WanderingScribe

La Dolce Vita

2024-04-27T19:12:00.001+00:00

Think I may have to see that there is another way to be.

From blog to book (In the Hands of Angels

2015-02-26T23:11:00.003+00:00

Some time ago, wanting to know how easy or difficult it was to produce an e-book, I started one, putting together all the blog posts that I originally wrote while I was in the car, and that whole time up to me getting a book deal. People often email me, still, asking how a blog becomes a book. Well, this is the story of how mine did.... It is now available on Amazon as a Kindle book.
The title is: In the Hands of Angels

As we sometimes all are....

It was very difficult reading through these again. And it reminded me that the trick is not only to understand your mistakes but to learn the lessons from them too, to make sure we never make the same ones again.

Illusions

2015-01-30T14:43:00.004+00:00

Sometimes it is because we are stupid or uninformed or naieve...but sometimes it is simply expedient to cling to illusions. Today I am badly in need of mine— if that's all they were. Reality can hold off for another day.

Memory lane

2015-01-20T20:07:00.001+00:00

It has been so long since I wrote in this blog. I thought I had finally put it all behind me, but today, emailing an old Headmaster in a school I worked in, reminded me of it all....

A walk on the beach to blow the cobwebs away.

Me, my dog and I....

Rachel Weisz

2015-01-16T13:08:00.011+00:00

I was in Cambridge this morning. It's a place I go quite often with a friend. While he returned books to the University Library I sat in the coffee shop in my favourite bookshop. It has lots of nooks and crannies and, as a single woman, it's easy to sit there alone and not feel that you are taking up a table that several people could sit at. But yesterday there were no free tables. So I sat at a large table with one other older lady sitting at it. I was happy to keep my nose in a book but she struck up a conversation with me, about the book I was reading.

It's such a small world. She used to live in almost the exact spot where I lived in London, and she turned out to be the mother of the actress Rachel Weisz. Rachel Weisz of 'The Constant Gardener', 'About a Boy' etc. fame. She was really lovely, and seemed almost surprised that I knew of her daughter, who has for years now lived in New York. But of course I knew of her, and I saw her several times in the street in Hampstead where I lived when I first moved to London after my Law Society Finals at The College of Law. I was young and full of life then, probably the same age as Rachel, and my childhood was just that childhood, something that happened way back in the past - as whatshisname said 'The past is another country' and I wasn't even sending postcards back there at the time, I was too busy enjoying life.

But speaking to her today, I had been through that whole car thing and homelessness and had written the book, so the childhood issues had come to the fore again. She probably would never have guessed though. We ended up having a long chat. When we got on to books and writing and the things I wanted to do in the future I stalled, because of course I couldn't tell her about the book I had already written. Or maybe I could have done, maybe I should have... Maybe she wouldn't have looked any differently at me, wouldn't have turned away as I fear people will. Maybe now, after all this time, it's time to stop worrying about those things completely, and just be who I am - which is the friendly, respectable, approachable woman who was sitting in the cafe opposite her today, chatting about the times I had seen Rachel Weisz in Southend Green when I lived there: one memorable time standing behind her in a queue in the greengrocer, her with a summer cold and a tick black scarf wrapped multiple times around her neck, with a rosy face and glazed eyes and a nasally voice as she chatted amicably with the greengrocer, who clearly knew her; another time at Belsize Road tube station walking up and down platform in a short skirt and very high heeled shoes. It felt like two different worlds the me I was then and the me I am now since the whole car thing and then writing the book. Wished none of the latter had happened and I was just standing behind Rachel again at the greengrocer's getting an equally friendly smile from him when she left and it was my turn.

Kayaking

2015-01-16T12:44:00.009+00:00

I went kayaking yesterday in Lake Windermere! My first time in a kayak. It was the greatest fun I have had in ages. It reminded me how much I love people and laughing and feeling alive. Being alone became a bad habit for years. I need to remember days like today.

I was told I would go under pretty soon. But I was determined not to, and put everything into steering a straight course and not tipping over. 'It's only water...You're ONLY water' I half-shouted aloud, half under my breath, lots of times, laughing in frustration as the current came surging towards me sending my kayak spinning in circles no matter how much I tried to paddle upstream, '.... I will NOT be defeated by water...' I shouted into the tide as I dug my paddle into the water. And in the end I wasn't. But it was a battle. And lots of times the water almost won....In fact, even though by the skin of my pants I managed to not capsize, it was probably a draw. Water:1 - Me:1 But even if I'd gone in dozens of times, it still would have been fantastic. Just being out there on the water with a group of like-minded people, with the evening sun on my face, and every ounce of energy I had going into keeping afloat and not making a fool of myself, was such a thrilling, life-affirming thing to do...and beautiful....watching pairs of geese hurry across a coloured sky or skid across the water, a heron unfold itself awkwardly from an island of broken reed and noisily take off from the middle of the lake, and in the distance, purple cloud-shadows creeping across the backlit hills. I've never been one for water really, I'm not the world's strongest swimmer, but this could be a conversion. If ever you get the chance go!

I thought I never would either....

New year, new blog, new eBook

2013-02-05T22:19:00.004+00:00

I have started a new blog over on Wordpress. Partly for technical reasons (Wordpress is easier...), but partly because it didn't feel right to bury this last post about Brendan under lots of other posts. It felt like an ending, I wanted to leave it there....

The new blog is: www.anyapeters.wordpress.com

I hope to see some of you there.
x

One Pound Food

2013-01-07T21:43:00.002+00:00

I only found out about One Pound Food just before Christmas. And without it, now, three or four times a fortnight, I'm not sure what I would do.

R.I.P. Dad

2012-06-02T22:53:00.001+00:00

Brendan died last night. My soul hurts.

...I hear it in my deep heart's core

2012-06-01T11:07:00.003+00:00

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore.
Whether on the roadway or on the pavements grey
I hear it in my deep heart's core

W.B. Yeats

(I recited this poem in front of 80 or so people at his graveside, a microphone shaking in my hand as I tried to blank out all the curious faces of his family and friends, some of whom - including one or two of his daughters family - who only now knew about me for the first time after all these years. He had an amazing memory for poetry. And he smuggled it into my childhood. As a child, Brendan was almost the only person we knew with a car. I didn't know he was my father then- in the early part of my life- he was just a friend of my mother's in Ireland, a glamourous, gentle stranger who always wore a suit and tie and arrived from Ireland every few months bringing presents and laughter, and who picked me out for special attention. Which in a large bustling family is quite something to have. One of my earliest memories is of him arriving unexpectedly outside the block of flats on my estate in a shiny new red hire car from the airport, coming like a movie star into our lives, taking me off for 'a spin' without any of my cousins, or slipping me out of that world to have lunch with him in a marble-floored hotel in the 'West End' as he called it. He wasn't much of a talker alone with a small girl, but I guess he got across what he wanted to get across with poetry, poems and lines of poems filling the many silences, or else filling my head with dreams, which were a dangerous. commodity back then. Car journeys in particular brought out the poetry in him - on all those spontaneous visits to see us all in London, or, later, the long drives to and from both boarding schools. And Innisfree was one of his favourite Yeat's poems. As I got older and became the cheeky, (slightly) rebellious teenager (which in retrospect I see he encouraged - almost created as a balance to the earlier part of my childhood...). His endless reciting (instead of answering my stack of 'why's' about their decisions about my life, once I discovered he was my father) would often infuriate me. I would sit in the back, a stroppy teenager gazing out over endless green fields pretending not to listen. But somehow the poetry got in and was passed on. I wasn't even sure I knew all the words to this poem. Until in the church, seeing his daughters and granddaughters go up one by one to give a reading or pay tribute, I realised I needed to say a public goodbye too. So, in the cemetery I spontaneously asked the priest if I could have the microphone and was surprised at my memory as every word of 'Innisfree' tumbled out. 'That's where I'll go when it's all over' he always joked, 'and I'll "live alone in the bee-loud glade" (which he claimed was one of the finest lines in the whole of poetry). I don't know if his other daughters knew Innisfree, or had poetry threaded through their childhoods the way I did - I think we all had our own Brendans. I like to think he would have been proud of me standing there in the steady drizzle the other day, reciting it from memory down to his coffin.

You'll be missed...I hope you're reciting poems in heaven....I wouldn't doubt you boy....)

Tea for one...

2010-11-29T16:40:00.002+00:00

Alan Bennett

2010-08-27T14:48:00.010+00:00

Last week...almost the week before now, I met the writer Alan Bennett. Well, I stood next to him in a cafe, both of us queuing for coffee...

Alan Bennett! Of all the writers to meet, to have him, the writer who wrote The Lady in the Van. Has anyone read that? It's a book about a lady who lived in her van in Alan Bennett's driveway before she died! One day, (as you do at the beginning in a kind of surreal dream I Googled myself - 'Wanderingscribe' — and in amongst the surreal 'woman living in her car' articles, and references to Wanderingscribe, and all the dross from disgusting trolls, I came across the book by Alan Bennett.

I bought it the very next day. It is a slim volume, and of course I read it in one sitting, transfixed... She wasn't like me at all; the Lady he writes about was a real bag lady, who had lived like that for years - though who knows that I might not have turned out like that under other circumstances. Anyway, I went on to read lots of Alan Bennett in the end, this way or that way. His name seemed to generally cross my path — as it does when you come across something new: I'd go into a bookshop and there it'd be, a book by Alan Bennett on the table or the counter, or a picture of him on the book jacket or some publicity flyer. He writes plays too, he wrote the 'History Boys', which was turned into the film. You can't help knowing what he looks like, his image is almost as famous as his words. And I remember going to the Southbank one evening for a reading of 'Nocturnes' by Kazio Ishiguru. And in one of the other theatres must have been something on by Bennett because there in the corner was a lifesize cardboard cut out of him. The long coat, the green scarf, the shirt and tie under a high v-neck, the black specs, the newly cut hair, that boyish grin. It could have been him standing there in the corner, life-size, watching the comings and goings in the foyer. Anyway, it's an image everyone is probably familiar with, iconic almost.

A few months after that, I went out for the day to London, a place where there is a large park and, nearby, lots of smart cafes. As I was choosing between cafes, walking towards me, looking very pleased with himself, grinning that grin, was Alan Bennett. Larger than life, pushing a bike, with a bunch of yellow flowers tucked in the crook of one arm, and a couple of A4 writing pads under the other. Can you imagine that - of all the things he could be carrying, he actually was carrying writing paper! Just walking towards me as if he had walked straight out of one of his own book jackets, Writing Home or that cardboard cut-out I saw at the Southbank. Except he was surprisingly taller than you'd imagine from the photos.

I haven't been to that place since. Until the week before last. Again I was out for the day, and schlepped from the train along to one of those cafes. This time I had some writing in my bag, and so hurried there, determined to make inroads on the novel I have long wanted to write (nothing to do with my own story, that's done I never want to write any part of my own story again! But that doesn't mean I don't want to write, ever since I wound a piece of white paper into my first Petite typewriter as a child - turquoise in its plastic turquoise case- I have wanted to write. A motivation which may well have come from my own story - difficult childhoods or periods in childhood have probably formed countless writers - but I never thought I'd write my own story - and if it wasn't for the situation I was in I never would have. I chose my cafe, staked a claim at an outside table, ordered a coffee and then wandered down to the bookshop further along to get a book.

The bookshop owner commented that he personally knew the author whose book I ended up buying. It wasn't Alan Bennett, but was apparently one of their neighbours. 'His children go to school with our children. He often pops in...' he said. It felt a good omen to have the author I had bought as a local. And as he said it, it reminded me of the writer I had seen the last time I was there. I had it in mind to tell him my Alan Bennett story: that the very last time I was here, all those months ago, I saw him, walking down the street towards me, pushing his bike with those yellow flowers in the crook of one arm, the writing pads under the other. I didn't tell him though. But as I walked out into drizzle and down to drink the coffee already waiting on the table, I had that image firmly in my head. It was as clear as if he was there again, slowly walking towards me along that same stretch of pavement, in that long coat and scarf, those yellow flowers, and then past me, walking on wheeling his bike, as if walking through a Hovis advert, that avuncular expression on his face as if he was laughing at a continuous inner stream of jokes as he went along.

I forgot about the image. I drank my coffee. I lost myself in the writing. The words came so well in the end that I didn't dare break the spell and decided to stay and have a second coffee. I went inside to order at the counter at the far end of the long cafe, and as the waiter wiped cappuccino pipes and frothed milk in a metal jug, I turned around and who was walking down the long aisle towards the counter...but Alan Bennett!

I did a double take. I cleared my vision by staring blankly at the waiter, and then glanced around again and there he was, still there. No yellow flowers under either arm.... I gave a cautious, probably very stunned, half-smile of aknowledgement, which he returned with that boyish grin. He then almost dropped himself into a chair at the small table by the counter, and waited to order. Seeing him sitting there, Alan Bennett dressed as Alan Bennett, was like looking at the cover of a book and again it made me smile. It was table service, so sitting at that small table by the counter, he could only have been there for takeaway. I tried not to say hello. I tried hard...but in the end I couldn't help myself. I said in one breath, 'I know I shouldn't speak to you...' at which he waved a hand and said 'no, that's fine' which I spoke over anyway saying '...but it's almost like I just summoned you up, because I was literally just thinking of you as I walked along from the bookshop.... ' He threw his head back and laughed heartily when I said that, and I told him about nearly telling the man in the bookshop about seeing him last time I was in the area too, and how instead, just twenty minutes or so ago, I'd carried his image in my head all the way back down the street to my waiting coffee. I didn't tell him that I was there to write that day, that I'd taken my book bag with me and was writing for the first time in I don't know how long...and then I think of him coming from the bookshop and turn at the counter and there he is walking up and queuing beside me for a coffee! Amazing! On the day I blow the dust off my notepad as well...Hopefully a good omen.

I wished I'd said more...I wish I'd been able to say more: 'Can I walk with you, Mr Bennett, talk to you about writing?' The things he could have told me...the tips, the advice. I think mostly I wanted to tell him that I lived in my car too, like the woman he wrote about, and that I wrote about that experience too. That maybe I wrote for her, Mrs Shepherd. He wrote about her living in her van from his perspective, imagined what she felt, why she was there, maybe I wrote her side of things, or a not too dissimilar version of it maybe...? Maybe I'm how it starts, the Mrs Shepherd thing. Maybe she was how it could have ended. There but for the grace of God...

But of course I couldn't have told him any of that...He did chat for a few minutes though as we waited for coffee. He was relaxed and approachable, with this great avuncular charm about him. He told me he used to live in Gloucester Place, and in the 60's lived in a flat around the corner from where we were, which he loved so much he wished he had back. When my coffee was ready, I could either hang around like some groupie or go back to my table outside. I wanted to hang around talk to him, about anything, just be in such a nice aura for a bit. But of course I said how nice it was to meet him and went back to my table outside. Minutes later I saw him walk away in the other direction with his takeaway coffee, the long coat swinging as he walked off home. In a way I'm still kicking myself for not talking to him, for there not being a way to do that. I wonder what he would have made of a chance meeting in a cafe as they stood waiting for coffee between (what I became known as at the time as) 'the woman who lived in her car' and the man who wrote The Lady Who Lived in a Van.

Sometimes I can't help thinking that paths cross for a reason....

...a joy forever

2010-06-05T14:12:00.001+00:00

Someone sent me this today. I have it as the screensaver on my computer. It's so beautiful I thought I would share it.

Did I really just do that?

2010-04-17T14:56:00.002+00:00

I'm reading The Bone People at the moment...it was recommended...That's all I can think to say for you to know who you are...not sure if that is good or bad.

If I was a bird....

2010-01-21T18:00:00.004+00:00

If I was a bird I would alight on a branch outside your window, come to and fro, to and fro, pecking away at your attention until I had forced your mind to know the secret of flight, and you could follow me out there, to and fro, to and fro.

The kind of thing I sometimes find myself saying to myself as I walk. Is that strange....?

A flock of colours...a path of yellow moonlight...and may a slow wind work these words of love around you...to mind your life

2010-01-01T15:20:00.003+00:00

1 January 2010
From John O'Donohue (1956-2008), a blessing for your New Year:

Beannacht
("Blessing")

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

...from the sieve of her hands...

2009-11-28T12:29:00.006+00:00

Sorry haven't been here for a while. Trying to go forwards...Work and life keeping me busy. Hope you are all well and using up the last of the year well. During the week I got onto a tube in London feeling very tired and despondent, as you often do cramming onto a tube at rush hour, wondering if I had taken a backwards step in my life, and without a book to read, swinging tiredly from the hand rail above me, I stared mindlessly up at the adverts. Among them was this poem. It is called 'Prayer' and was almost in answer to one in that moment, and was so lovely I thought I'd put it here. I hope you think so too...

PRAYER - Carol anne Duffey

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre

(It would be enough wouldn't it... to write something like that. Even just once... 'the truth enters our hearts, that small familiar pain...', '...Then dusk, and someone calls a child's name as though they named their loss.')

Sonnet

2009-08-07T16:54:00.004+00:00

Not sure why, but this poem spoke to me today.

Sonnet to Orpheus

Oh you gentle ones, every once in a while step
into the breath that is indifferent to you,
let it be parted on your cheeks,
behind you it trembles, reunited.

Oh you blessed ones, oh you whole ones,
you who seem to be the beginning of the hearts.
Bow of arrows and target of arrows,
your smile beams eternally with tears.

Do not fear to suffer the heaviness,
give it back to earth's weight:
heavy are the mountains. Heavy are the oceans.
Even what you planted as children,
the trees, have long become too heavy;
you could not carry them.
But the breezes... but the spaces...

Be grateful for the freedom to see other dreams...

2009-07-14T17:59:00.004+00:00

Psalm 91 for my sins, this for pleasure. I wish I had written it...

To An English Friend In Africa
— Ben Okri

Be grateful for the freedom to see other dreams. Bless your loneliness as much as you drank of your former companionships. All that you are experiencing now, will become moods of future joys. So bless it all. Do not think your way superior to another's. Do not venture to judge, but see things with fresh and open eyes. Do not condemn, but praise when you can, and when you can't, be silent.

Time now is a gift for you. A gift of freedom to think and remember and understand the ever perplexing past and to recreate yourself anew in order to transform time.

Live while you are alive. Learn the ways of silence and wisdom. Learn to act, learn a new speech. Learn to be what you are in the seed of your spirit. Learn to free yourself from all the things that have moulded you and which limit your secret and undiscovered road.

Remember that all things which happen to you are raw materials. Endlessly fertile. Endlessly yielding of thoughts that could change your life and go on doing so forever.

Never forget to pray and be thankful for all things good or bad on the rich road; for everything is changeable so long as you live while you are alive.

Fear not, but be full of light and love. Fear not, but be alert and receptive. Fear not, but act decisively when you should. Fear not, but know when to stop. Fear not, for you are loved by me. Fear not, for death is not the real terror, but life magically is.

Be joyful in your silence, be strong in your patience. Do not try to wrestle with the universe, but be sometimes like water or air, sometimes like fire, and constant like the earth.

Live slowly, think slowly, for time is a mystery. Never forget that love requires always that you be the greatest person you are capable of being, self-regenerating and strong and gentle--your own hero and star.

Love demands the best in us. To always and in time oversome the worst and lowest in our souls. Love the world wisely.

It is love alone that is the greatest weapon and the deepest and hardest secret.

So fear not, my friend. The darkness is gentler than you think. Be grateful for the manifold, dreams of creation, and the many ways of the unnumbered peoples.

Be grateful for life as you live it. And may a wonderful light always guide you on the unfolding road.

...I turned a corner

2009-04-29T17:58:00.005+00:00

Today it was the smell of lilacs. I turned a corner, on a road I'd never walked down before, quite close to home, and bang... There I was a child of seven or eight again, dragging her feet on the way to the big houses under the railway bridge, where on some Sunday mornings, a tiny lady who lived in one of them sold us rhubarb, and as a treat bunches of mint for potatoes. Delicious smells that would later fill our small flat....but before we got to them, we carried our huge bundles of rhubarb wrapped in newspaper home, walking along a crescent-shaped road that was full of (what I now know to be) lilacs, and the heavenly smell cleared everything else from your mind. For a while, everything...forcing you to be in the moment.... One of the saving graces of childhood.
To this day I love lilac - the colour, the smell, the look of them...and of course the way they make my mouth water for rhubarb crumble and minted potatoes.

Here and there

2009-04-15T13:22:00.009+00:00

I'm sitting up here typing this under blue skies. The busy city street below my window is full of the smell of warm blossom and, now and then, when there is the occasional lull in traffic and all you hear is the slow swish of trees from neighbouring gardens and the call of birds in flight, you can close your eyes and think yourself almost anywhere. I love days like today.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well...

2009-04-09T15:32:00.008+00:00

All feels right with the world today.

Last night I made, and froze, a banoffee pie, a mound of gooey loveliness to be eaten at the weekend. The rain has stopped. The first purple bud of the desk-plant I bought last year has appeared overnight; I have just re-read psalm 23 and using my brand new keyboard have written the start of the first poem I have written in what feels like years. Also the magnolias are out and at the weekend I found a heartshaped stone on the beach and there are only 2 clear days left between now and the end of Lent. Coffee is fast approaching....And, just for today, it feels like nothing else matters.
Today I feel like someone has just given me a long, cold drink of water.

I hope all is well with you.

Out of sight jigsaws, and sushi...

2009-03-04T16:56:00.008+00:00

It seems only yesterday that I wrote in here that I had given up chocolate for Lent...Well, I've done it again...Chocolate AND coffee this year, so my nerves are on fire — constant red alert. Only another 35 days to go though (apparently Sundays don't count as Lenten days!).

Anyway, I really can't believe that it has rolled around again, and that Lent is here. Time is relentless.

I should be keeping an eye on time...making sure it doesn't just pass me by. It is not just me saying that, apparently it was a direct message from angels for me (if you believe that kind of thing....)

When I got back in touch with my dad (Brendan) again, the time just before I ended up in the car, he heard about a woman in Ireland who was a mystic and received messages from angels. He got in touch with her, in fact I think he drove up to see her. I don't know to this day what he said to her but in amongst other things he asked her to pray for me. He later gave me her telephone number and urged me to call her, saying she would be expecting my call. I didn't know what to say, and wasn't going to, but one day in the midst of this, feeling very foolish, I found myself dialing her number.

A softly spoken Irish lady answered, but it clearly wasn't a good time for her — I think she was in a hurry to pick one of her children up from somewhere (yes, she also has children and lives in a modern house in a modern part of Ireland). She said she had received a message for me though — that the angels had given her a message saying that I had many talents that I was in danger of wasting, and that time was running out. Which seemed like a message that could be for anyone really..... She said she was very busy and couldn't talk but that I should give her my address and that she would write to me with the message.

I thought she was fobbing me off, but I gave her my address in Newcastle anyway and a few weeks later a letter did arrive. It took up only one side of paper and repeated the message from the angels: saying that they stressed that I needed to be particularly careful about time, and not to let it slip by. Which at the time I thought was a very strange message, even though that is what I have always tended to do in my life. I was a bit disappointed in a way, of all the things that angels could tell you....especially me in the lost state I was in at the time. She also gave me the name of my two guardian angels. Names which weren't in English, but which, even though I was sceptical of the whole thing anyway, I still found a bit unsettling seeing written down in the letter. She said all I needed to do was call the name and ask them to come down and they would. I remember rolling the sounds of their names around my tongue and for a few days finding myself silently saying them. But then I got frightened of what I was doing and tried to forget them — which, unfortunately, I have now succeeded in doing. (Though I think I still have the letter somewhere.)

I'd never met this woman myself. All I knew was her name, and her voice...

Then yesterday, in a local bookshop, I stepped aside to let past a couple pushing a toddler in a buggy, and as I did so knocked up against one of the bookcases. A display book standing face-out on the edge of one of the shelves threatened to topple. It was a new hardback with a very appealing light-filled cover. As I reached up to straighten it, I instinctively read the title, and then my eyes shot up to the author's name. Because suddenly I knew who it was. And as I read the authors name I saw it was her. The woman with the message for me from the angels. She has a book out, an autobiography called Angels In My Hair. Her name is Lorna Bryne, and she is apparently Kosher — for those who believe.

Brendan still has her telephone number and gave it to me again yesterday when I told him. Though I wouldn't dare call her again. But how odd...Time did run out for me in the end and I ended up in my car. So in a way the message was right. And then I wrote an autobiography. An autobiography which came right at the right time in the publishing world in a way. And now the person who gave me that message has written her autobiography too - with many more books to come it seems. It gave me shivers standing there in the bookshop holding it in my hands. Kind of...sort of...in a way...mysterious...

You can get yourself in a state of mind where things start to feel like proof. As if someone is laying a trail... constantly nudging, giving you more and more clues saying: Now do you believe? Now do you ...? How about now...? as they fill in this spiritual join-the-dots in your head.

Skye High

2008-12-30T11:49:00.010+00:00

I had an almost perfect Christmas — up on the Isle of Skye. My head is full of postcard-perfect images that I hope never fade.

I've never been to Skye before. I'd nearly been. I once went across to the island of Barra — many years ago, landing with only 3 other passengers in a tiny, 12-seater British Airways plane directly onto their long, white, cockle beach, which doubles as the runway — and island-hopping on the way home down the freezing necklace of islands that make up the Outer Hebrides — uninterested in them mostly, ticking them off, reading Louis MacNeice and dreaming of getting to Skye and of home. But I never had time to stop off there in the end. And it's a place I've wondered about ever since...So I am so glad I got the chance to go. Skye is in a world of its own, definitely worth making time for.

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas.

In the words of the Mexican emailer I mentioned in the last post ...I splash all your New Years with blessings.

From Mexico with love

2008-12-20T23:49:00.004+00:00

Someone sent me an email this week. Someone from Mexico, writing mostly in broken English. They signed off saying - "I splash your life with blessings"
'I splash your life with blessings'... It's still making me smile.