Everyday Words

Hello dear Everyday Word friends, Photo by Thomas Bormans on Unsplash How are you? As the sub-title of this newsletter and the photo above suggest I’m in a bit of a list making frenzy at the moment. It’s all happy, and based around my poetry collection about Capability Brown being launched out in the world. Have I mentioned that the Hands of a Gardener is now out…. Oh just a few times. Ok, let’s move on.

Hello my Everyday Word friends And happy June to you. This newsletter is a bit different this month, because instead of random things I’ve found across all sorts of places I’m going to give you a list of random (and hopefully helpful) things I’ve discovered when writing my poetry collection, The Hands of a Gardener, and its launch. This book started as a novel based on Capability Brown’s wife, Biddy.

Hello my word-loving friends, Here’s a beautiful word for you today … and one I’ve been NEEDING to find out more about recently. Photo by Vera Lee Bird on Unsplash This definition from the website is something I love … “Thrutopian visions craft, grounded, plausible and inspiring route maps from a recognisable present towards a future we’d be proud to leave behind…. This is not dystopia – bringing the worst of ourselves to the table.

Hello to you all, and welcome! “Go further than you planned. Ask for the moon. You will be surprised how often you get it.” —Paulo Coelho This painting above is on show at the Met Gallery, Two Men Contemplating the Moon, and was painted by Caspar David Friedrich between 1825-1830. Maybe you are like me at the moment and can’t stop ‘contemplating the moon’. It’s not just because of Artemis II, although that’s a huge part, but because I don’t particularly want to think about what’s happening on earth.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train. Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest Hello to you all! It’s hard to write anything at the moment, it can all feel a little trivial but I know that sometimes I need to take my mind away from the news. Life goes on whether I like it or not, and the routine of writing and publishing this newsletter is something I value so here I am. You’re very welcome here too.

Hello my dear Everyday Words friends, Well, here we all are at the turn of something, there’s such a shift in the air and all we can do - surely - is hope that we end up the right way round at the end of it. I don’t know about you but as part of my self-care, I’ve been watching the Mamdani press conference with ‘assorted children’ on repeat and also feeding the birds in my little garden.

Hello my Everyday Words friends, But first, here’s a riddle … what’s ‘weird and funny, but also scary’… Photo by Gary Fultz on Unsplash No, not that squirrel! It’s actually the reaction workers at Deloittes gave when a marketing trainee came into the office and did… nothing! (Actually back briefly to the squirrel because I typed in ‘doing nothing’ to stock photos and there was JUST ONE! This one.

Hello all of you I’m a bit late with this but I’m writing to you from Tunbridge Wells where we’ve had no drinking water for over a week, and counting. Actually for five days we had no water at all, and then when it came back we were told very firmly not to do anything with it – apart from flushing the toilet – without boiling it first. They haven’t told us why or what’s in it, and lots of conflicting information is whizzing round my whatsapp groups and social media feeds.

This month we are all about getting it a bit wrong. Being an amateur if you like. It’s something I’m an EXPERT at. Oh wait… Anyway, let’s go. This subject does let me share some pretty amazing things, and it doesn’t matter if I don’t quite get it right because I’ll just be fitting in with the theme. 1. One of my very favourite poems by Jack Gilbert Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

Cafe writing with prompts Dear friends, Admittedly most of those photographs above look the same - mostly wooden tables, half drunk cups of coffee, and best of all an empty page ready to be written on! I’m such a happy cafe wr…