Gum on My Shoe

By Lisa Judson If anyone had told me two years ago that I’d be swimming in open water, all through the year, in temperatures that sometimes go down to the minus figures, I would, without doubt, have told them EXACTLY where to go! But here we are, two years on and guess what I’m doing, between two and four times a week on average?! The way it worked was that my therapist tried for more than two years to get me to try it. She explained how good it was for your central nervous system and how it would help to reset my brain. She even took me to the lake where I now swim around four times a week. I laughed and said, (this is the polite, publishable version by the way) “not a chance — but the oat milk decaf latte was ok — so I’d come down and join you for one of those.” About six months later I was standing at the edge of the lake, in a wetsuit, with her encouraging me to just step in for a moment. It has to be said that my ADHD brain is a little tinker for helping me into an “all or...

Walking in the park, I saw an old man sitting on a bench. He looked sad. So I wrote him a poem about the ducks. It’s for your wife, I said. He looked at me. At the poem. Thank you, he said. She loved the ducks. He was crying as I walked away.   Photo by Guilherme Garcia at Unsplash.  

And now I’m just left with this stump — this space — which I want to also understand. (Andy Goldsworthy) This post was inspired by a recent act of vandalism that resulted in the felling of the “Robin Hood Tree” at Sycamore Gap beside Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, England. Believed to have been planted between 1860–1890, the tree achieved international recognition in 1991 when it featured in the Kevin Costner movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves . It was a favourite subject for photographers and artists. People proposed to their spouses there. Ashes of loved ones were scattered there. It was voted Tree of the Year in 2016 in a public competition run by The Woodland Trust. For a fuller account of the tree’s significance and the effect of its loss, check out this BBC News article . This post isn’t about the Gap sycamore alone, however. It’s something I’ve wanted to write since the unexpected — and unexplained — loss of a tree close to my home in May 2021. It didn’t have ...

Writing prompt: Tell the story of something that happened to you, but write it from a different perspective, or as fiction rather than fact. It was our first visit to the Green Festival. In past years I’d learned about it after the event, or we were doing something else, or ... well, anyway, this year we went along: my wife Pamela, son Michael and step-daughter Emma. When we arrived there seemed to be plenty going on. Lots of stalls and tents, noise and people. Our first priority, though, was food: somewhere to sit and eat the picnic we’d brought with us. We found a suitable spot close by a huge felled tree that was providing children with a makeshift and ecologically sound climbing frame. We attacked our picnic with good-natured greed to the accompaniment of the loud, live, 70s music emanating from a marquee somewhere close behind us. My hunger pangs assuaged, I sat back to take in the surroundings and indulge in a little people-watching. Perhaps from a desire on the part o...

“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.” (Laura Ingalls Wilder) Covid-19 has curtailed many of the activities that brought meaning to our lives. However, for many of us it has provided an opportunity to engage more with our immediate surroundings. Wherever we live and no matter our personal circumstances we can all invite the natural world into our lives. Garden Visitors Working from home has given me the chance to observe the wildlife in our garden more than ever before. Several times a day I step away from my laptop and take a stroll around the estate — aka our small overgrown garden. We keep a variety of feeders stocked with sunflower seeds, peanuts, fat treats, and mealworms and have been blessed by visits from a wide range of species including blue tit, great tit, goldfinch, greenfinch, chaffinch, bullfinch, blackbird, robin, wood pigeon, starling, house sparrow, wren, lesser spotted woodpecker, and magpie. The feeders have also attracted a grey sq...