Sometimes, things get the better of us; I’ve just been through a patch where I didn’t want to go out and socialise, didn’t want to write anything, just wanted to sit – which was getting really boring I realised I was feeling a bit depressed – still am, although this is not a particularly bad patch – so I’m doing something about it I managed to go to my writing

Continuing the theme of words set to music, Robin and I are still collaborating, in what’s proving to be a really interesting project. The writing is centred on a fictional village, with a pub (the Lamb of Sussex) at the heart. This piece does not include the Lamb, but does use landmarks I’ve borrowed from reality. This piece is perhaps a bit more contraversial than others I’ve written, and comes

School days are a distant memory, nevertheless some of my most powerful memories come from those days. Music has always been important to me; I listen to music when I write, when I work, when I cook – I’d have music going the whole time, if I could – but maybe that would send me a bit more dotty than I already am. So much music is available now –

I first saw an Egret (a little egret) from a train window. I was on my way to Cornwall, to meet an English Nature reserve warden. At the time, I was studying the heath fritillary butterfly, endangered through habitat loss, and exploring the use of a computer programme (a version of GIS) to identify nearby locations where the butterfly might prosper, were it to gain a foothold. The train to

Gardening gets you closer to nature. Being outdoors in the weather, noticing the chill of a breeze or the warmth of May sun, the natural world comes closer. Nature comes in all sort of guises – from the earthworms in the compost, the robin who bugs you to turn over soil, to the buzzard that cries overhead. A garden is a web of living, breathing entities, sharing the space in

Last week, I was talking to someone about how some poems come easy, and others take a while to work on and polish up, and I mentioned this poem to them at the time, so here it is. This poem, Gull Gyre, was remarkably easy to write, although I did spend time thinking it through beforehand. Driving to the garden centre one day, maybe a couple of weeks ago, I