I started writing this on Monday afternoon, a stiflingly hot day with barely a breeze, just the faint shouts from the children in the playground across the road drifting in through the open windows at the other end of the room.

Sitting on the sofa as I do, the kettle to my right, the glass door to the garden to my left I lift my eyes above my laptop screen perched on my lap and see Bella’s dog bed.

It’s empty and my brain tricks me into thinking she’s just out for a walk, but she isn’t because on Saturday evening our 14 years and 4 months old yellow Labrador who we’d brought home as a puppy died.

This is the dog who once inhaled an entire freshly baked banana loaf, who loved her bed in the middle of the house so she could keep an eye on us all, who loved a dunk in the sea, the tarn, any body of water. Who adored a sniffathon whether a simple pavement walk or a romp across the moor.

“We meet wonderful people, but lose them
in our busyness.
We’re, as the saying goes, all over the place.
Steadfastness, it seems,
is more about dogs than about us.
One of the reasons we love them so much.”
― Mary Oliver, Dog Songs: Poems

We knew it was coming. Before my husband left for a week of paddle boarding the Norwegian fjords, we talked about what might happen if Bella took a turn for the worse while he was away. I’m not sure we finished the conversation, talking instead about a time when he was back, thinking we’d have time to make a proper, managed decision about her future. Convincing ourselves we could control, manage her, her body, the end when really what we were doing I guess, was trying to put off the inevitable.

But around 8pm on Saturday evening Bella collapsed on the kitchen floor, her arthritis felling all four limbs. She’d been her version of fine all day with a slow lap of the tarn in the morning, a pootle in the garden in the afternoon, lying in her bed next to the piano opposite where I sit writing this in all the in between hours.

I called a friend who, before I’d finished the sentence, said she’d be straight round with her husband. They helped to carry Bella the 30 plus steps that separate our kitchen from the pavement and transport. I called the vets. ‘Bring her in’ they said, and I did, Bella panting, shaking. ‘The panting is a sign she’s in pain’ the vet told us.

An hour later after phone calls to my husband and our sons my friends dropped me and my daughter (my 16 year old daughter wanting to be there to say good bye in person) home, but without Bella.

While walking in circles around the usually busy reception area I’d spoken to my husband, talking him through the options the vet had given me. 1) euthanasia (her word) or 2) administer a ton of pain relief, leave her overnight and see how she was in the morning. Option 1, as hard as it was, was the kindest option.

On Monday morning I collected her collar and the blanket she’d laid on, confirming our wish to have her cremated, telling the receptionist our plans to scatter her ashes at Saltburn-by-the-Sea where she’d enjoyed many a charge into the north sea. This was the one box on the consent form I didn’t tick on Saturday evening; and in the afternoon, sitting on the sofa I start writing this.

I knew it was coming, she was 14 plus years old, but didn’t know how I’d feel, and it turns out, I feel a lot.

Taking her presence for granted

The tears are expected although I cry a lot harder than I’d anticipated but then we’d moved from theoretical end of life conversations to reality in quick time. Her body rightly having the final say, saying no, that’s enough now. My right eye started twitching on Sunday morning, a piercing sinus style headache deciding to join it.

Oh how these animals weave their way into our hearts and the fabric of our lives. Something I knew in theory but I’d maybe got so used to Bella being here that I’d taken her presence at home for granted.

She had a knack of standing across doorways, in front of the oven, the sink, the fridge door. In each house we’ve lived in her bed has been in a spot that would give her maximum opportunity to watch us, to see us. To check us in and out.

There was that time last October when on a regular morning walk she stepped into the tarn for a paddle (as she’d done hundreds of times before) and slipped into an outflow pipe under the tarn. She was stuck there for a few hours until rescued by the fire brigade, gaining notoriety amongst dog walkers, my daughters friends. All sorts of people.

She inhaled food. We used a red plastic wobbler she had to nose around the floor to dispense kibble in ones and twos to slow down her eating. She’d sneak under the table for hoped for scraps of dropped food. She loved sniffy, meandering walks. Her walks distance wise covering two, three times our footsteps.

She was a vital part of this family, a mostly silent sounding board for she didn’t really bark, no guard dog despite her size. She’d jerk and run and bark in her sleep. Passing her bed, her ears would prick up, twitching with the sound of our soft footsteps a sign of food incoming maybe? Maybe another walk? Maybe a scratch behind the ear but she never really barked; I mean she did occasionally but it would be random. No context, rhyme or reason but you don’t need to be loud, or to make a sound to feel a presence.

A constant in an ever-changing family landscape

I’d got used to there being fewer humans in the house over the past few years, a changing energy, a different soundscape. The boys leaving home for university, the youngest having a far more active social life than us all put together, but on the rare occasion when I was home alone, I wasn’t.

None of us were. Having the house to ourselves wasn’t strictly true because Bella was always there. If we hadn’t walked past her bed in a while she’d seek us out, nudge a hand, rest her head on our thigh.

I guess Bella tied us to a family life that’s been ebbing away since the eldest headed up to Newcastle for university in September 2021. The house growing quieter, the tent pegs tying us to daily, weekly rhythm and routine of school, work, family life, loosened.

Morning routines were centred on Bella’s needs as much as they did getting the children to school with their bookbags and PE kits. Waking up and sliding open the kitchen door to let her into the garden. Retrieving her wobbler wedged with those final pieces of kibble under a chair, behind a door. Her pacing and hopeful standing by the front door, trying to sneak out with the children as they went to school. She couldn’t possibly wait til after school drop off for her walk, and yet she did, wait patiently, morning after morning until it was her turn, nudging her nose into my coat pocket knowing treats lay within.

So so many walks. On beaches, on the moor, around the tarn and once upon a time, way back when she was a pup around Bath Racecourse where she’d gallop with imaginary horses, running her own race for one, never in a straight line.

On Saturday evening two chapters in her life with us kept playing on a loop in my head as I knelt on the floor next to her, her head resting on my forearm. The beach dog walks after mum, dad and grandma died in 2015 when we were still new to family life in Bournemouth, and the dog walks on the moor after I finished cancer treatment and started writing back in 2019.

The beach walks for their simplicity. Do we turn right or left one we hit Alum Chine beach at the bottom of the road? Usually right towards Branksome Chine where we’d veer away from the golden sand and head for woodland shade and texture, shadows and shafts of sunlight contrasting with the sharp straight line of the blue sea sky horizon.

Metronomic walks that gave me a reason to leave the house other than school drop off and pick up and the Tesco run. The simple act of placing one foot in front of the other when my world had been turned inside out, back to front. My insides on a spin cycle with grief.

A way of being. A safe way to feel my way back into this irrevocably change world whilst living in a place that was still beautiful but still didn’t feel like home.

Creating new normals one dog walk at a time

We left Bournemouth in September 2017 for Ilkley and trudging through the mud on the moor, much like the way I’d kicked through the sand on the beach, is how I started to root myself physically in this new landscape. In both places, the morning dog walk helping me to create a new daily rhythm and routine, and I thank her for instilling in me a need to get out and move, to get some fresh air in the morning.

One that I’d hope, with each footstep, would help me to feel like I belonged. That these new landscapes would start feeling like home while light touch social interactions with other dog walkers gave me much needed human contact while the children were at school, my husband out at work.

Working for myself has meant my work, my income has been portable, flexing around each move, but you don’t meet many people sitting at the kitchen table tapping out comms plans and articles.

A writing life created on the moor

The other chapter running through my head on Saturday links directly to this writing life. After nine months of cancer treatment I’d mentally track my physical recovery by the distances I walked with Bella. The paths we took, documented by the photos taken and shared on Facebook, Instagram. My physical recovery way ahead of my mental and emotional recovery. How do you create a ‘new normal’ when there wasn’t a regular or old normal in the first place? I started with walking Bella.

By the time Covid landed a year or so later I’d discovered the lightness and freedom that came with writing out the thoughts and feelings swirling through me. I guess I was writing for therapy, for catharsis as I marched, and Bella sniffed around the moor.

I’d turn on the writing tap at 8am with

London Writers’ Salon Writers Hour and at 9am I’d clip Bella’s lead onto her collar and head out, stopping to tap and type more thoughts into my phone. Bella creating her own sniffing story while I wrote mine.

Some of those notes turned into these posts, memoir writing, all sorts of writing, much of which I haven’t shared because sharing wasn’t the point. Writing was the point. Walking and moving was the point. Bella didn’t know that she was enabling, encouraging this writing habit. She was just happy to be out charging along paths, leaping over becks, sniffing heather and posing for the odd photo.

The thing with having started this on Monday is that I don’t know where or how to finish it, this slender slither of a reflection of my relationship with Bella. There are 1001 memories, a stack of photos, the children, my husband with their own stories, their own relationships.

What I do know is that Bella’s bed is still by the piano, her water bowl is still in the kitchen. The box with her lead, treats and poo bags still sit by the front door. I hear noises and creaks in the house and think it’s her moving around. It isn’t but the headache has gone, the twitchy eye too, mostly, and I am slowly getting used to her not being in the house.

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A New Writing Chapter

Thank you as ever for reading. This writing life including Gently Does It, much like my family life, is moving into a new chapter. I’m giving my Moor Communication client writing some much needed TLC (more on that in due course) and I’m switching my focus from purely memoir and reflective writing to fiction, thanks to the Intro to Creative Course I’ve been doing with Writing Room.

The move into writing fiction in particular is a lot of fun and I’d love you to be with me as I explore this new writing chapter. I’ll still be writing reflective pieces but it’s no coincidence that this move into writing fiction is very much linked to where I am in life too and I need to give myself permission and the freedom to evolve on the page and screen as well as in real life.

If the first writing chapter was about writing for therapy and catharsis, this next chapter is all about being creative, writing for fun and enjoyment as well writing to work out how and what I’m feeling.

Many thanks as ever for reading, and I’ll be hanging out in the comments if you fancy a chat!

Harriet

and finding peace by plodding along the fern lined paths of Ilkley Moor under an expansive Yorkshire sky.

Hello dear reader, how are you this third Sunday in June?

I’ve struggled a little to know how or where to start with this week’s post. It can feel self-indulgent at the best of times to write and send these words out into the world, even more so when the world feels as scary as it does right now. When you can’t not but also can’t bear to watch the news.

On Friday evening as the clock ticked closer to 10pm my husband or maybe it was me, said, ‘Right, we watching the end of the world on ITV or BBC?’.

It looks so flippant written down.

We’d spent the evening walking around the riverside, eating leftovers sitting in the garden, watching Celebrity Gogglebox while the youngest, so close to the end of GCSEs, was out with friends. We were anticipating the ‘Can you pick me up’ text any second. So, so normal.

We opted for neither channel, turning our back on the headlines, figuring we’d heard enough during the day from all the other places we get our news from these days, and wanting to sleep with calm minds.

Instead I took on the job of persuading Bella, our 14-year-old yellow lab out of her bed into the garden with a stream of, ‘Up you get, you can do it, that’s it, yeah you’re doing it. Up onto the grass’ in a voice reminiscent of the one I’d use with the children when they were recalcitrant toddlers.

Meanwhile my husband got in the car to go and collect the youngest from her friend’s house, once home she filled the kitchen with ‘OMG, uh-mazing garden’ with its patios, tree swings, lawn and all backing onto fields.

One physics, two Spanish and a Food tech paper sit between her and a summer of freedom, and the all-important Prom. Bring on Tuesday lunchtime when this ridiculous GCSE marathon ends, in this house at least.

How easily we slip back into the minutiae of our lives, our backs turned away from the headlines. It feels necessary but inadequate too. Surely there’s more we can do other than watch, sign petitions, send letters and make donations.

It’s strange, this powerless space and maybe because of this powerlessness it feels even more necessary to bury ourselves in the ‘Do we need milk?’ ‘How far do you think the dog will walk today?’. It’s why I appreciated Annie MacManus piece on Gaza this week.

I remind myself that this corner of the writing world is about living gently, finding a path through life especially when life is scary. So this week I’m sharing snapshots from my plodding walks, books and other bits and bobs that remind me, reinforce what I know already, that there is huge good out there in the world too, there’s compassion and kindness aplenty, despite the headlines.

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Ilkley moor is where I started writing when longer dog walks with a then spritely Bella were the order of the day. She’d sniff while I’d stop to take photos and tap words and phrases into my phone with an urgency I haven’t felt for a while.

Walks characterised by a visceral need to get all the words and thoughts out of me post-cancer, still felled by grief and my heart and mind not quite having caught up with this body in recovery now living in Yorkshire after those three years by the sea in Bournemouth.

These days I listen to audio books while I walk. I’ve just finished Roisin O’Donnell’s Nesting which was incredible, so so powerful and now it’s Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin’s Ordinary Saints, I love my Irish writers.

Or I listen to the loud silence of nature.

Away from the walks I spot a Facebook post from my cousin Eleanor Schofield, Director of Collections at Mary Rose Trust sharing that she’s going to on Radio 4 Life Scientific in August talking about her life as a scientist and her work at Mary Rose.

Proud? Hell yeah.

We try to co-ordinate diaries with the eldest so we can help him move into his new house share in Newcastle but he’s away filming at the Great North Swim at Lake Windermere.

Three days of wetsuit clad folk swimming anything from half a mile to 10km with some not content with ‘just’ swimming and opting for the Swim Run. A swim run differing from a biathlon because competitors swim and run in their wetsuits and trainers, none of this getting changed nonsense.

Humans being brilliant in nature. What a combo.

My wild swimming friend is there to swim too and checks in on the eldest, ‘if you see a ginger curly haired young man with a camera, that’s him’ I message her on Friday afternoon. She replies with photos of the two of them together, beaming smiles, curly redheads both, and it reassures me, these photos and messages.

Back in the garden I notice that a couple of my peonies have finally bloomed, not all, but some. It pains me but I have to admit that my sisters were right, darn it, when I spend an initial five minutes weeding and notice how quickly it makes a difference and so I keep going. The hydrangeas now have space to breathe, the mint pared back. The garden so quick to tip from bare to lush to overgrown.

I add the Women’s Prize winners to my book buying list and spend my Oliver Bonas leaving present on this gorgeous copy of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca with a Neisha Crossland cover and Elizabeth Strout’s ‘Tell me everything’. I add them to the other two book purchases this week from our local Oxfam Bookshop.

But mostly I thank the lord for my sturdy legs that have carried me to Poetry Corner, Twelve Apostles, Swastika Stone, Middleton Woods (minus the bluebells now but still the scent of wild garlic lingering) and the river this week.

I thank goodness for these enormous Yorkshire skies, the ducklings at the tarn and the never not funny sheep trying to hide in the endless waist high ferns edging the paths on the moor. All this in between sitting at the desk, thinking about and writing newsletters for clients, working on a new fiction story of my own, tidying up my work website. Resisting the urge to scroll, deleting apps from my phone.

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I often think about how boundaried my parents were in their news consumption, but then it is ten years since they died. There was the radio in the background, more likely to be tuned to Radio 3 than 4 though, and a newspaper each day that they’d work through separately, coming together to solve the crossword. During the course of their marriage they worked their way through all the broadsheets and back again. I remember mum’s delight when The Independent launched in 1986, a new newspaper to read. They wanted to read and hear different voices, watching the news on the TV always came with an opinion on the newscaster as much on the news itself.

I also remember mum telling me how in the relatively early days of their marriage she had to ask dad that while she really appreciated the early cup of tea in bed before he left for his office at Smithfield Meat Market in London, he didn’t need to deliver it with the news headlines. Death, destruction and disaster wasn’t how she wanted start the day, and this was back in the early 1960s.

I don’t have any answers to any of this but I know how lucky I am to have this choice, to be able to turn my back, even for a short while, on what’s happening. To ration the headlines. How lucky I am to have the luxury of the minutiae of this life to lose myself in, even if switching off feels uncomfortable.

Thank you as ever for reading,

Harriet

On how a gentle reinvention feels a week in, plus saunas on the prom, swims in the sea and sharpening the pencils for this writing life.

It’s so-long May and hello June and based on today I’d say June is still very much making up its mind about whether it’s ready for this year or not. We’ve swung between beautiful warm May-like blue sky and November-y downpours. Our first Sunday of the month Ilkley food market reduced to traders selling out the back of their cars and trucks rather than the usual vibrant stalls that line The Grove but still, June, you are very welcome.

A week can make all the difference

It’s a week and a bit since leaving my job at Oliver Bonas, the tenth anniversary of mum’s death and a week into this new version of my writing / working life. That’s one whole week of being back in the writing chair, or rather, spending more time in the writing chair.

In so many ways it was a week indistinguishable from any other. A mix of Writers Hours with 

London Writers’ Salon, walks on the moor, finishing off one client’s newsletter, and meeting up with another for a long overdue catch up. Plus the usual, ‘what are we having for dinner/do we need milk’ conversations over a boiling kettle, stalling the inevitable trip to Tesco where they’re rearranging the store, the aisles filled with baffled shoppers as they stare at boxes of teabags where toilet roll once lived. Change, it’s everywhere.

This week felt different, in a good way

In a sense there’s nothing new to see here in this new/not new writing/home life and I worry about making too big a deal of leaving a part-time job I did for eighteen months. On paper I’m simply opening up the work diary to do more of what I’ve been doing for so long already, writing for others through my Moor Communication business.

This week felt different though. There was a definite undercurrent of excitement, energy and freedom. Something I hadn’t felt in a while as I walked into my writing room, put another cup of tea down on the desk, switched the table lamp on and chose a CD to listen to. Hello Jamie Cullum, I haven’t listened to you for a while.

We’re very much in semi-change territory, a gentle reinvention initiated by me rather than some of the huge life-changes of the past decade or so, and that feels good. I figure I should also see this opportunity as a gift, a gift I should use wisely.

Intentional is the word that keeps popping into my head. Intentional in how I spend my time, the energy I want to be around, intentional in the decisions I make rather than just sliding into situations and jobs as I have in the past.

I don’t want to lose that sense of freedom that being freelance can give you (‘can’ being the operative word). I want to be open to opportunities but I also know I can let the adrenaline and energy rush I feel in the early stages of any change to cloud my judgement. Pausing first, even for a second, before jumping in is where my head is.

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May be the fact that we’re heading into the halfway point in the year is why I stopped to re-read the piece I wrote at the beginning of the year, your comments too. I don’t often re-read what I’ve posted here, happy to see the words disappear into the ether to do whatever it is they need to do, to land wherever they land but it was interesting. I’m still feeling the ‘same, same but different’ energy as we enter the sixth month of the year.

Yes, there will be change ahead, there will be tweaks. There’ll be unexpected left and right turns. There always are. We’re hours away from our families and I’d like to get better at leaving this cosy bubble behind more often, but I guess that falls under the ‘but different’ part of the ‘same same but different’ tagline.
How do you want to feel in 2025?
Gently Does It

I guess it’s also why the Words of Wisdom shared at 

London Writers’ Salon Friday morning’s 8am Writers Hour (shared below) landed as well. It’s easy to point to new job titles, homes and friendships, exercise routines and clubs joined as evidence of change and growth.

It can be harder to show how we’ve changed internally, although I have a feeling our body language and visual tics tend to give us away anyway. The we carry ourselves, the conversations we now embrace, how our shoulders hunch less, our eyes clearer, our voices less strained.

It feels good to recognise these internal changes, to notice these shifts in our emotions, the patterns we’ve maybe broken. To really feel the difference in the way we can cope with certain situations, certain conversations now. The things that previously would have taken up way too much space in our heads now easily brushed off. It’s so easy to keep pressing forward, our eyes and ears ripe for newness, some new answer, some new distraction when sometimes all we need to do is stop and smell those June roses. And when I say ‘we’, I guess I’m really saying ‘me’.

“Look back on the goals you set for yourself. Have you been making progress? Even if you’re not where you want to be, you still have to pat yourself on the back for all the steps you took on your journey. Maybe you’ve become more confident, more resilient, more self-reliant. These internal changes matter just as much as anything that’s happening on the outside––maybe even more. Every step forward is a victory.”

Pretty Vee, The Pretty Victory: 100-Day Guide to Recenter Yourself and Find Your Purpose

Iterations, intentions and gentle reinventions

I guess that’s what’s on my mind right now. This new iteration of my writing and home life looks and sounds a lot like the one I’ve had for a while now, but boy does it feel different.

I guess I feel more confident going into the client writing this time round. I feel like I’m going into it with stronger personal foundations, a new layer of confidence gained from all those conversations on the shop floor. All those – mainly – women I’ve met in the past eighteen months blending into one massive confidence boost.

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Sauna and sea dips

Talking of gentle reinventions, let’s talk wild swimming. Something I mentioned a few months ago in this piece, something that wasn’t even the seed of an idea when I wrote my beginning of the year post.

The new year post did mention Saltburn-by-the-sea though and that’s where I was last Saturday 24^th May. It was the tenth anniversary of mum’s death and I got it into my head that I needed to not only be near the sea, but in it. I needed to ‘do’ something,

I didn’t want the day to just seep away as a slow Saturday sometimes can. It also coincided with the day after leaving Oliver Bonas. And so a friend and I booked a 9am slot in the Whitby Well-Being trailer sauna at the end of Saltburn prom. Once there we took our places on the benches alongside two men in their twenties and a group of half a dozen friends, women broadly in their 40s and 50s.

Up close and personal in our swimmers, faces flushed, sweat pouring we chatted about where we’d driven from, if we’d been before. We quickly moved onto hot flushes, the emotional intelligence of the younger generation, general menopause chat as happens when a group of women at our life stage come together and the perils of men wearing short shorts in a mixed yoga or pilates class. One thing I feel way more comfortable with after working on the shop floor, enjoy even, are random, unexpected conversations with strangers.

The hour flew by as we sauna’d for ten-ish minutes until beetroot red in the face, nodded ‘It’s time’ and scuttled across the beach, swim shoes protecting our feet from the shells and pebbles and jumped into the waves. We swore, splashed and shrieked for a few minutes before scuttling back into the sauna. We repeated this a few times during the hour and finished off with a final extended dip in the sea, not really wanting to leave the waves.

Cold? Yes! Fun? Also yes.

Once dry, we said our good-byes and Rachel and I headed straight to the café on the prom for a coffee and bacon sarnie, followed by a saunter along the pier to watch the surfers riding the waves under blackening skies.

It was brilliant and I’m already plotting another sauna and dip but maybe at one of the other beachside locations.

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And with that my friends I’ll leave you. There was so much else I wanted to write today but there wasn’t space and my head is so full of words and thoughts it was a challenge getting these to line up in an orderly fashion.

Honestly, as much as I’ve enjoyed being back at the writing desk, I can see how many writing projects I have on the go by the pile of notebooks teetering on my desk, a different coloured one for each project.

I’ll be turning to 

Breakthroughs & Blocks 7-day June Writing Sprint tomorrow to help me prioritise them and leaning into 

Jami Attenberg #1000wordsofsummer (check out 

CRAFT TALK for more info) to keep my newly discovered creative writing bug going in between writing client newsletters, updating my website and writing here.

Let’s sharpen those pencils!

Thanks as ever for reading,

Harriet

PS the typos and mistakes are mine, all mine!

There’s an additional vulnerability that comes with reading our writing in public, but it can also be freeing.

Dear reader,

How are you this Thursday? Here in Ilkley the sun has gone for a wander and we have white grey sky above us rather than the clear blue we’ve got used to these past few months.

And this evening it’s our writing group, Moor Words, Spoken Word evening. It’s an evening full of joy and it’s an evening that pushes – in a good way – we writers out of our comfort zone.

Firstly we have to write some words. Commit them to paper or screen and as writers, creatives you’ll know that’s easier said than done. Secondly, we share them in the most public way. No hiding behind a screen, hitting ‘Send’ and running off to make a cup of tea.

This is in the moment reaction to our words, the energy shifting with each reading, each voice. The gap between writer/reader and listener gossamer thin. The response in the room palpable, the shifting, the silence, the murmurs. I only know what it’s like to share my own life in the room and not fiction, does that add another layer of vulnerability into the mix?

I salute Emily for encouraging us to do this, there may be nerves, but there is also, in my experience, something incredibly freeing, empowering about doing it. I thank my violin and piano playing, all those readings in church from an early age for giving me the muscle memory to know that nerves are to be expected, but that’s ok.

Because I love feeling my words float out of my mouth into the air where they might (or might not) land in the audiences’ ears. I know my writing isn’t for everyone, and that’s ok. I can’t control how my words will be received, all I can do is send them out with confidence, hope and belief that this is the best I’ve got right now.

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That said, without fail, a week before the event I always tell Emily I don’t think I’ll speak. I don’t have anything new. I want to just sit and enjoy the other readings. The excuses are feeble, the words and delivery.

Emily listens, offers a ‘Thats’ fine, just let me know,’ and doesn’t push me but I think we both know I just like to know I have this get out clause. I also hate letting people down, and I know how much time and effort Emily puts into our group, the monthly meetings, the door always open to new writers. Putting on a Spoken Word evening takes time and energy and it’s not fair to muck her around.

I mention to another writer that I might not read this time, that I have nothing to share. She says, ‘But what about that piece you shared way back when, it was a few years ago. The one about the panic attacks, about waking in the night. A lot of us related to that.’

A piece of writing I’d forgotten about. I’d forgotten about the sleepless nights and the panic attacks. Forgotten I’d woken one morning and written about it in Writers Hour and shared it that same evening at writing group.

She planted a seed, I didn’t need to write something new.

And so I went back through the files on my Mac, read the panic attack one and it didn’t feel right, that time has passed. I couldn’t see myself reading to a room full of people on a Thursday evening a piece about panic attacks, whatever I read has to feel right.

No matter, I kept looking and spotted it. The piece about mum and her Wednesday afternoon visits when we lived in Bath when the children were little. I’ve shared it before in various versions and I’ve rewritten for this evening and I guess for Saturday too. It’s the tenth anniversary of mum’s death on Saturday.

It’s a piece of writing that lives, shape shifts, reflecting how I feel in any given moment. Each time I open it is a chance to go back to those soft afternoons, to spent time with mum on the page. Grief is different now, it doesn’t overwhelm as it did. Her face and voice have faded. Writing with her summons her back from the shadows.

It’s a piece of writing that will never be ‘done’.

Victoria Sponges are Wednesday afternoon cakes

Mary Karr, author of The Art of memoir wrote, ‘If you let yourself tell those smaller anecdotes or stories, the over-arching capital-S story will eventually rise into view.’ This is one of those smaller stories and it’s dedicated to my mum, the cake baker who died ten years ago on Saturday and my three children for reasons that will become clear.

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The hug on the doorstep is brief, awkward all clashing arms and noses what with mum trying to put her car keys in her handbag and stop the cake tin from falling and me trying to stop the dog from escaping. Passing the open living room door she volleys a ‘Hiya Saskia’ which is ignored, Saskia in a lunchtime CBeebies trance, sticky sandwich hands clasped in her lap.

In the kitchen at the back of our terrace mum hangs her handbag on the corner of a kitchen chair, places the cake tin on the table and goes to the open glass doors and arms folded over her cardigan looks out at the garden while I flick on the kettle, retrieve mugs and teabags from cupboards, milk from the fridge.

I can’t remember how or when these Wednesday afternoon visits started or how many there were. Maybe it started with a ‘Harriet dear, how about I pop over one afternoon, sit with Saskia, collect the boys from school. You can rest. I can’t do Friday afternoon because I have art, and I don’t want to leave dad for too long, but maybe a Wednesday.’ Mum visiting wasn’t new, mum visiting on her own, leaving dad at home was and I can’t remember if she always brought a Victoria sponge or if this was added to the ingredients list later on.

Mugs of tea in our left hands we’d walk around the garden, the grass scuffed from the dog and games of football, mum murmuring approval of the honeysuckle and hops climbing up the apple tree that only ever gave us inedible apples, foliage masking traffic from the main road, creamy pink magnolia hiding the trampoline and collection of rugby and footballs.

The garden, the kitchen table, matching clear blue eyes, the Victoria sponge between us, my, ‘But how do you get it to rise’ and her ‘You just need to weigh the eggs Harriet’ part of conversational routine. Moments of stillness, respite.

I declare myself incapable of baking a Victoria sponge, any baking. Feeding the children – pasta, shepherd’s pie, bangers and mash I could do. But baking? That was adulting I didn’t think myself capable of. I didn’t need to learn either because as long as mum came over from Cardiff in her blue Fiat Agila, Radio 3 blaring, cheering as she passed the ‘Welcome to England’ sign I’d be looked after in the cake department.

We talked; we chatted at that table but left so much unsaid. The cancer cells getting a free ride in her lymphatic system, the surgery trying to stop them, slow down the melanoma. Consultant appointments for her, nurse and physio for dad.

The bone crunching fatigue of my ME that put me in a profound black sleep more hours of the day and night than I care to remember. Was I coping with Andy living and working away from home.

Instead she’d eyeroll at mentions of dad, his Wednesdays known for his lunch club and afternoon snoozes in front of the TV, newspaper sliding down his outstretched legs, crossword partially completed. She’d tell me about concerts she’d been to at St David’s Hall, articles she’d read. Films she’d watched with friends. We ticked off family members from our conversation list with sighs and shrugs and smiles.

But after she left there’d be clockwise and ant-clockwise phone calls between mum and my two sisters and then me and my sisters, less so my brother. ‘But didn’t Harriet say anything about the house move, the kids school places’ ‘did mum even mention what the consultant said?’ No, I didn’t ask. She didn’t say. It didn’t come up.

I didn’t know she’d captured these afternoons in deft pencil strokes until much later. The children on the sofa, knees bent under their legs, crumb covered plates on the coffee table faces staring at flickering screens. The dog snoozing in her bed.

Peaceful afternoons before we moved away to Bournemouth, and news that her cancer was impervious to all treatment. Soft memories even though I know there were probably just as many slammed car doors, shouts of, ‘Come on kids, you can carry your own book bags and water bottles’ and ‘I’m going out the back to play football.’ ‘Can Seb come round?’

My now 16-year-old daughter’s face creases into smiles when I ask her what she remembers of these afternoons, ‘The car journey to school. Having to give her directions to school from my booster seat in the back even though we did it every week. She knew where she was going didn’t she.’

I ask my eldest – he’s 22 on Sunday – his 12^th birthday the day after she died, his brother’s 10^th birthday just a couple of days before, a clumsy birthday embrace around her death. ‘Victoria Sponges’ he says. ‘Yours are good, but grandma’s were better. Oh and her secret stash of wine gums in the car.’

Like the sketches, that she kept a stash of wine gums in the car just for the children is only revealed after she dies. And it’s funny because her mum, my grandma also had a secret stash of wine gums for her grandchildren, hers kept hers in a tin in the kitchen.

My just 20-year-old studies in Cardiff now and often walks past the end of mum and dad’s road on his way to and from different campus. He marches through Roath Park headphones on, the park where mum would push him, his siblings, his cousin on the swings, encourage them to have another go on the slide.

He’s away this week on a uni trip messing with clay, potters wheels and sketchbooks, a week mum would love (as would I) and while I can’t get hold of him to ask, I remember him saying a few years ago, ‘You can’t bake a Victoria Sponge on a Saturday morning mum; Vicky sponges are Wednesday afternoon cakes.’

And me? What do I remember of these afternoons? Conversation, conversation and her clear blue eyes that missed nothing. Oh, and a bloody good sponge.

Thank you for reading and for your support,
Harriet

PS Written off the cuff this morning, any and all typos my own, stumbles in the audio all me too!

and it comes with a whole range of feelings.

Hello, how are you?

Please forgive the wayward timings of these letters, I aim for fortnightly but it often slips because you know, life. Life in Ilkley is sunny which is fabulous. The garden is looking lush with delicate yellow poppies, out of control rhubarb and my favourite alchemilla mollis having its fun in the sun.

The water butts are running dry but the sliding doors are open and music drifts out. I guess the latest news is that I’ve handed in my notice at Oliver Bonas where I’ve been working part-time for the past 18 months, and I’m returning full-time(ish) to the writing desk in my navy-walled office at home.

Small change? Big change? Who knows, it’s all change.

The thing is, when change is afoot the temptation, for me at least, is to reinforce the protective shell, hunker down and pull up the drawbridge. I cleave to ‘no’ more than ‘yes’ and sometimes saying no is the right thing to do, but not always.

There’s a vulnerability – financial and otherwise – that comes with making this decision even though I know it’s the right one. Stepping away from something I know and enjoy feels counter-intuitive even when it’s right. There were changes coming down the line impacting the time I have with my husband and family that couldn’t be ignored. Plus, I’d started to miss sitting at my desk and writing for other people, helping them to find their words, their voice. I didn’t stop completely but I am going to have to put myself out there again and find new work, new clients to work with.

Colour, conversation and confidence

I’ve loved working outside the home. I’ve gained confidence and embraced a more colourful wardrobe, I mean, I wore a bright orange jumpsuit to the eldest’s graduation last summer when my usual uniform is more navy and white stripes. I’ve had more fabulous conversations with women in their midlife from behind the changing room curtain and around the jewellery cabinet than I can remember.

There was the woman who used a dowsing necklace to help choose a present for her ‘difficult to buy for’ daughter. The woman busting some moves in the changing room to check the robustness of the poppers on the dress she was trying on while her husband sang along to The Communards ‘Don’t leave me this way’. The woman who whispered that the reason she favoured tunic style shirts and tops that skimmed her body is because she feels self-conscious about the scar tissue in her abdomen after a lot of surgery.

These and lots of other conversations will stay with me, but I need more control over my working life. I’ve noticed a need to be at home more this year. I’ve found it harder to find a rhythm that I can settle into.

My desk, my writing room with its music and books and view of the trees is where I feel rooted especially when the rest of the family and world is spinning. Too many times I’ve felt like I’m back on the spinning dance floor of the Tuxedo Royale on the Tyne and while that was a lot of fun back in 1993, it’s less fun now.

So it’s back to freelance writing full-time (or my version of full-time), something I’ve been doing since 2008 in one form or another. I feel excited about being my own boss again and grateful that this is an option I can to turn to. Although I say ‘back to’, I’m viewing this more as a ‘quiet reinvention’ to borrow

Antonia Taylor’s words in an exchange we had the other day.

I love a little reinvention. I just need to remember it comes with some awkward feelings and it’s ok to sit with them for a while, but maybe not for too long.

“Midlife: when the Universe grabs your shoulders and tells you “I’m not f-ing around, use the gifts you were given.”

Dr. Brene Brown

Newcastle: The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and the Laing Gallery

In between handing in my notice, writing to-do lists and giving my poor work website some TLC there’ve been two trips to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, books read, music listened to and food cooked.

Inspired by the ice breaker in the first session of the Intro to Creative Writing course I started with Writing Room the other week (all we had to do was share a recommendation, a place, a book, a film, anything) I thought I’d share a few things I’ve liked over the past few weeks. It’s a reminder to me as much as anything else that in amongst the big thoughts there’s some really great stuff going on too.

My first trip to Newcastle was on an unofficial ‘take your mum to work’ visit to see the Torvill & Dean Last Dance Ice Show. The eldest is following them on tour as a camera operator for their ‘The Last Dance’ documentary, it should be on our small screens later this year.

I wouldn’t normally spend a Thursday afternoon in the Utilita Arena squished next to a couple from Darlington, the husband happily showing me photos of their lurcher dog but it was fun.

Before the ice dancers emerged from behind the black curtain and The Greatest Showman soundtrack to backflip, twist, jump and glide around the ice, my ice dance watching companion and his wife shared tales of travels with their dog. We swapped notes on our favourite north east beaches – Saltburn-by-the-Sea- on both our lists. They also told me they were from Nottingham originally and saw Torvill & Dean on their first tour back in 1980-something and that this felt like closing a circle of sorts. I loved our conversation.

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But before Torvill & Dean I popped into the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts. I love this gallery. I love the building. I love walking along the Quayside and crossing the Millennium Bridge. I loved how on that May Thursday lunchtime there was a buzz in the air as people took advantage of the benches by the Tyne to sit and have lunch under a clear blue sky. More conversational energy filling the air.

At the gallery I loved the Rachel and Laura Lancaster exhibition ‘Remember, somewhere’. I loved my cuban sandwich in the cafe afterwards and I loved passing Offshore 44 on the way to the arena. Offshore 44 is where you’d find me and my housemates most Friday early evenings between the years of 1989-1993 taking advantage of Happy Hour when we were at Newcastle Poly.

I stuck to the city centre when I was there this week though, popping into my other favourite place, the Laing Gallery after offering my son some moral support at a flat viewing. I love the cafe with the tall glass stained window. I love the navy walled first floor gallery but I really loved hearing the sounds of chatter and exclamations from the primary school aged children who were there making their own art that afternoon.

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Books!

Last year didn’t feel like a great reading year. I mean I read books, lots of them, but few hit the spot. I’m being a little more mindful about picking reads that work with my mood and energy this year. So far standouts include Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake, Elif Shafak’s Three Daughters of Eve and Emma Simpson’s Breaking Waves on the memoir front.

I’ve just finished Greta and Valdin By Rebecca K Reilly and loved it. Sharp writing, quirky characters you can’t help but love, and a fabulous setting in New Zealand. Next up is Cathy Newman’s Sandwich because I loved ‘We all want impossible things’ and then Rupet Dastur’s Cloudless after hearing him talk about the book at The Grove Bookshop last Thursday evening.

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Let the music play

We’ve been back to the mid-nineties and early 2000s with Brand New Heavies ‘Brother Sister’, Nora Jones ‘Come away with me’ and Corinne Bailey Rae wafting through the open doors and onto the decking. That and The Sundays ‘This is where the story ends’ thanks to the teen and her friends playing it in the kitchen on Wednesday morning before their final day at school ahead of exams. I’ve also been playing Dojo Cuts ‘Easy to come home’ after hearing it in One Kitchen & Social in Jesmond where I met the eldest for a drink before the flat viewing. Newcastle isn’t short on great places to eat and drink.

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Breaking bread

And finally, some home cooking. We love our Mob cookbooks especially Mob One right now. I’m a big fan of one pot cooking, especially if it’s something I can chuck in the oven or leave on the hob and forget about for a while. The Italian meatball recipe on page 151 has gone down a treat multiple times in the past few weeks with friends and family as has the Preserved Lemon and Ginger cheesecake recipe on page 250. Crowd pleasers for sure.

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Oof, I think that’s enough for now. I hope it’s warm and sunny where you are, and that you’re able to make the most of it whether in the garden or generally out and about. And feel free to jump into the comments with your recommendations.

Thanks for reading, Harriet

Easter Sunday was a loose-limbed kind of day without a definitive start, end or purpose, a bit like last week’s writing, just plenty of sitting and reading.

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We walked Bella as the cloud lifted, the sun warmed our faces and we played the ‘Yep, I’ve definitely got too many layers on again’ game. Back home I drift in and out of the house. I worked Good Friday and Saturday afternoons, congregants from Christchurch on The Grove handing out hot cross buns to shoppers and passers-by, me included.

Easter Sunday though I spent mostly moving around the garden with a succession of mugs of tea and Ron Rash’s The Caretaker. A new to me author thanks to Mel from Griffin Books in Penarth, a recommendation in passing when I was there the other week.

By the time we get back from our walk Easter eggs have been claimed from the lucky dip line up I left on the kitchen side. I send Easter egg money to the oldest who’s stayed in Newcastle. He’s done enough train travel these past few weeks with a camera in hand and he too needs to be in his home.

This time last year he was a month away from handing in his final university assignment and starting this job. This April he’s been in Aberdeen, Glasgow and London filming for Torvill & Dean’s Last Dance, editing for the London Landmark’s Half Marathon and the Junior Boat Race.

His head is just about catching up with his body.

Middle child is home from university, spending most of his time out with friends. He’s home on Easter Sunday though watching TV in between asking if we’ll be his proxy vote in the May local elections and searching for food.

Andy heads off to do some beekeeping with a friend mid-afternoon. He’s completed his beekeeping course, built a hive and is amassing kit including his beekeeping suit. No bees yet though.

Why on earth is this landlubber contemplating dips in the river, Googling outdoor swimming kit and buying tickets for moonlight swims in the lido?

Dear reader, how are you?

Greetings from sunny Penarth in south Wales where I landed yesterday afternoon. I parked up outside my sister and brother-in-law’s flat, sent them a text to say I’d arrived, but figuring they’d still be working, walked straight down to the pier and looked out to sea. It’s amazing how six hours of diving can be put right with a takeaway cup of tea, some sun and the sound of waves against the pebbly beach.

This piece has taken me longer to write than I anticipated so thank you in advance or reading and overlooking any typos and errors!

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Being in or near the water has been a theme this past week after inhaling

Emma Simpson debut book, her memoir Breaking Waves. In it she shares how wild swimming, how being in water has given her solace and respite from grief and pain, from the death of her brother, health challenges, leaving her career as an Air Traffic Controller and birth trauma. But it’s not just her story that she shares.

She weaves in stories from some of the women she’s met while outdoor swimming over the years. Women both close to home and across the globe. We’re talking women who’ve swum around Manhattan and English channel relays and that’s just for starters.

Reading Breaking Waves last week led to a rare dipping of my toes in the ice cold beck that runs in between Cow and Calf rocks and Rocky Valley on Friday lunchtime. This is a beck I’ve crossed countless times and not once stopped to take my trainers off for a paddle. This small step escalated quickly into buying tickets for a couple of moonlight swims at Ilkley Lido in June and September, joining the Otley Bluetits swimming community and Googling outdoor swimming kit.

From land lubber to wild swimmer (maybe)

The things is though, I grew up in landlocked Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Bar a handful of family holidays in Brittany and north Wales, and a few Sunday afternoons in the public swimming pool in St. Albans with dad, water didn’t feature hugely when I was growing up. It was all violin and piano lessons, the occasional netball or hockey match with school.

I played tennis a bit once I left the organised PE and games lessons of school behind, but that was about it. We weren’t really an outdoorsy kind of family. Museums, art galleries and concerts. Sitting around a kitchen table and chatting over food and the newspapers and books. Outdoor swimming? What?

This was brought home with startling clarity the one and only time I’ve been scuba diving, this was in the Great Barrier Reef in 2001. My approach from the moment we landed on Hamilton Island up until we sailed out from our island idyll was to pretend that I wasn’t about to face my fear. I could barely put my head under water in the swimming pool and here I was, about to wriggle into a wetsuit, don a mask and oxygen tank and dive down I don’t know how many metres beneath the surface and swim with the fish. By contrast, this was my husbands idea of heaven.

I was fine with the sailing bit of the excursion, I could pretend that when the moment came I could duck out of it, say, ‘No, no you go. I’ll be fine here.’ I probably took a book with me in anticipation of having a few hours peace and quiet to myself, sitting on the deck in the sun while everyone else was in the water. But no.

While my husband and the rest of the group were beyond excited, listening intently to get through the safety talks, the ‘put your masks on and place your face in the water’ stage and head into the sea, I was frozen at the ‘put your face in the water’ stage.

Face in water, really?

I was spotted by a kind female guide who floated over to me, gently voiced and acknowledged my fear without laughing at me or minimising how I was feeling. My other fear, being laughed at. She pointed out that having got this far future me would be pretty p***** off that I’d sat on the boat while the others had the dive of a lifetime. And also, sitting it out wasn’t an option.

And so, with a firm hand she cajoled me. We ignored everyone else and she broke down each step, helping me through each one, letting me take my time, but not too much time, all the while saying ‘there, see, you can do it’. And I did.

The others had long left the boat but no matter, she stuck with me and we dived together. There were lots of reassuring thumbs up, pointing out sea creatures and just that one time when I needed to go up and poke my head above the sea, ‘just needed to check the sky was still there, did you?’ she smiled, ‘pretty much’ my answer and back down into the sea we went again.

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Those Sunday afternoons in the heaving with bodies swimming pool with dad where I was terrified of being dunked under water, and being kicked by a flailing limb whilst also secretly wishing I could jump in with the freedom so many others seemed to possess, hadn’t prepared me for diving in the Barrier Reef.

Neither had the swimming lessons at secondary school in the unheated outdoor swimming pool. We’d be marched out of the changing rooms across the walkway in our regulation black swimming costumes, too small scratchy towels and swim caps and in to the freezing pool hidden behind wooden fences.

Teeth chattering, mottled legs we’d shiver while Miss Williams shouted instructions to us that we’d usually misunderstand before scrambling into the pool and trying to stay warm during repeated widths of front crawl and breast stroke. Then it was the pain of trying to wrestle out of a damp swimming costume, getting dry and back into our school uniform, the rest of the day spent with damp hair, body parts and school bag.

Six months living in Malaga in my third year at university (I studied French and Spanish at Newcastle Poly and spent my third year in Aix-en-Provence and Malaga) gave me an introduction to seaside living. That’s if you consider slathering on Hawaiian Tropic, gossiping about the antics from the night before while wearing cheap bikinis from the market as learning to live by the sea, ditto the summer I spent in Palma de Mallorca the summer after I graduated. These beach experiences were less about being in the water than hoping – in vain – that my milky white skin might, just might gather a little colour for once.

It’s not screaming ‘loves being the water’ is it even though I love that weightless feeling, the feeling of being supported by the water once I’m in.

I guess I never grew up knowing what my body could do, I’ve always been quick to discount myself. ‘I can’t do that’ the refrain and the longer that’s gone on, the harder it’s been to break that pattern, chronic fatigue and cancer compounding those beliefs.

There is also the vulnerability that comes with from swapping the safety of clothes that cover your body, that hide and mask your bodily insecurities and wriggling into a teeny tiny piece of material made of nylon, polyester and elastane. I was, still am, more of a tuck your shirt in rather than let it all hang out kinda person.

Living ‘by’ the sea rather than being ‘in’ it

And yet I so miss living by the sea, being by the water. We spent three years living in Bournemouth between 2014 and 2017 with Alum Chine beach at the bottom of our road but those years feel shorter and shorter as time moves on. I haven’t been back since we moved to Ilkley, but I am feeling the urge to revisit the stretch of beach that provided me with such peace and solace during the three challenging years when mum, dad and grandma died. It’s ten years this May since mum died, August for grandma and September for dad. 2015 was a tough year.

I’d love to tell you that I was in and out of the sea all the time when we lived there but I wasn’t. I did spend hours staring out to the horizon, walking up and down the prom with the dog.

I kept the sea at arms length, other than walking into the shallows, leaving the bounding in and out to the dog and children. I guess the key word here is living ‘by’ the sea rather than being ‘in’ it.

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From the beck to the river

And now we’re in land locked Ilkley although we’re surrounded by water more than I initially thought. I mean there’s the beck that runs off the moor, passing our house and into the Rive Wharfe, a river that provides swim and dipping spots through the Yorkshire Dales. Our neighbours on the other side of the beck have created steps from their garden down the bank to a plunge pool in the beck and installed a sauna too.

Now there’s an idea.

Ilkley is an active town full of people doing things. Cycling, running, hiking, outdoor swimming. You can’t move for people moving about in lycra, Goretex and technical fabric. We have outdoor clothing shops galore, neither are we short on cafes for post-endeavour coffees. I mean, we have Ilkley Moor looming over us, it’s no surprise that this landscape seeps into every corner of our lives.

It can be intimidating when you don’t feel like you fit that active or outdoorsy image, as I don’t, or didn’t though. As time passes, and it’ll be eight years this autumn since we moved to Yorkshire and I feel stronger physically, am less prone to comparing myself to others who might whizz past me on the moor, am more secure in what makes me tick and what I need to make me tick, I’m finding my own way. My own way of being in this incredible landscape in a way that feels good for me mentally, emotionally and physically.

From the shallows of the sea

And so I figure, while reading Breaking Waves, why not give wild swimming a go? Is it time for me to stop letting this what? Fear, mental block get in the way of doing something I feel instinctively will be good for me. Lord knows the world is scary and chaotic. Finding ways to be quiet, to laugh, to spend time with others outdoors, shedding the layers of daily life feels like a good thing. And I hear cake and tea are often involved too.

There might be other, warmer ways to find this peace but I also want to have a go so that I can stop being the person on the river bank observing, the person who labels themselves as someone who doesn’t do things like wild swimming rather than someone who’s given it a go and even enjoyed it. Maybe.

Someone who, when tickets go on sale for the Ilkley Lido summer solstice swim buys one and swims under the breaking sky of the longest day rather than looking wistfully at the photos of smiling (mostly) women on Instagram later in that day.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve shut down chances to do things through baseless fear that I’m not built do these things, a perception that I’m not that type of person.

I’m aware of the dangers of wild swimming, the shock of the cold and I’ll ensure I’m in good hands when I head to the water whether it’s with friends who are already experienced wild swimmers (*including the friend who wrote the comment I borrowed for the headline), the Bluetits community of swimmers I’ve stumbled across down the road in Otley and there’s Emma too, who is generous with her support and general wild swimming enabling.

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Asking the water to do the holding

Plus, after writing about all the things we hold onto the other week, the idea of asking the water to hold me, to allow me to float freely, even if it is for for a few freezing seconds, sounds pretty good.

And that, my friends is why I bought tickets for moonlight swims at Ilkley Lido in June and September on Sunday afternoon. Maybe I’m mad, but something’s drawing me to the water this Spring so wish me luck and I’ll report back!

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Thank you as ever for reading and supporting my writing and please jump into the comments with any wild swimming tips and suggestions!

Harriet

Hello, how are you?

I think the last time I wrote to you we’d had a weekend of unfamiliar, yet very welcome, warmth. People shedding coats, sunglasses on their first outings of the year! It was short lived as it turned out. Hats and scarves and hoods back on within days as temperatures plummeted.

It was, from the shop floor, interesting. We couldn’t help but notice the lighter footsteps, the easy laughter and smiles. Women – for our shop is mostly women – heads up, eyes darting around. Conversation easier to conjure up when faces are open. Couples and groups of friends bumping into each other in the doorway. The sound of conversation and laughter. Energy and vibrancy.

We’re used to seeing people weighed down. Juggling handbags and shopping bags, laptops in backpacks, glasses, wallets, pints of milk, buggies and babies strapped to chests. We spot customers cradling mugs, jewellery boxes and greetings cards and ask if we can look after them.

We tell them that we’ll pop them behind the till so they can walk free handed. That there’s no pressure to buy the things they hand us. We’ll just let the shelf behind the till carry the weight.

It’s not just the physical load. We’re pretty good at spotting the focused eyes, the way someone loops around the shop not asking for help but so relieved when one of us approaches. Shoulders drop, a deep breath released. Overwhelmed with decisions and wanting to get the gift right for their friend’s daughter’s 21st, their mother-in-law or their ‘kooky aunt who’s going to be 60’. We try to lighten these decisions. These decisions, our shop, should be a place where people can feel light.

I’m always struck by the look of surprise that flits across their face, the relief released from their tightly held body. One less thing they need to think about, carry on their own.

Women holding things

This idea of how we hold onto things has been with me since seeing this beautiful film shared by @feminist and @messynessychic on Instagram on International Women’s Day.

I’ve seen it before and it’s one of those films I tend to play not just once, but a few times. Less than a minute long, it blends footage of women criss-crossing the streets of Paris holding children’s hands, their partners hands. Shopping bags, bunches of flowers, chairs, a vacuum cleaner with Maira Kalman reciting an extract from her book ‘Women Holding Things’. A book she describes as a, ‘a love song to women and at times everyone (as exhausted as we all are from holding everything).’ A book born during the pandemic.

Sometimes, when I am feeling
particularly happy or content,
I think I can provide sustenance
for legions of human beings.
I can hold the entire world in my arms.

Other times, I can barely cross the
room. And I drop my arms. Frozen.”
Maira Kalman, Women Holding Things

It reminds me of an email exchange I had with a therapist back in October 2022 where, and this was before she’d met me in person, she wrote.

‘Thank you so much for sharing a little bit about what is bringing you to therapy. It sounds like you have been going through and also ‘holding’ a lot of things – I hope you are ok.’

Ping. The lightbulb.

Yes. Holding was the word.

I was so good at holding. Adding each blow to the last. The grief, the cancer, the relocation. Holding my breath in anticipation of the next blow. Holding my children’s emotions, holding my own, holding the to-do lists and not knowing how to lessen the load, gripping, holding more and more, tighter and tighter. My husband too.

I’d hold onto unhelpful conversations I’d repeat in my head. I’d hold onto memories played and replayed in unending circles, replaying events over and over in often failed attempts to make sense. I was unable to find the door, the path that would help me to lighten the load. There were tears, outbursts of anger and frustration. A general sense of not feeling right, of being weighed down, unable to move. I didn’t’ feel like me, not that I really knew who me was in this changed world.

I think it was one or maybe both of my sisters who gently asked during another tear-filled phone call if I thought it would help to talk to someone.

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That was the autumn of 2022 and in the following January I wrote a little about how I was feeling after a couple of months of Monday afternoon therapy sessions. I’ve shared it here. An hour sitting opposite L on the couch. Box of tissues, herbal tea, nowhere to hide. A gentle, probing gaze. Silence and thoughts. The ritual of arriving not quite knowing where the conversation might go but also knowing that this space was somewhere that would help me to learn how to release the load.

‘I think I’m able to look forward because I’m learning how to look back. I mean properly look back, not just rehash what went before but look back so that I can move freely, in whichever direction I want to. I was so bored and fed up with forever trying to move forward only for the bungee cord to snap me back and leave me swaying the wind, not knowing (again) which way was up. I wonder if there comes a point where holding onto the past is easier than trying to work out how to live in a new future.’

It’s been two years since those weekly sessions came to a natural end, and there’ve been times where I’ve thought about restarting them but haven’t. Sometimes it’s enough to know that I can if I need to and sometimes it’s enough to have words like ‘holding’ or that Instagram story to take me back there.

I’ve felt like I’ve been holding onto things more these past weeks. Things I’d got used to brushing off. Conversations and exchanges landing with a thud, taking longer to pass through me. I’ve been holding my breath again. Holding onto perceived slights even though I know I’m imagining something that wasn’t there. Reminding myself that we’re all holding stuff. I know too that some of my reactions in conversations haven’t been quite right.

I notice that when I’m holding too much too tightly that my world shrinks. My walks shorter, more likely to follow the same path. Reluctant to talk. It’s why I turn to writing. To Writers Hour with

London Writers’ Salon . I love the gentle acceptance, energy and warmth of that space while I write whatever it is I need to write.

I also know that when I’m holding myself too tight, it makes it harder to be held. To soften enough to allow someone else in.

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At some point during those Monday afternoon sessions on the therapist’s couch I printed out a feelings wheel and sellotaped it to my fridge. A prompt, a nudge. New words to describe what any of us in the house were feeling because I figured if I didn’t have the words, then there was a good chance no one else would.

I come from a family of talkers and listeners, but in the years leading up to sitting on the therapist’s couch I’d become acutely aware that my emotional vocabulary was limited. I was either tired or fine, which in a decade of grief, and cancer, relocation and chronic fatigue and parenting, was clearly not entirely true. Plus, I wasn’t great at using the few words I did have.

I didn’t know how to say, ‘I feel cross/confused/angry/happy/disappointed/scared’ without feeling embarrassed or shamed. I didn’t know how good it felt when I allowed myself to name those emotions, to listen and notice where I felt them in my body, accept them, allow them to stay a while before making space for something else.

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We had a friends round on Friday evening for drinks and a bite to eat, a relaxed evening of chatting in the kitchen. We don’t do it often and I suspect I’ve been holding my breath a little more than usual in planning the evening. Thinking about the combination of people, will they enjoy themselves. Do we have enough food? All that stuff. It led to a cleaning blitz and I wondered if I should take the feelings wheel off the fridge.

I didn’t, and I’m glad it didn’t, because it prompted conversations. Where did you get it? Do you use it, do the children use it? One of the guests a therapist, all creatives and empaths. A safe, gentle group, why wouldn’t I want to share that with them?

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Back on the shop floor, out of ten customer’s approached and nine, ‘Oh thank you, that would be great, I was worried I was going to drop the my/vase/box of glasses/scarf’ exchanges there’ll be a tenth, ‘oh thank you, I’m fine.’ And they’ll wander off holding the jumper or the cushion, often tighter, to their chest.

Because there’s comfort in holding too. The warmth of another’s hand, being held in a tight embrace, the comfort in wrapping our hands around a mug filled with tea, coffee or hot chocolate. Being wrapped in a blanket or even the gentle touch of hand on arm.

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This piece of writing has been lurking in the corners of my mind for a few weeks. The ‘Women Holding Things’ video, Annette Vaucanson Kelly’s siren call, inviting me to share some thoughts on International Women’s Day, plus reflections on how I’ve been feeling. I knew I wanted to start with the word ‘holding’ but I wasn’t sure where it would take me. Thank you for following the thread to this point.

Harriet

I need and want writing to be the baseline beat of my daily, weekly life so why do I let a habit that I love, and that nourishes me slip so easily…

Greetings dear reader,

How are you this first Sunday of March 2025? In this corner of Yorkshire the whispers of Spring are getting louder, my sunglasses have had their first outing of the year and some have even been brave enough to do away with a coat. That said, the man I saw striding through town this afternoon wearing a black vest, Bermuda shorts and a straw sun hat was maybe the bravest – and coldest – of all.

I guess there is one quote that’s lurked in my mind these past few weeks. It might be one you’ve come across, I might even have shared it before. It’s by the American writer Annie Dillard and it goes like this.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

It popped into my mind during Writers Hour, you might remember me mentioning Writers Hour with London Writers’ Salon before, you might be a Writers Hour writer already.

These free fifty-ish minute writing sessions on Zoom – alone but together – have kept me writing for years now. I realised though that I’d let this habit, a nourishing habit at that, slide. Rejoining these sessions has reminded me how important it is to have this space and time marked out in the calendar to not only write, but to write in the company of others, 330+ people and counting one morning alone last week.

Hello, hello, hello!

I can’t help but smile at the cacophony of hellos as people wander into the Zoom room, and the instant silence when the hosts put us on mute. I love seeing the chat fill with people saying hello, where they are in the world, what the weather is like and what they’re going to work on during the session.

That first session back I remembered how good it felt using this time for free writing (some call it journalling, others Morning Pages). Those empty the head onto a page writing sessions that leave me feeling lighter, creating space for other words and thoughts to emerge. Or simply allowing me to go about the day feeling less burdened by the thoughts running in a never ending circle.

It’s the kind of writing I love but for some reason fall out the habit of doing, especially if I don’t have something like Writers Hour to give me the nudge to pick up the pencil.

It was during one of these writing sessions that I remembered the Annie Dillard quote, and how these regular drops of writing give me a baseline to my day, my week alongside the HiT sessions, the shifts on the shop floor at Oliver Bonas and walks with Bella on the moor. A baseline that I also slot my freelance client writing into.

I don’t know what you’d call the rhythm this baseline creates, but I do know that as I tip toe out of a few weeks of being in a fatigue funk, I’m putting things in my diary that, as per Annie’s quote, bring reason and order, as well as peace to my life

Baseline, verse and chorus

This is the baseline that I can layer a line of verses over – trips out to Salts Mill, to Leeds and outings with friends (my own version of Julia Cameron’s artist’s dates if you follow The Artist’s Way) before the chorus comes in with its holidays and longer breaks. I’m not sure if that makes sense, but it works in my head.

I think one of the reasons I’ve been struggling to find a rhythm this year is because I was racing ahead to the verse and chorus without having put the baseline down.

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Reading, reading and more reading

Last year I read a lot of books, I have a list on my phone, but I didn’t feel like I engaged with, or really loved books in the way I have done before. More books than usual were left unread, and I’m not one for abandoning a book.

This year feels different though. Deleting apps from my phone, swapping that dead time spent scrolling for pages in hand is making a difference and I’m switching between books as I would flicking through the TV channels of an evening. Back to Annie again and being more deliberate in not only how I spend my time, but how I want to be, how I want to feel in these minutes and hours too.

There’s Clare Chamber’s Shy Creatures that I listen to when I’m walking to work or walking laps of the tarn with the dog.

Full disclosure though, I wasn’t paying attention when I downloaded Shy Creatures, I saw the name Clare, thought I was downloading something by ‘Small things like these’ author, the brilliant Claire Keegan, only to realise I’d downloaded a book by the other author called Clare I like who wrote a book with the word ‘small’ in it. Clare ‘Small Pleasures’ Chambers.

What I think Clare Chambers is so good at is writing tightly observational novels set in the 1950s and 1960s with women front and centre, quietly questioning their place in the world and their relationships with the men around them. There’s a very distinctive style to her books, the characters and stories that I like. It reminds me of Sally Vickers in some ways and I’m enjoying listening to Shy Creatures.

At night though I’m reading Samantha Harvey’s Orbital and I love it. I love the way it makes me feel. I love how light it is in my hands, I love the cover and I love how it tackles big themes in such a gentle, human way. A book to savour and come back to.

I don’t read it during the day though. Daytime reading, as in the books I carry around the house with me or have in my bag when out and about tend to be meatier, layered stories I get can my teeth into, and right now Elif Shafak’s Three Daughters of Eve fits that bill. I’m enjoying the unfolding of Peri’s story from her childhood in Istanbul, student days at Oxford, and back in Istanbul as a wife and mother where we first meet her.

That said, a friend placing Sophie van Lleweyn’s Bottled Goods into my hands partway through last week has thrown all of that up in the air. She knew I’d love it, and I do. It’s a novella-in-flash according to the blurb on the back. The writing is beautiful, each one of the short chapter stories perfect in their own right and strung together they make for a beautiful short read.

Sidenote: These are the people I want to surround myself with. Friends who not only recommend books but come and place them in your hands.

I’ve also laid my hands on a copy of Nature’s Calendar as recommended by

Lindsay Johnstone in her seasonal writing workshop. I don’t need a lot of encouragement to slow down, but I’ve been struggling with this four seasons in a year thing for a while, and to have the year broken down into 72 micro seasons so beautifully illustrated and explained is a joy.

As of today, Sunday 2nd March we are in ‘Frogspawn Wobbles’ season until 5th March when we move into ‘Woodpeckers Drumming’. Brilliant.

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And finally this Sunday evening I’ll leave you with these words from poet David Whyte. These ‘Words of Wisdom’ were shared at the beginning of Writers Hour this week and they are beautiful.

Routine that carries the timeless and the exploratory, can become the central foundation of keeping a relationship alive, of writing a book, raising a family, building a house.

We make a miracle out of simply turning up, at the same time to do the same good work, watching that work mature, slowly, with our daily visitations, into something we could not fully imagine, before we gave ourselves over to that daily, dedicated, repeated, miraculous act of appearance and disappearance at the waiting desk or at our well-loved familiar workbench.

David Whyte, Consolations II

Wishing you a calm and peaceful week ahead, thank you as ever for being here.

Harriet

PS I’ve written this between the kitchen and living room after a shift at work so please forgive any typos and mistakes. I’m sure I’ll spot them as soon as I send this out!