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Flashes of promise – that’s how the change of season is manifesting in the Azores. More rainbows than full-on sun. But swathes of bright yellow oxalis waving from the hedgerows all month; and last week my heart did a double flip over two luminous purple magnolia trees in full bloom – a month ahead of…
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How has January been for you? A wet, and sometimes wildly windy month here in the Azores – though avoiding the extreme storms assaulting mainland Portugal, and my native Britain – I’ve been glad to stay home and enjoy some virtual contact, beginning with my online writing group. This has not been escapism. Hosted by…
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New Year The yearsFall like dry leavesFrom the top-less treeOf eternity.Does it matterThat another leaf has fallen? by Langston Hughes (1901-1967) I shall be glad to be greeting 2026 with people I love and care for. Of the date prompting me to make a small change or two. And also mindful of the Black American…
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If I had three wishes – alas, no lamp or genie! – after “1) Peace in the fraught places of the world, and 2) cures for life-limiting diseases, so we can all of us just grow old and die of natural causes” – I’d squander the third on myself: “Please make me funny!” I’ve always…
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The last time you walked or sat in a forest – what made for that profound peace? A sense of relief, perhaps, the trees being so present, that it’s not all about you? The secret music in the wind’s interplay with the branches and leaves, nature singing, powerful yet intimate? Paul Klee, 20th century Swiss-German…
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I missed the ‘blood moon’. A startling sight, I imagine, in the Azores where light pollution is minimal. But when a friend from the UK messaged me next day to ask how it was for us here, I couldn’t say. Had I not spotted it through the kitchen window, where I usually watch the moonrise…
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Where have I been …? No blog for over six weeks – do I not care? I like what Louise Gluck, American poet and essayist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2020, said: ‘Anyone who writes is a seeker. You look at a blank page and you’re seeking.’ So perhaps I left this…
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‘What do I really want?’ This enduring question of our lives may be the hardest – but answer it we must. Last blog, I urged that ‘the only time we have is now’ – with the wide consequential meaning of ‘seize the decade as well as the day’. It may therefore come as a surprise…
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‘When was the best time of your life, the happiest so far?’ A new acquaintance is throwing a games afternoon one Sunday, and it’s a great icebreaker question. The joke (on me) – I thought we were playing Pictionary. Oh, for a breezy and original answer! Being third in the circle, going anticlockwise, I’m panicking…
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On 25th May 2025, it will be the fifth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. None of us needs to be reminded what happened there. I’m White British. No getting around it. My DNA a mix of, in descending order percentagewise: English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and a pinch each of Swedish and – wow,…