Category: Living

Home, Books and a Sense of Belonging

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It’s an early grey Sunday morning, and the rain taps on the window quietly. The long drought has at last shifted to much-needed rain, and my sea sounds are behind me from my little sound machine. A hot cup of tea sits on the shelf above, and I have no idea quite where these words will go, only that something now needs to be said.

Behind me are the current books that have largely been part of my home, life, and a sense of belonging over these past three months. One is absent (as it’s been returned to the library – I am a great supporter of public libraries), but I have mentioned it to many of my friends on social media. ‘Notes From Walnut Tree Farm’ by Roger Deakin, published in 2008, two years after his death. The farm sits on the edge of Mellis Common near Diss.

This book was so powerful for me in the following ways:

  1. It told me about the fascinating life of a nature writer that I knew nothing about and who should stand more prominently in the genre of Nature writing.
  2. I was transported into a beautiful home with 12 acres, a life so powerfully yet so peacefully lived, with such a raw sense of presence. A life lived with great purpose and commitment to conservation.
  3. The writing was so poetic, vibrant, and so well written. It was an inspiration for my own words, and how I could become better at writing these blog posts.
  4. Lasting impression:
  6. It left me with such a lasting impression that I wanted to find this place and soak in something of what he knew on the edge of Mellis Common, near Diss, on the edges of Suffolk and Norfolk.
  7. I also felt a personal connection. Suffolk is where I was born, though on the Northern fringes in Lowestoft. There were mentions of towns that reinforced a sense of belonging, that I too was part of this special place.

This book was compiled from his nature notes, capturing the last six years of his life. Tragically, as he was finishing ‘Wildwood’ (about the life of trees), he died in August 2006 of glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain tumour, at the age of 63. To be able to see that book’s completion, as he was dying of something that was killing his mind, demonstrates to me just what a special talent he had for writing.

He has been described as a literary genius and was a personal friend of Robert Macfarlane ( one of Nature’s great travel writers), who became his literary agent after his death. A personal archive of his notes is currently with the University of East Anglia.

 Roger bought Walnut Tree Farm in 1970, having discovered it a year before in a derelict condition. He restored his home and lived there until his death in 2006. The Farm was eventually sold by his son Rufus to his childhood friends, who I believe still own it to this day, and it is possible to stay there in one of the dwellings Roger built himself. The Shepherd’s Hut and The Railway Wagon were two of his favourite nooks that he would take off to write in. I don’t include any photos here out of respect as this is now a private home.

Roger also described in his notes how he fought to save the nearby Cow pasture Lane from developers and, had he lived, his friends, knowing his radical views and forceful character, when it came to saving the countryside, believed he would have been a prominent character in Extinction Rebellion. He was already a founding member of Friends of the Earth and co-founder of Common Ground, the latter being a conservation movement saving hedgerows, orchards and verges.

There was another book written in his lifetime which is viewed as a catalyst for the wild swimming movement. ‘Waterlog, a swimmer’s journey through Britain’ by Patrick Barkham, published in 1999, becoming a best seller by word of mouth.

To find out more about this work and Roger’s life and career, click here. Patrick wrote an excellent article for The Guardian, and his biography is taken from interviews with the many people Roger knew and worked with. It’s a brilliant biography by someone who never met him, yet in incredible detail captured his life and the essence of who he was.

Why has this character fascinated me so much that I had to go and find Walnut Tree Farm?

My kind friend, also called Helen, drove me there in August, and we had quite an adventure finding this home nestled down a lane, on the edge of Mellis Common, having asked two people for its whereabouts. It was a joy to meet someone who had met him.

We didn’t get to find Cow Pasture Lane, due to time restrictions (we packed a lot in that day), but when I can drive again, this will be one of the first places I shall be returning to.

A final word:

‘The Notes of Walnut Tree Farm’ truly celebrate art in the natural world because the words became a living, breathing embodiment of a life infused with natural connections, beauty, colour, poetry, prose, and a life well lived with passion and energy. For me, it echoes how our home isn’t just about a physical dwelling but a spiritual connection with life itself through people, places, and creatures, both on land, water, and air. All of this was there within the pages. Pages that spoke to me, became alive, and showed me why, as I mature with age, the natural world is a huge part of my identity and how both art and nature continue to heal me in so many ways from physical and emotional illness.

Next time:

When Art and Nature become medicine.    

Connecting The Arts to the Natural World ( an introduction)

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  For me, music flows through the air as freely as wind moves through trees. Each note is like a wave, an impulse, an energy. Its lightness is invisible to the eye, but its presence can be felt all around you, with a magnitude as mighty as any Oak.

Music can soar like a bird or be as delicate as a feather floating down from the breeze. It can touch us and linger there.

We are all affected by The Arts and The Natural World, even if this influence sits beneath the surface in our subconscious mind. Our world is forever encouraging us to rush through the day. The radio or audio player in our ears as we are running in a park or drowning out the noise on our ever-hectic roadsides to a destination.

We may not notice the bird song in our streets or stop to look up at the beauty of the skies, but we are forever in its presence.

What do we define as The Arts? A theatre production, a film, concerts, a piece of music, a painting, a poem, a literary piece of work or prose, a sculpture, a much-prized Bansky image on a city wall.

How many of us associate ourselves as being Artists? We say we cannot paint or play anything, and therefore,we close ourselves off to this creative process, and only those processing certain ‘gifts’ can fully appreciate it.

But how many of us know that both Nature and the Arts are the most profound healers of all things sorrowful and sad? How we take off in our cars at the earliest opportunity, or by foot,or bike to seek out the abundance of the natural world to ingest its wonderful elixir of life, through our five senses. Visits to gardens, museums, art galleries, the countryside or flowing streams on a warm summer day, or a bracing walk by the sea in the winter.

In fact, I believe that most people crave peace and beauty, which can be found in the natural world and that  Mother Earth is expressed in multi-faceted ways through The Arts.

A novice observer, a beginner, an introduction is all it takes to create momentum. A chance encounter, an idea turns a thought into a reality, a new way of seeing things for the very first time, of what was hiding in plain sight. A symphony of a new life can be born.

Open your eyes, your ears and above all, your hearts,you are going to go on a journey you may not have been on before, as it is my intention to capture it here.

I’ve nearly finished the most beautiful book, ‘Notes from Walnut Tree Farm’, by the late Roger Deakin (a good friend and fellow travel companion to the great nature writer Robert Macfarlane). It was through reading McFarlane’s book ‘The Wild Places’ dedicated to Roger, that prompted me to seek out his own work.

It was Roger’s words in the opening pages of Nature Notes that I read over and over again, saying to myself:

“Yes, this is how it is, these words are perfect and describe one of the Arts so well.”

I quote:

‘Music is like the decorative, symphonic possibilities of a wood: endless combinations of notes or twigs, leaves and wind, branch shapes against the sky.’

It inspired me with the opening lines of this rejuvenated blog and gave me an idea of a poem to be called,‘The Music of Trees.’

Now, I understand why I love Nature so much and totally ‘get it’ why I love the Arts and the natural world together. To me, they are one big canvas, full of potential exploration and discovery of all that is beautiful and wonderful. It is the balm that soothes my own soul, and connects experiences from the past, present and hope to my future.

How both are combined so perfectly, creating a massive pull for anyone who decides to stop and see with fresh eyes for the very first time how this force can be truly life-changing.

It has for me!

I hope it will for you.

Next time:

The Chelsea Flower Show and the overall design winner. ‘Gardens on the Edge’- a perfect example where art and nature can come together to create a most powerful message about the need to protect our environment around the fringes of town and cities.

I hope you will continue this journey with me.

Reference: Nature Notes from Walnut Tree Farm, Roger Deakin, edited by Alison Hastie and Terrence Blacker, Penguin Random House, Uk @2008 page 16.

All images are my own apart from the image of the house and water taken by Marcus Boughen my son-in-law.

When One Moment Changes Everything

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What happens to us when life changes in an instant? How do we feel? Shock, grief, loss, disbelief? There is no logic and there is no fathomable reason, but it appears anyway, catching you by astonishment, by total surprise, and the aftershocks of the earthquake of feelings linger on for days, months andeven years. The landscape of your life has changed forever. One small trigger and you feel like you are living it all over again.

Nothing could prepare you for this moment and how you wish you could be given a dial to turn the clock back, to freeze a frame, to undo the result.

One morning, a woman on a 90 something floor of the Twin Towers in New York, on that fateful day, was typing and sending an email. It was 09.44. An ordinary day, she had decided to go into work at 08.30. It was a new job of two weeks. She could have started at 09.00 but had decided to help out that day by going in early. Her husband, with aviation experience, heard a plane’s engine that he knew was too low, followed by an explosion. By 09.46, just two minutes after sending that email, his wife was literally ‘vapourised.’ No body, no bones, not even ash to bury. In those two minutes the normal became the hideous nightmare nobody wants to hear. Your loved one has died, a life of just 40 years extinguished in an instant.

How can anyone make any sense of that? I remember a GP at the hospital where I worked at the time after the Lockerbie bombing of December 21st 1988 say any one of us could be dead within the next 30 minutes. I have never forgotten that statement.

Last month, it was an ordinary day when a ping came from my phone. I read the message and couldn’t believe in what I was reading. Someone whom my late friend Geoff in the Philippines knew daughter had died, suddenly aged 22. How could the universe deal this card to a family full of love and gratitude for life? A family committed to faith, God and prayer. It made no sense. It sat heavy on me all day and still does, and with the family’s permission I can write about it here in this blog post.

Juliana, epitomised her beautiful name. Having graduated last year from a four-year college degree in Civil Law the doors of her future lay wide open. Then suddenly the tropical Dengue Fever shut that door with a bang that no-one saw coming. She was an artist too and I saw many of her paintings.

 I got to know Rose her mother, on Social Media, after my friend Geoff’s death (the family were neighbours where he lived for several months of the year).

I was inspired by her mother’s digital creative ability, her optimism as she showed us her photography and lovely positive affirmations, her grace and the total love and commitment she instilled daily into her two children: John, now graduated as an architect and recently married on November 4th and Juliana. I asked the Universe how could you deal this kind of card to a woman who only ever called in love, gratitude and abundance?

Then two weeks ago we heard of one ordinary evening train turned into a horror ride as people are stabbed and the train making an emergency stop at Huntington, a Fenland town my family knows so well, having lived there for a few years.

So, what is the point of the post, its central message? Seven months ago, an innocent decision, a sequence of events led to the unexpected on my own doorstep. My blogging ceased overnight, the words frozen, suspended and left dangling like a flimsy thread within a piece of string. That piece of string is still a tight rope I walk on and will be doing so for at least the next five years. Nothing is certain, and my life can only be planned on a day or weekly basis.

During this time, I have learnt valuable lessons. My friends have been rocks of gold of which I have clung to. They have given me hope and a lifeline, their patience and care have been totally remarkable and kind. I have been shown blessings and an insight few may see.

Worry is futile, planning is fine, but goals and decisions can take a different and twisted path. We can never truly see what is around the corner and maybe it’s a good thing we can’t. I have learnt that all we have is this moment, this day and that is a blessing. Trivial things seem absurd and hard days still feel like blessings because I am still living and breathing in this world.

We can turn pain into purpose. The husband of the women killed on 9/11 went on to do amazing work with the widows left behind on that day. He discovered more men died than women and that over 1,800 of the later needed urgent help and support. For Rose, I know that her daughter will live on in countless ways, not yet known or seen, but I have no doubt she will because her mother is an exceptional woman and the rest of her family equally so. I have always wanted to meet them in the Philippines. If I ever get to Australia, and on my return home, I really hope I can visit them.

For myself, a relative stranger, where I was temporarily staying for three months gave a notebook and coaster to me with the words from Jeremiah 29: 11 because she felt she needed to.

‘ For I know the plans, I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.’

 The words struck me because I know what I want my plans to be, as yet to be unfolded, as yet unformed and unseen. It felt like a clear message that everything was going to be OK..

So let me leave you with this lovely face of an angel. Let her teach you that beauty can’t be extinguished even in death, that legacy lives, that memories made are never lost, that personalities persist long after physical perishing, that light always glows brighter and more passionate than the darkness, because we inject the light with love that darkness can never erode, nor its flame ever be extinguished.

In the trauma of these last few months, how comforting it is to be back writing with you again.

In memory of Juliana M Florino born 29th August 2003 and died October 13th, 2025.

May you rest in peace, but your life lives on forever in our hearts.

(Photographs and words posted with kind permission of the family.)

Life is for Living

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A new poem for you to consider and how these words can be applied to many contexts. Inspired by an event and conversations, I wrote this poem in five minutes.

“Life is for living, not for quitting

Life is truly yours, not for fitting

Into someone else’s idea of how it should look

Life is for uplifting, not for hitting

Your own face when it doesn’t work

Life is not about splitting yourself in half

Life isn’t all about sitting either

But just turning up and not necessarily winning.

When something needs to be done, do it.

When someone needs your love, show it.

When someone needs a friend, be it.

But above all be a friend to yourself.

Because without that

You life will never feel like a life that is fulfilling or forgiving

When things are messed up

                            chucked up

                             mixed up

TRUST that it will all work out in the end

As intended

All in unison

Blended, not offended

PEACE! “

As writers don’t sabotage your growth, write. As crafters craft, as photographers, take pictures. As walkers, walk and as healers heal. As carers, care and as makers, make. As musicians play and as gardeners, garden the seeds of today for tomorrow’s harvest, because it is all good and worthwhile and ENOUGH.

You are enough. TODAY ALWAYS.

That’s my message for this week. Plain and simple and getting back after a break for work involving the new tax year, of exciting plans and new moves. Also, been painting a daughter’s kitchen:))

Until next time, when I will be talking about therapy the colour of blue. Interested to hear my thoughts then see you next week.