We’ll meet again one day I’m sure… your previous time down here coincided with when I had to go to ground for a few years and relearn how to be offline and in conversation only with family and people in my small town. I’m still living in that mode but when I can be better company again I will DM!
Thank you for holding me in mind. Fond memories always of our mentoring call and then that fine conversation at Edinburgh…
That’s a lovely thing to be told. Thank you Laine. I miss being a regular part of these spaces but I reached a limit in myself after all the book events and mum dying so had to focus on my small town life for a few years. Xx
It’s the first thing that’s moved me to post in months… I do miss how rich my online life used to be but I somehow lost the nerve for being public even in the quiet way of this. But oh the people I met before that happened - and you & yoir extraordinary work among them xx
It’s the first thing I’ve felt moved to post about in months and months! Lovely that you saw it - your podcast is still and always part of my regular late evening listening x
Photo shows the issue stamp page of an East Sussex County Library copy of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. The first issue dates are from the years of the Second World War when this area of the UK was often being bombed
I called out from the East Sussex library system store their copy of Aristotle’s The Nichomachean Ethics. Had tears come when I opened it and found its first readers took it out during the Second World War, when this area was often bombed. And yet people went out to get this text on how to live…
Image of the Ash Dome by sculptor David Nash: a ring of Ash trees planted in the 70s and tended ever since into this dancing intertwined shape. Their location in Wales remains secret.
“the sculptor’s advice for art and life Always give your ideas ‘molecules’, quickly, before they fade: just a title is enough, or a sketch, or a few notes on scrap paper, sellotaped up and kept in view. In this way, a thing beyond your time, resources, or abilities now, is far more likely to happen in future. Be professional and serious in your work, however late and tentative your endeavours. Measure success not by the number of people who respond to what you make but be motivated instead by that one necessary person you might meet, whenever you risk putting a well-intentioned work into the world. Be moved, also, by the possibility of becoming that person to others. Tell a true, ongoing story of your life as well as your art. Even if you receive no reward or notice for what you do, you still gain meaning from this, and purpose. Understand how much time it takes for a work, or a path, or a life to take shape. Be alert to the teachings of chance.” — The Cure for Sleep by Tanya Shadrick
‘Understand how much time it takes for a work, or a path, or a life to take shape’
A sculptor’s advice for art & life:
David Nash is perhaps best known for his living art piece the Ash Dome - planted in the 70s for the next millennium. He has literally grown a meaningful life. Here is his advice
A white wooden door is open to a dark basement. On the door is a yellow handpainted coat rack. On the lefthand hook is a man’s khaki gardening hat, and a faded blue workjacket. On the centre hook, beside it, is a woman’s blue-and-white-spotted headscarf and a navy apron. Portrait of a long marriage as workwear.
Well-worn: Husband & Wife
Was going about my quiet day alone at home, thirty years married, when the sight of our clothes without us had me stop and fill with feeling. Always-there but never-noticed: his habitual outfit, mine, hanging together on the basement door.
Oh my…. a family home of 70 more years. My mother moved so often that I can’t imagine the deep feeling of returning to a place that has held so much, so long...
A white wooden door is open to a dark basement. On the door is a yellow handpainted coat rack. On the lefthand hook is a man’s khaki gardening hat, and a faded blue workjacket. On the centre hook, beside it, is a woman’s blue-and-white-spotted headscarf and a navy apron. Portrait of a long marriage as workwear.
Well-worn: Husband & Wife
Was going about my quiet day alone at home, thirty years married, when the sight of our clothes without us had me stop and fill with feeling. Always-there but never-noticed: his habitual outfit, mine, hanging together on the basement door.
And thank you to you for reading. I’m hardly ever online anymore and not writing anything new for publication: reposted a few old things today in hope of meeting some interesting new people to follow… as has happened now.
Jen! I’m hardly ever online here anymore but how lovely that I logged on and this was the first thing I saw! Thank you again for being part of that soulful, trust-full, life-writing project with me. xxx
Ah, thank you. I hope I get to walk some with both of you one day….
“Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!”
In memoriam
#VirginiaWoolf #DOTD
28 March 1941
📷 Starlings over the River Ouse at Southease, near Woolf’s last home - Monks House, Rodmell, Sussex
“Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!”
In memoriam
#VirginiaWoolf #DOTD
28 March 1941
📷 Starlings over the River Ouse at Southease, near Woolf’s last home - Monks House, Rodmell, Sussex
‘She worked on the Harrier, the Concorde. She had a love of speed and freedom. Sports cars. Like the one in which she fled. Flew. From marriage and family. From us.’
Stunning piece by @npitchford.bsky.social for the decade-long collective #BirdsOfFirle project…
selkiepress.com/2025/03/18/b...
‘I once had a winter that was wordless’
In 2020 @littletollerbooks.bsky.social published my #BirdsOfFirle: origin story of a decade-long collective project on hope & grief as the things with feathers. I used Twitter to reach people; hope to relaunch here soon
www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing...
Thank you Laine (& for your early and much appreciated contribution. May I reshare that on here when I build out a thread of pieces to date? Half way mark already!) x
Thank you for reading & sharing!
Oh thank you! For reading Nicola’s powerful piece and kind words about the project x
Well that’s my first book of autumn waiting for me! Xx
Thank you, touched. And I was wondering just the other day about your new book… do you have a pub date in place? X
Deeply moving, beautifully drifting writing from @npitchford.bsky.social for the wonderful, occasional body of threaded stories that is @tanyashadrick.bsky.social’s #BirdsofFirle .. “as if belonging could be as multiple in its objects as love is.”
Thank you for reading dear Nicola. And would you be happy for me to share your piece on here soon? I’d like to create a thread showcasing the online pieces I’ve collected so far and yours is an important contribution.
Thank you, Ed, for reading & sharing Nicola’s powerful contribution. I’d lost heart at the five-year/halfway mark because Twitter was where I found readers for the contributions I receive. But joining here helped - as well as the amazing @npitchford.bsky.social agreeing to go first!
Thank you for reading, Patrick. And this gives me a chance to ask if I may share your piece here (this being the new home for sharing the online aspect of the project now our old way of doing that on X has been made impossible)
Thank you for reading & sharing, dear one. I know it will likely feel too soon for you to take part but how much I hope you will be part of this project: will you let me know whenever you are? Xx
Thank you, Geoff. You are rich a deep reader & generous sharer of stories xx
I’m not sure I would have continued past this halfway mark if you hadn’t agreed to be its relaunch writer. I knew you’d rords would remind me why I began this experiment back in 2020. That lift & expansion which comes from call & response xx
