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See how unbothered these girls are, moseying to their milking! Traffic jam, Azores-style … five minutes for me, while driving, to unhurry myself as they shamble – confident, casual – along a known road to the ritual afternoon appointment. If there were previous lives, I would have been a cat – cold water, ugh! If…
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I’ve been an apprentice writer for nine-tenths of my life. That may leave you guessing! What I will let slip is, aged nine, modelling myself on LM Montgomery’s teenage aspiring author Anne Shirley, I took on board ‘Write what you know’ – likely a Mark Twain maxim. I didn’t find this easy. Despite loving the…
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Speaking another language you haven’t grown up with strikes me as revealing an individual flair – like painting, or ballet. I’m not convinced that anyone can do it. In particular, I’m hesitant that I can do it. Nevertheless, this month I ventured, with my husband – who was blissfully sanguine about it! – to join…
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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…