history for, because both remind me: look, perfection is a myth. It really is a kind of cultural paranoia. And if this search for self is something that you’ve been but compelled to go on, as I have in my own life, you can’t but go on it, without a sense of My God: but what propels me!

Yet the more determined you are to carry on in a way that at times only makes sense to you, the more you find aspects of yourself that I don’t have words to even describe.

I do believe the difference of those who are living out their destinies and those who feel unable to, for whatever reasons, the difference is the experience of both love and freedom. And the gift of repression, or pain or loss or whatever it is that impinges a persons truest expression of their own nature, is that hopefully, like Dervla you’re just going to go for it, when that door finally opens, and you sense freedom calling and you say: I’m here.

Just as another incredible woman, Decca Mitford did - whose story, in Kaplan’s biography Troublemaker I learnt about recently too. I knew nothing about Decca, having only been familiar with one of her sister’s Nancy Mitford, via her books which were long ago introduced to me, by my mother. But my god, this book stirred me! Again, just this sense of how much some people carry and you never know. And how lazy and uniformed the judgements we make about others most often are. How they miss out the humanity of a person. And of all the experiences that have shaped them. And that our culture makes no time for, or too little.

And so I found learning about their lives humbling. (If you do read Troublemaker, maybe also get this collection of Jessica Mitford’s letters to read after, which I bought as whilst I agree that Kaplan, the author of Troublemaker, is a “master biographer,” her focus is very much on the details of Decca’s accomplishments and efforts and I felt there was a more tender part of her that I felt curious about, namely in who she was as a mother - and I do think this comes through more in her own letters in a way that really broke open my heart.

As did Ireland…

Like I wrote above: a trip that restored my spirit, as 2025 was a meaty year for our family. And so to discover that waterfall, there was something so colossal abut it. Just being near it, my spirit revived, “It’s a power spot,” I said to Tom. “Do you know what that is?” To which he very kindly listened!

(I got the idea from a Carlos Castenanda book, which spoke about these places in nature that you go to and instantly are revived. And it’s a very personal thing. You don’t so much as find your power spots, as come upon them. And you’ll know if a place is one for you, as you drop into effortless meditation, awareness… they just are so healing. For me, all my power spots have a sense of the pilgrimage about them, in that they always require a certain effort to get to. But I am very grateful to have them, and to have discovered one more!)

Anyway, how to distill a trip and a return home where whole tectonic plates have shifted in my family other then to say, I really do think life is a mystery and all I know is that the more we place our faith and everything in what our hearts care most about, and carry on doing the nitty-gritty, arduous, slow plonking inner-work of really truly understanding who our self is and who our self is not, I do believe and indeed, all I can say is the way I am raising my own children is that this connection to our true self, really is our compass for life. For beyond the flotsam and jetsam we all acquire in our personalities and external facing selves, is an inner mechanism, a part of us that is always there that is our connection to the universe; a relationship so integral to being human! Something that matters, not only in ‘these times,’ but in all times. For this connection is what has always been most sacred (for some of us), and so whatever and whoever helps you revive that, they too are sacred. (hence Cosmic Clive above who we shared some special moments with…)

SO, with many wishes to each of you - my dear subscribers: you mean so much to me! - and all those in your life who you hold as sacred - “we’re all walking each other home,” and that home: lets allow it to be a mystery that’s thousands of years in the unfolding…

With much love,

Laura x

Some Photos:

eve & I.

“Cosmic Clive.”

A fish n chips lake-side cafe Tom found, suggested to him by the chap sitting next to him on the plane over to Ireland!

The water was as still as it looks here…

I can’t quite bring to words what it does to my soul to see my children being free in nature.

A walk I went off solo, heading towards that mountain. Freedom singing in my heart!

The view from our bedroom.

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A photo from another trip to Ireland, earlier in 2025, to Connemara with my daughter eve. We visited a wool museum - and never made it past the incredible book-shop at the entrance…

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Hello…

I write this sitting beside a wild river, whose waters run as black as Guinness… It’s just turned 7a.m. and my family are still asleep. I’ve been awake since 4 a.m. determined to finish the edits for my manuscript for my novel, Shelta’s Way - as I prepare to send out the manuscript to a second round of agents in the new year.

It feels special to be finishing the novel here in Shelta’s land - Ireland - in the home of her hero Tom Crean, here in Co. Kerry.

After working on edits suggested and also inspired by my last editor, I have just had a soul-lift over the experience of trying to find your first agent from Phoebe Morgan’s beautiful post about being rejected by agents here.

Which is to say, I’ve been enjoying this edit as much as if I’ve been forced to convince Keir Starmer that humans are beautiful and brave, and our hearts want healing for us, whilst standing in the nude under florescent lighting (he’s wearing a blind-fold), whilst having to do an aerobic workout. Which is to say, I love this book, but my God, has this edit been painful!

But I am so close, and even though I have been attempting to use my partner, Tom, as an excuse for why I can’t get up in the morning to write whilst we’re here - turns out he is nothing but supportive - I must admit to a tremble of excitement as I write to you. (Which might also have something to do with the two cups of strong coffee I’ve just had on an empty stomach, breakfast being 30mins away at this beautiful hotel we’re staying at)!

Anyway, my family have now woken, hugs and kisses by each of them and the caffeine shakes mean I need to go and get some food…

I will be back with posts as usual from the week of the 12th, but till then, here’s another excerpt from my first book Travels With My Daughter: An Experience of Motherhood

Even tho I wrote this about the first years of my daughter eve’s life, the spirit it speaks to - that I seek to spend time with my kids - is still very much the heart of what being a mum means to me. And it’s dedicated to all mothers for whom your love language is time…

And also, the way of Artemis really: that so much magic happens when we are outside…

With much love,

Laura x

Travel Redefined

Sometimes, we don’t get far. At other times, our front door doesn’t even open. The back door does, though, out of which we go, into our garden; home to a re-wilding project that’s ravaging earnestly. Out here, amidst our unmown lawn, roses and wild orchids are emerging from nowhere, along with plumes of ragwort, tufts of ferns, dandelions and the white fluffy plant, that you blow at to set the fairies free.

At the far end of the garden stands our threshold to the rest of the world: nettles about five feet high that are currently acting as a fortress to a thick wad of blackberry bushes. The flies have got to the juiciest first. We don’t complain too loudly.

It’s out here that, most days, my daughter Evie and I, along with our dog Bongo, who’s come to live with us now that we’ve more to offer him then a graveyard in Kilburn, come. Although sometimes, the neurotic mother in me hurls herself fretfully into focus.

“We must go somewhere!” she’ll screech. “We must do something!” she’ll shrill. And so, dog and daughter are herded into the car, and off we go to the Land of Something. Other times, though, another part of me whispers back: But what’s wrong with here? Everyone’s content with where they are…

Occasionally, this truth sinks in, causing the breathless pulse of paranoia to subside, if only for an afternoon. Which leaves the three of us free to walk off in search of adventures. Like out here in our garden, under the wide-open blue, or rather, grey wind-swept sky.

Of course, life isn’t a constant, so I don’t always feel at ease in our home environment. Sometimes, the tiredness from another night struggling to sleep blows me so off centre that all I want is to be utterly alone: a mother bear in her cave.

Grrrr.

Generally, however, I like hanging out with my daughter. So that for the last five years most of my days have been spent with her.

For the most part, this has involved us doing something that to the uninitiated, might look like nothing, but to us: is something. Possibly this has been a mistake. Who knows, maybe when I’m eighty years old, I’ll look back, sigh and speak of the regret I have of all the time Evie and I spent with one another.

But I don’t think so. And I can only hope that when my daughter turns her gaze back to look at the shape of her life, she doesn’t say, Oh, I wish Mama had hung out with me less. But rather: we had a good innings, Mum and I.

And even though, more often than not, our travels involve a climate that’s soul-crushingly British, these days, I look at my passport with its blank pages, and less and less do I feel a mourning for that. Or at least, it’s not inaccurate to say, I mourn them less. Because something else is blooming that has the potential to be even more enticing then the extraordinary joy that comes with foreign travel. I don’t need to stand in any passport queues to access it, or fill in any visas to earn my right for it. Journeying to it requires very little in fact.

I just need to remember.

And because these first five years of motherhood have been about settling and making peace –maybe most of all, with myself – it’s become an irony of my life that I’m growing up, travelling not the contours of this globe, but the inner terrain of my heart.

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Some reader reviews of Travels:

“Literally couldn’t put it down - really honest and interesting and different!!!” Aita, Dorset, UK

“If there is one word I could use to describe Laura’s writing it would be magic. She transports you to another world, another realm where even the simplest of everyday things become enchanted. Her writing makes you look at the world in wonder & awe.” Alex, Australia.

“Thank you for sharing your inspiring thoughts & vulnerability in your experience of motherhood!” Inny, Spain

“If you love a rhythmic read then this is your book, about so much more than motherhood: crossing all the boundaries of public personas and private processes laid bare.” Yvonne, London.

“A deeply authentic, raw & poetic teaching of how the path of motherhood

is discovered.” Dee, Surrey.

“How do you measure the gift of a person writing from their heart, revealing so much for all to see? The first half raced by almost like a roller coaster with moments of real beauty and clarity and wisdom that were almost jaw dropping.” Beatrice, Devon.

If you’d like to buy your copy, or have a friend who’s a first time mother, you can buy your copy here.

My daughter eve, our dog Aslan and I last Christmas at my mother’s: one year we are going to a family en masse Christmas card!

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Dearest all,

Over the holidays, I am pausing from releasing fresh posts, as I spend time with family, and New Years in Ireland. A trip I’m very excited about, but won’t allow myself to write about - yet! So, the next few posts, will be extracts from Travels which I very much hope you’ll enjoy. (Pls do consider gifting a copy, which you can buy from Amazon, to a friend. I do think it makes a good gift for a new mother if you have a friend who’s recently given birth)!

For me, this year has been a lot about sense-making, and also, moving through self doubt. Some real healing too in an adventure I’ve had a life-long affection and devotion to: the search for self, as a way of figuring out our lives, in a way that brings about a lot of healing and also, just lots of fun & wonderful adventures.

In little moments of quiet confidence about why these searches and figurings out matter, I have this sense that on a collective level, having a rooted sense of self is so important. Not only does it bring healing to our families, in a really cool, osmosis kind of way, but I actually think this is a process, a birth-right that all humans should (I don’t normally like should as a word, nor as a concept, but here, it has its place!) at least have the option to explore.

Of course this is pure utopia.

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The other day, I came across a definition of success from Napoleon Hill that I want to share with you:

“Success is the progressive realisation of an ideal.”

I love this so much. Because no one, but our own internal sense of things can tell us what is an ideal to each of us… this can’t be forced onto you. It can’t be presented to you. It can’t be intoned by a friend, parent, beloved, or teacher. And definitely not educated into you, altho, if freedom tis what stirs your soul, then my god, are there some brave people out there, whose books we can read, whose paintings we can look into whose work will speak to this, and schools and passionate teachers can share these works with us. So we can be exposed to ideas that can resonate with us. But what really sparks ones intrinsic motivation, is a deeply personal, private process. And I wish it were one that we all realised, innately was ours to explore. And I do not believe it a selfish thing, I believe innately who us humans are are beings, expressions of nature, a part of nature, who care deeply about co-existing in thriving ecosystems with a myriad cohort of diverse beings around us.

The heart of this newsletter is all about making sense of an ideal that matters to me that I share with my children. Indeed, It’s an ideal I am making sense of every-day of my life. That I make so many mistakes figuring out, and probably waste too much time being in doubt over!

If you derive some entertainment and pleasure from reading the words I write, and maybe too, a greater sense of your own capacity to trust what matters most to you because some woman called Laura Fraser is out there figuring out her best life, and maybe you can trust yourself a bit more too, well, that be a rock n roll thing…

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I am always being inspired by those who lived and shared their own adventures. Because it gives me greater confidence to trust my own. The Dervla Murphy’s, Decca Mitford’s, Anna Sewell’s, Elizabeth Barret Browning and Elizabeth Gaskill’s of our world who lived with such a spirit of fun and adventure. My God, I am so thankful to learn about them!

Suffice to say, one thing 2025 has taught me is that life, no matter what the longevity lot say, is not about striving for perfection, nor control over. Damn that. It is about some form of courage, and all the love we can tune into, and muster and offer combined. Love for something larger then our singular life, yet to, which our singular life is so deeply connected to.

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Anyway, I write, on a day when I am hanging with my daughter, about to eat lunch, and then going out into the wild for a walk with our dogs. I am staying at my mother’s which means no house-work, and no cooking for 3 days, and I am very very happy and thankful about that.

As I am to each of you for subscribing. You are each a blessing to me. I can’t tell you how much delight I feel when I see a new subscriber. I literally call out to my children: another person has subscribed! And they ask, how many now mum? And I tell them: 10,002! (Ha,… not yet!!)

Anyway, keep trusting yourselves dear mothers: it may be the most revolutionary thing we yet do :)

With love,

Laura xxx

Oh yes! I forgot… the dedication from Travels!

Dedication

To all those for whom shards of glass have lodged inside your hearts.

May we learn and then relearn again, every single day, how to dislodge what seems so permanent. Because only then can we learn to hold what has seemed so wounding in our open palms, as our feet carry us in a direction most mysterious. A place where we discover a campfire roaring, around which others have been gathering since time immemorial, and are already dancing... And where, close by, the animals’ hooves and paws have smoothed down what was once rough, so that now it is smooth.

It’s a fire around which women of all ages and backgrounds are standing, the heat of which is so strong that it can be felt by those not yet ready, or able, to make the walk. Like a memory calling them, from not so far away after all…

Here, on this earth, is where we place these shards of glass.

Hans Christian Anderson wrote of Gerda and Kai and the pixies up high who relished in destroying all that they couldn’t understand. The thing that the pixies didn’t realise, was that the power that beat in Gerda’s heart was more powerful then any mischief they could create. And so, similarily whatever dramas have played out in each of our lives, when we learn to remove what has lodged inside our hearts, and place those shards of glass side by side, those of others, it’s exactly then, when we see those jagged edges which we once feared so much, fitting effortlessly into one another, so that what’s slowly forming is a new mirror.

One that we are learning to peer into to discover…we are never as alone as we feel we are.

To all those who are learning to peer into the mirror: this book is for you.

If you’d like to buy your copy, you can here.

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