Dearest Sheila… the energy that pulsed through my screen when I received your first piece, and then each that came after. How I read every single one of them to Nye so that when I called out about a new substack I wanted him to hear, he always guessed your name first.
At the end of the Hagitude year - our other great shared experience - I…
Dearest Sheila… the energy that pulsed through my screen when I received your first piece, and then each that came after. How I read every single one of them to Nye so that when I called out about a new substack I wanted him to hear, he always guessed your name first.
At the end of the Hagitude year - our other great shared experience - I remember being so touched at the end of the last zoom by how many of you around the world offered me your homes should I have travelled this year as I mean to. And I did mean to. Yet only a month later I had that abrupt private understanding while away in Yorkshire that I’d been away from home too too often for writing events since 2018 and then care of Mum since 21. This year - two trips abroad for my daughter’s sake - I’ve barely left Lewes. Not even to walk on the Downs out at Firle, Rodmell, Southease, those places I used to spend so much time in.
Instead, I do loops of town like a rook before it settles into its tree at night to roost. Am learning the names of everyone I pass by on a regular basis: up to hundreds now, enough for it to be noticeable as I walk around - huge numbers of handwaves, nods, calls. And yet these people know nothing about me other than I’m the lady who ‘strides about’ or is at the gym the same time as them. A few find out somehow that I’m a writer, just from my first name, and I mourn a bit that they know more about me than I will them, but that’s the price of a book in the local Waterstones and library. Still getting used to it: what it means to be an open book for those who want to go there. So I try to make it harder for new people I meet to know I have one!
Aware this is turning into a long one, but I’m writing to you as a friend from faraway, and this a letter I’m about to walk down to the post box.
If I do ever recover an urge to travel, you know that arriving at your back door to sit in your kitchen is one of the first journeys I’d be hoping to take.
Tanya, I have a loop I also walk…we are both site attached birds. This was a beautiful writing, I’ll hold it dear, and maybe one day we can continue the conversation. Xxx
Dearest Sheila… the energy that pulsed through my screen when I received your first piece, and then each that came after. How I read every single one of them to Nye so that when I called out about a new substack I wanted him to hear, he always guessed your name first.
At the end of the Hagitude year - our other great shared experience - I remember being so touched at the end of the last zoom by how many of you around the world offered me your homes should I have travelled this year as I mean to. And I did mean to. Yet only a month later I had that abrupt private understanding while away in Yorkshire that I’d been away from home too too often for writing events since 2018 and then care of Mum since 21. This year - two trips abroad for my daughter’s sake - I’ve barely left Lewes. Not even to walk on the Downs out at Firle, Rodmell, Southease, those places I used to spend so much time in.
Instead, I do loops of town like a rook before it settles into its tree at night to roost. Am learning the names of everyone I pass by on a regular basis: up to hundreds now, enough for it to be noticeable as I walk around - huge numbers of handwaves, nods, calls. And yet these people know nothing about me other than I’m the lady who ‘strides about’ or is at the gym the same time as them. A few find out somehow that I’m a writer, just from my first name, and I mourn a bit that they know more about me than I will them, but that’s the price of a book in the local Waterstones and library. Still getting used to it: what it means to be an open book for those who want to go there. So I try to make it harder for new people I meet to know I have one!
Aware this is turning into a long one, but I’m writing to you as a friend from faraway, and this a letter I’m about to walk down to the post box.
If I do ever recover an urge to travel, you know that arriving at your back door to sit in your kitchen is one of the first journeys I’d be hoping to take.
Much love and gratitude in return xxx
Tanya, I have a loop I also walk…we are both site attached birds. This was a beautiful writing, I’ll hold it dear, and maybe one day we can continue the conversation. Xxx
‘site attached bird’ - a good new way to think of myself! xxx