If you could make your pet understand one thing, what would it be?
This is entirely the wrong question. I am completely at ease with my dogs not always fully understanding me. They however struggle with my failure to always understand them. Anything from the length of a cuddle or the temperature that a cup of tea should be served at, is misconstrued by their humans.
A canine huff is loaded with disappointment, and sometimes they just have to throw themselves to the floor to recover from the latest example of human incompetence.
Our purchase of a camper van was one of the biggest examples of our failure to correctly understand the way of their world. We thought the van would extend adventures. They see it as a bed with constantly changing backdrops to their thinking and dozing.
Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.
Until this moment I had no idea that my name meant Youthful. It is perhaps a little late to discover such a thing. Sky Father is also mentioned which at least has some form of accuracy as my dad was in the Air Force. But like the sell-by date on perishable food the youthful meaning was lost on me some time ago. Never a popular name, I was gifted the name when it was on a tiny peak.
For most of my life it has been a comfortable enough label. Although my adolescent years were unnecessarily awkward as an acne prone face and a so-called ‘romantic’ name was an easy pairing for ridicule and unkindness.
I have never quite understood the letters that come after a word to help pronounciation in dictionaries. I suppose I should have paid more attention. This somehow makes my name feel rather brutal.
My life in bookshops started in the small market town where I grew up. Hannay in the High Street sold books and had a smell like no other. The smell of other worlds and experiences, the smell of adventure.
By the time I was 10 my bookshop tastes were expanded exponentially, my dad often worked in Cambridge and Dad Day Care involved him leaving me in a bookshop for hours. He knew I would never leave or get into trouble.
At the same age I discovered Hay-on-Wye and streets filled with second -hand book shops. In my fantasy book life I frequented Shakespeare and Co in Paris, more than a bookshop. I was taken there by Hemingway and F. Scott-Fitzgerald. In my dreams!
Daunts Books in Marylebone High Street is my favourite book shop building and probably the one I know best.
So many hours spent in there whilst I was on-call at the Heart Hospital. My friends and family got really well researched book gifts while I worked near there.
But it was a bookshop in the middle of nowhere that ignited my love of bookshops with a side serving of coffee and quirk.
Robbers Roost in Torrey, Utah brought my fantasy book shop to life. A shop that was so much more. Named because the building stands close to a hiding place of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. The bookshop was built as a home in 1976 and is also the home of the Entrada Institute.
Unknown at the time we had chanced on this bookstore soon after it had opened. We were only in Torrey for three days but I visited the bookstore every day and it has forever fueled my imagination of the perfect place to sell books and build a community hub. I would love to work in such a place. The commute is the only thing that stops me.
P.s not all my bookshop hunts have been as life affirming as those mentioned.
We were visiting Athens in October 2016 and had popped into an independent book shop.We bought some gifts. Hours later the book shop was bombed. The one occasion when my dad was wrong. Bookshops are not always safe.
There isn’t a part of my life that isn’t cluttered. Isn’t life meant to be cluttered? As the festive season ebbs away and seasonal trinkets are packed away there is a definite sensation of decluttering but beyond that I quite like clutter. I believe I have clutter under control rather than the other way around so that seems fine. Good clutter is like good food. Life affirming and positive. Bad clutter just needs to be gone.
The trick with clutter, in my opinion, is to keep it constantly under review and tidy, with regular trips to Charity shops and the tip. The same can be said for mental clutter.
I find clutter inspirational and creative but it needs to be under control. Stringent control. Declutter to reclutter. Out with the negative, always, to allow more positive in
I am drawn to Hares, there is an elegance about a hare that a rabbit simply doesn’t have. The elongated body and oversized ears give them an unmistakable profile on the very rare occasions when they are seen out and about. Hares were a popular subject on Christmas cards that we received this year.
Hares are never a common sight in the UK but I grew up in the flat, rural part of Essex with large arable fields all around my home. Traditionally the best time to see hares is in the Spring, when they are looking for love. The best time near us was late August or early September when the harvest had just been done and hares ran across the fields almost unaware that their hidden paths through crops were now fully exposed.
In all the usual ways but oh so much quicker than ever before.
This Victorian clock is on the Cornish side of a local ferry service. I’ve always thought it was quite an inappropriate theme for passengers who had no choice but to squander time in a queue for a ferry.
As long as I get my time differences right I can ask friends in Australia a question and get a message back immediately. This would have taken more than a hundred days when letters travelled by sea. Probably two weeks using airmail and would once have been very expensive by phone.
Communicating online is fast and as effective as the humans that use it. Since communication is one of our most valuable and essential human skills speeding it up must be a good thing. As long as the communication itself is the very best that we can do.
Communicating by writing was always one of my favourite things to do. Blogging is how I reacquaint myself with slow-form writing. Just stringing some words together every day helps me wake my mind up for the day ahead. I think it makes me a better communicator and I better appreciate all that I love about life. The time spent is not squandered.
I have been very lucky and done some great road trips around the world, but I would argue that the most memorable road trips are the mundane ones that we sometimes do every day of our lives. The repetitive unconscious road trips by public transport, or being driven by someone else. The Public Light Bus Service of Hong Kong are perhaps the scariest I have used regularly. They are ramshackle minibuses that are supposed to be speed regulated, but night journeys are done at high-speed with the over-the-speed limit alarm as the constant accompaniment of the journey. Apart from when the bus speeds to a stop to swiftly drop off passengers and their possessions, before hurtling to the next destination. In complete contrast the Number 3 bus from Crystal Palace to Oxford Street hurtles nowhere. But it follows a fabulous 6 mile route from South London through leafy Dulwich and vibrant Brixton to the historic heart of one of the Worlds most diverse cities.
As luck would have it both these memorable road trips coincide in one photograph. Our grand-daughter driving a Number 3 bus in the Dragon Centre. Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong. Sadly we did not catch the Public Light Bus to get there, but we could have.
Walk into the sunset on a cold and sunny day. There were plans for Saturday but then the sun came out after three or more weeks of rain. Plans changed.
If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?
I’m not sure anyone would describe the road in and out of Stonehouse Peninsular as a freeway. Apart from the boy racers, whose noisy car delight is to speed their high-powered and primped vehicles around the circuit of Georgian houses. Or break off to the coast road to disturb the night-time Doggers of Devils Point car park with their squealing tyres and farting exhausts.
As a Conservation Area, I am fairly certain there will never be a billboard. But were there to be one, it would almost certainly be one of those curiously English ones with a polite passive-aggressive message.
Not a physical gift or an experience gift but a word that eloquently replaces ‘pile”.
Over Christmas my Tsundoko grew. This was not intentional. Not only was I gifted some books creating a pleasing Tsunduko of books chosen for me by others. I had a singular book club book that must be read by next week. Two library books borrowed but now extended. There was a third, unplanned Tsunami of books that arrived just before and just after Christmas. My local library has an App where I can order any book I like and join a waiting list. In total 6 books that I would love to read arrived over the festive season. Something had to be done. A prioritise Tsundunku was made and a returns Tsunduku. Some of the waiting list books have been returned and I will rejoin the waiting list for them. Some of them have been 6 months on a waiting list.😭
I piled my newly curated Tsunduku by the sofa. As luck would have it the pile is high enough to comfortably hold a cup of tea within easy reach of a busily reading woman.
Rather late in the day a friend arrived carrying a carrier bag of delayed birthday and Christmas gifts. She viewed my new pile and the cup of tea and said. “Isn’t there a Japanese word for a pile of books”
And just like that the gift of Tsunduko was given. Possibly the greatest and most useful gift of all time.
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