River swimming

You’ll keep going your way

I’ll keep going my way

River, stay away from my door

(Paul Robeson’s is an infinitely deeper, more solemn and glorious version of this song than Frank Sinatra’s. It was played at my grandfather’s funeral and reminds me of something of the essence of him, as I remember him, even though that was the first time I’d ever heard it)

When my daughters were very young we spent a lot of time in and around the River Wandle. At one point our house backed onto its banks, and I was warned against letting Cherry paddle barefoot in the very shallow, clear part closest to us due to the frequent volumes of knives and syringes that were reportedly pulled out of it. I came back from a bike ride one day to find the girls, with their dad, planting up some of the banks with a local volunteer group. Violet, barely more than a baby, was plastered head to toe in river mud. I still remember the predominantly male volunteers astonishment that I didn’t instantly berate the girls’ dad for allowing my baby to cover herself in mud. They weren’t to know of course that mud, and rivers, were my domain.

The Wandle is a shallow, meandering sort of river in most of the places we interacted with it. I googled and was assured otters frequented it and the only kingfishers I have seen to date were on the Wandle. I don’t think we ever found a part deep enough for the girls to swim in, which was just as well because they were wading in it years before either of them could swim.

I associated the river inextricably with my experience of motherhood, its meanders seemed to soothe me through the reality of raising two children. I fondly imagined the Wandle parented with me, calmed the girls as it calmed me, intrigued them as it intrigued me, and held us all in its womanly curves. The relentless flow felt like a metaphor for the passage of time as experienced through the eyes of a mother, seemingly always the same whilst constantly slipping away to make way for the new, changes so subtle and imperceptible that still somehow came as a surprise.

Nobody ‘official’ ever told us we couldn’t paddle in the river although well-meaning passers-by were full of reasons why we ‘shouldn’t’, ranging from concerns about dirt and mud, to riverbourne diseases, to an adamance my girls would ‘catch their death’ although to my knowledge not one child has died of exposure or hypothermia from paddling in the River Wandle. We had friends who joined us but many weren’t so lucky. Sometimes passing children would ask their parents or grandparents if they could paddle too and I heard a lot of ‘ugh no! Dirty!’ and other strange attitudes to our waterways. I even once heard ‘no, you’ll get your wellies dirty’.

Now we live in Sussex the Wandle has been replaced by the Arun as ‘our’ river. The Arun is also the river of my childhood and it occurs to me now, as my new relationship with it begins, that I never once as a child paddled or swam in the Arun.

A deep, fast-flowing, tidal river, the Arun begins at a series of springs and ghylls in St Leonard’s Forest, just outside Horsham. A recent bike ride to investigate revealed little of note to the naked eye, trickles and ditches but nothing I could instantly identify as the source of the Arun. Nonetheless by the time it reaches a piece of West Sussex I know as Lee Place, also ‘the end of Harsfold Lane’ that lies geographically somewhere between Wisborough Green, Billingshurst and Pulborough, it is wide, deep and imposing with steep banks. Perhaps this is why I never got in it.

More likely I never thought to. Even for somebody as prone to wandering and blatant trespassing as me the river was off-limits. I still don’t really know why, my parents never to my recollection raised any objection to me returning home in any sort of sodden or mud-soaked state, and I don’t remember being told to keep out of water. I swam in the lakes on family holidays to the Lake District and in the sea at Littlehampton where the Arun returns to the mother. Nonetheless it never occurred to me then that I could swim in the Arun but since coming back to Sussex I’ve felt the pull of the river every time I pass it by.

My good friend and source of all wisdom on open-water swimming Debbie Burton says some people dip, and some people swim. I think I’m the former, because although my instincts now always urge me into the water it’s the experience of being connected with the habitat that I want, I’m a competent enough swimmer but I’ve yet to feel the urge to seriously swim. Maybe it’ll come, as time passes the idea of slipping into the river from one of the various bridges nearby and swimming a way up, or downstream, is appealing.

Even so it took me a long time to swim in the Arun. I’d been living here for nearly a year before I christened myself and the first time I did so it took ages. I can’t really explain why. The area I chose was recommended by several wild swimming publications, all of which seemed legitimate, and there were no obvious NO SWIMMING signs and the presence of a NO DIVING in fact strongly suggested this was a spot many others had deduced was suitable for swimming. But I sat on the bank for a good half hour, sweating after a long bike ride and stripped down to my bra and bib shorts, barefoot and trying desperately not to think about what lay beneath the rushes and what might ooze in the slime at the bottom of the water.

There’s a primal sort of fascination and revulsion at the thought of the secret life of rivers, the nymphs and ghastly worms that live in the riverbed, the horrifying sucker-like creatures we imagine spiral through dank waters, the nibbly insects, the fish - what if they bite? Do fish bite? I’ve seen the size of some of the pike my brother hauled out of the Arun when he was a teenager.

Then there’s the sense of being somewhere I shouldn’t, the awareness that while I don’t know of any reason why I can’t be in the river, I wouldn’t really have any answer to anybody who told me to get out. People feel ownership over land they connect with, I feel it too so I understand it, but some think their feelings are more important and use the depth of that feeling to argue everybody else away.

Contrary to popular belief outside isn’t free and it’s also not terribly friendly a lot of the time. In the past few months I’ve twice been shouted at by angry men for being on public land. I have thoughts on men who shout at women, none of them are good thoughts, and I particularly have thoughts on men who shout at women who are alone or with young children.

Those thoughts loomed large in my mind as I edged around on the riverbank and getting in was a process of gently talking to myself, pushing myself, encouraging and urging myself until in one fell swoop it was done. I let the current carry me a short distance then swam back up against it to scramble out, knees muddied and tingling from the brushes of nettles in amongst the rushes. Whatever invisible barriers lay between me and the river had been breached. Getting back in was the work of a moment.

I don’t really fully know what the pull of river swimming is yet, only that it exists in me and in my children who love the river and embrace it as fully as I do. More fully, they put their heads under and I can’t yet. For reasons unknown I still can’t submerge my head. I think like all relationships the one I have with the Arun will continue to evolve. I think the more I learn about the river the more questions I will have and the more time I will need to spend answering those questions through being in the environment.

Yesterday as my daughters and I played in a particularly good, shallow spot with friends a grass snake swam by, its little head above the surface as its body wriggled side-to-side through the water. I can see us reliving that moment in 50 years, when I am unfathomably old, the girls will say ‘do you remember that grass snake?’ and even through my inevitable dementia I will because who wouldn’t? The moments that make a childhood, make a life, happen in rivers as they happen in gardens and woods and fields and on beaches and up hills and mountains, and only rarely in classrooms and halls and soft play centres and theme parks, but only if we let them, if we’re not afraid to get our wellies dirty.

Two 400s

Chalfont St Peter, May 4

There was one thing I took away from riding 40km of the 407km London-Wales-London audax one cold, windy day in May, after the ensuing violent crying in my car, the sort of crying that shakes your solar plexus as well as your shitty old Nissan Almera Tino. Without consciously realising it I had thought this ride would make me all sorts of things, prove all sorts of things, and justify the choices and actions of the woman who decided last summer while staring down the barrel of the long, bleak, arduous aftermath of a dead marriage that she wanted to be the kind of person who rode 400k audax.

The violence in the crying was the relief, the realisation that all those things I thought that ride would make me, I was already, all the things I thought it would bring me, were already here.

Once all that was out of the way enough clarity of thought emerged for me to realise I truly believed I could ride this distance.

Stumbling straight out the blocks isn’t brilliant but let’s not start telling myself more stories about what I’m not. I’ve learned enough in the last year to know when to give myself a big hug, stroke my own hair, send myself home for tea, bath and bed and then put on my big girl pants and work out what I’m going to do about it.

Cyclopark, Gravesend, May 11

Right, this is much better. I am here, correctly attired, in good time, with my bike packed and set up and ready to go, and no possible further opportunity for faffing. If I say so myself my preparation this time has been exemplary, other than the fact I forgot toothpaste but did remember the chamois cream so currently my crotch is more minty-fresh than my mouth, however because I was in good time, I was able to stop at a garage and pick up toothpaste and my toothbrush is in my drop-bag so we’re ALL GOOD.

Tea, toast, teeth, bit of banter with the assembled, and a bit of AWE at the geezer having a cheeky fag before the off (‘everybody tells me off for it now,’ he confides between drags, ‘but by 3am they’re all asking me for one. Don’t worry.’ He pats his jersey pockets. ‘I’ve got enough for all of us’). I’m just about to propose to him when somebody admires my Eastway. Somebody always does, and as well they might, as it’s an absolute mile-eating monster these days and I fancy that it’s starting to get a bit of a retro vibe to it. OK it’s not getting any younger, but then neither am I and I’ve never looked better either. Anyway. We’re away.

I’m in the front bunch, with the chap who said this was his first 400, filling me with hope that I would not be the only one without a previous under my belt, only to casually add he frequently does 24-hour time trials and anticipates completing the entire ride by 3am. That’d be impressive. We didn’t start until 9am.

The final control is at 342km and that’s where my bag will be, so I can sleep if I need to, so instead of thinking about this as a 400km ride and falling to pieces again at the sheer enormity of the task, it’s broken down into a 300 plus a recovery ride home. And a few more k.

The route for Invicta Phoenix - incidentally my favourite name for an audax ever - goes through Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire. I know most of it and there is no point in the route that doesn’t hold the comfort of familiarity and the knowledge that I am not too far away from my children.

One of the dark niggling thoughts I carried for my short attempt at LWL was ‘what if you get a mechanical outside Wales? You’re a long way from your daughters.’ It’s impossible to circumnavigate the tug of my children, the yearning for their presence even when I know they are safe and well and cared for, the way my thoughts return to them the second I feel under threat. It’s beyond rational thought, it’s pure biology, every cell in me is created to protect and nurture them, it overrides reason and fact, careful argument. It just is, and it can’t be argued with or denied. Instead I have to find ways to work around it, to stretch those invisible threads between them and me, to work out how far away I can go, for how long, and how much risk I can accept, before my structures crumble and I am nothing but an animal, a wolf-mother howling for her cubs, violent crying in a Nissan Almera Tino.

Torrential rain before the first control at Edenbridge, proper biblical stuff, but that’s OK because I have my rain jacket, and spare socks and a change of jersey in my seat-pack, it’s fine. I’m all prepared. A bit of flirting with one of the old men on steel at the first control because our drops have got tangled up. ‘Oh look, we’ve hooked up,’ I trill. ‘It’s too early for any of that,’ he protests. Oh come on mate. It’s never too early.

A chap with tri bars passes me, but he doesn’t pull too far away. I am eventually joined by a Suave Older Gentleman who is beautifully spoken and an all round delight, and we swoop down to the second control at Rudgwick at a decent pace, joined by another chap whose Garmin doesn’t work. We form a nice peloton, Suave Older Gentlemen introduces himself as Martin and we all take turns at the front. I know how this works now. Apparently get enough miles under my belt and I can finally ride in a group.

After some stunning, if salty, cheese on toast at Rudgwick we’re off again but after a while Martin says the pace is too much for him to keep up all the way round, and he drops back. I’m pretty much on my own for this stint, tri guy and I pass each other a couple of times and somebody joins up with me for a while but their chain creaks like nobody’s business and I’m quite glad when they peel off at a bike shop. Christ, it’s hailing. England in May, eh?

Ten minutes later it’s glorious sunshine and that’s how it stays all the way to Hampshire. That cheese on toast was so salty I’ve gone through both of my water bottles so I hunt out a tap. Just outside Winchester tri guy and I finally align and we roll in together at what I can only describe as a blistering pace. He says he’s called Richard, is doing Paris-Brest-Paris, has teenagers, and other pleasantries.

Winchester, Tesco, a wrap I don’t really want but I need to keep eating, some summer-fruits Oasis, tea. Time to push on to Petersfield. I lag. I feel a bit flat. God, we’ve only done 170km. Richard is ahead with a few other riders and I’m off the pace and slumping. We climb, I catch up with the bunch, then drop off again at the descent. This isn’t great, but don’t panic, just get to the next control. Richard leaves the group to ride with me, and I pick up a bit, and we get to Petersfield at 7pm. 200k in ten hours, MacDonalds, have to force it down, have to keep eating. Richard says he’ll need to slow the pace a bit for the night section, but he’s happy to stick together.

We roll through the South Downs at sunset and it’s quite magical. Red kite overhead, tail twitching in the air. That MacDonald’s has sorted me right out. Keep eating, keep drinking, keep pedalling, all will be well. I feel a bit cocooned as the light fades, knowing I’m about to become part of the secretive world of the night. I have layers for when it gets cold. I have good lights, spares, a dynamo, a battery pack. I am happy and at home on my bike, I’m happy to be riding with Richard, who is an experienced audax rider and an excellent wheel to follow and mercifully seems content with very little chit-chat. Quick stop to turn on lights, we’re good to go. Through woods and winding roads. A barn owl swoops into our path.

As it gets darker I take over pacemaking and we pedal on and on. Our next stop is Lewes and at 89k this is the longest single section of the route. There’s a Co-Op at Steyning and we agree to stop there to put on night-time layers and for a snack and drink. But by the time we arrive, it’s closed. We dither a bit about whether to press on to an all-night garage half an hour down the road or get sorted here. I’m beginning to faff, Richard looks a bit tense, so I make the call. Night-time garb on here. I put on a long-sleeved base layer and thicker jersey, some dry socks, adjust my legwarmers, this, that, the other. Eat some ginger cake. Richard definitely wants to get going, he’s getting cold and eating lots. Back on the road. An hour or two to Lewes.

I feel fine but Richard is flagging, he’s cold and he’s getting a slump. He drops off my wheel several times but we keep going, and then the signs for Lewes start to appear and I shout back to him - five miles. Four miles! We’re nearly there. Into the 24-hour garage at Lewes at just gone midnight, Richard smashes down two coffees, I buy some chocolate-coated peanuts, a cup of tea, go to the toilet, faff a bit. 60k to the final control at Rye where hot food, my drop-bag and a nap, if we want one, awaits. We have a brief strategy chat. Should we nap at Rye? No idea. Let’s get going.

Richard’s still tired and I don’t feel like I am but I’m aware I do better moving than I do stopping and the faff levels are shooting up, so I am obviously flagging on some level. Time to take drastic action and do the conversation bit. I start asking Richard about his kids, and the miles fly as we chat - we talk about kids, schools, work, I take a brief 20-minute break from pretending I’m a normal human to descend into Rant Mode and give him chapter and verse about getting divorced, he looks mildly alarmed but at least he’s awake. He wants to think himself lucky he didn’t have the misfortune to encounter me on an audax six months ago, he’d have had 400k of this bullshit to pedal through.

I hadn’t really noticed how flat the route had become until it wasn’t. This is very rolling, it’s pitch black and quite foggy in places so it’s impossible to judge really what’s coming up, or how big a climb is, but the legs know. There is a lot of up, and a lot of down, and the up is hard and sweaty and the down is freezing cold, so all in all we’re definitely night riding. It’s fine though. The legs are fine. The chat is fine. Outside Battle we climb Mount Everest and at the summit I feel the telltale signs of a bonk coming on. Oh, not now. I don’t want to eat, but EAT. Drop the bike, stagger about a bit, sit down, raid the frame bag. A Clif bar, will do, tip a sachet of energy drink powder Duncan forced upon me into my water, drink half of it. Richard’s at the top now, he enquires after my welfare and waits patiently while I blether, stuff food in my face, glug my drink, and then we’re back on track.

So much snot. Richard’s a spitter, he’s doing it almost constantly now, and I can’t stop firing snot rockets into the ether, the bottom of my nose is sore from all the wiping, aren’t we just the most attractive pair? Richard shouts that dawn is breaking and he’s right, to our left we can see clouds, and the sky is beginning to glow deep red. We’ve made it through the night, and all of a sudden there’s signs to Rye - SIGNS TO RYE - and we pick up the pace considerably. As we roll down into Rye we cheer and I announce that we are a pair of legends. Richard agrees wholeheartedly.

The control is warm and people are asleep. I don’t think I need to sleep and neither does Richard so we both do a bit of staring, and drink some tea, and faff a bit, then beans on toast, and then I look at the time. 4.50am. ‘Leave by five?’ Richard’s game. I get changed out of the spare clothes I put in my drop-bag in case sleep was required. Faff. We go outside to get going. I need the toilet. FAFF. Back inside. Time trial guy was asleep and has just woken up, blinking, along with a few others. Somehow there’s quite a lot of naked chest going on. Back outside. Let’s go.

It’s cold, and foggy, but it’s light and it’s glorious. Thick blankets off fog rolling across fields, mist rising from the ground, a perfect dawn, a perfect day. I’m losing Richard up the hills and there’s plenty of them, there’s still 80k to go. I soft pedal for a while to let him catch up, then more climbs, and I eventually decide to just push on because I feel strong and I want to get as far up the road as I can, and the night is over and he seems fine and so off I go.

It’s all a bit of a blur. Tiny village after tiny village, left here, right here, fog, Downs, up, down, big climb, little climb, cardboard box. Am I there yet? DON’T check your GPS. You don’t want to know. Don’t check the time either, you’ll be disappointed if you’ve only been riding an hour and you think you’ve done at least two. More villages. More climbs.

Bloody hell this is a lot of climbing. I’m slowing down now, average pace is dropping, even my climbing pace is dropping but I’m still going, I still feel OK, my legs hurt and I can feel my knees but oh look, here’s another monster, god am I going to be climbing forever? But I’m still going. I’ve come too far now, I’m going to make it, am I there yet? DON’T CHECK YOUR GPS. Sign for Meopham. That’s only 5k from the end. Why am I climbing? Why am I still climbing? IS THERE GOING TO BE A FUCKING RAMP UP TO THE TOP OF CYCLOPARK AT THE END? Sign for Cyclopark. Huge roundabout, get out of my way, speed hump, here I am, 426K later, 4,140m of climbing, 24 hours and 16 minutes, everybody all smiles, sit down, might never get up again, somebody brings me a cup of tea, am a completely bloody legend, fucking knew I could do it, thank u, next.

(Richard gets in about half an hour after me and is magnanimous about me blatantly dropping him. Time trial guy gets in about half an hour later, just as I’m getting ready to go. ‘Did you sleep?’ he demands. I say no. He looks incredulous. ‘How did you not sleep?’ Mate, I say, I’m a parent. I haven’t slept in seven and a half years. Richard nods with the knowing of a man who has fathered teenagers and hasn’t slept since the turn of the century.)

A tale of three 200ks

Bristol, March 9

I am horribly nervous about riding Wells, Mells and Broader because I don’t know anybody, although I am staying with a friend who is womanning the first checkpoint. This will be my first 200k, officially the furthest I will ever have ridden on a bike in one sitting, and it’s windy and drizzly and I have a cough and a cold and I bottled a 200 a few weeks ago because my GPS wasn’t working and don’t make me, Mum, I don’t wanna.

As soon as we all set off I settle in for a good hard worry. I’m in a small, fairly slow group and I want to pass everybody but I’m anxious about going too fast and blowing up late and being that idiot who shot past everybody at the start. It’s raining a bit harder now and the wind is sort of sideways. My bike is a bit on the lame side, I took it to Duncan at my LBS yesterday and he tutted and sighed and said it ‘might’ get me round and did a few tweaks but there’s lots of metallic grinding and crunching and I only have about three silent gears. There’s snot everywhere. Is it finished yet? Christ almighty where did that hill come from? You’re not in Surrey now, petal.

El is waiting at checkpoint one, smiley and lovely, and I have a cup of tea and hook up with Neil, the granite-like stalwart of the Bristol long-distance scene and his young padawan Mark. Mark and I are silly and youthful and leave Neil to head off together, and then I lose him up a hideous hill, then at the bottom I pick up another Mark who comments on the tailwind making the ride much easier from this direction. I wondered why it felt like I was riding into treacle a few miles back. Mark gets a puncture and I stop and wait with him and we’re soon joined by Other Mark and Mike, who comes bearing ginger cake, and all of a sudden we are a group and everything is quite pleasant, really, other than the bastard wind. Also remembering everybody’s name is super easy. If in doubt, Mark.

Riding in a group is good because you get to chat lots, and it’s fun and everybody helps each other, even with Mark’s second puncture about half a mile down the road. Also ginger cake. As the miles fly by we lose Mark who rather wisely decides to follow Neil’s steady but relentless wheel instead, and after lunch Mike, who is training for the Transcontinental and clearly much faster, zooms off and it’s just me and Mark for a long sloggy sort of section that involves a hill so brutal I have to get off and push at the very end. THE SHAME. Mark kindly blames my inadequate Eastway and talks about something called 28t. I’m already mentally chastising Duncan and demanding he solve this dilemma for me. We’re getting tired, and the checkpoint is 25km away, then we ride 25km and it’s an info stop and the checkpoint is STILL 25km away and now I’m not so sure group riding is a great idea, because Mark seems to know when the hills are coming up and how hilly they’ll be, and frankly I’d rather not know. But I’m glad of his company.

At the next stop we reunite with Mike and eat lots and there’s talk of more hills and I really wish I could just plug my ears, but instead I ride in dread, lifted only by my companions and their patience, as they’re clearly all in far better shape than me. Halfway up Mount Everest at 190km I have to stop and eat the entire contents of my Carradice. I think I might die, I certainly can’t get up the rest of that hill without a LOT of Hotel Chocolat, and by now it’s dark and Mark and Mike and whoever else was with us went on ahead, but because he is sweet, Mike comes back for me, and because he is also sweet Mark is waiting for us in an audax hotel (bus shelter) about a mile down the road, and there’s another hill and another walk of shame and then we all finish together and I am absolutely thrilled with myself and I have no idea how I’m going to ride 400km in two months time.

Petworth, March 31

I am so up for this. My legs are actually twitching, that’s how much I want to ride this distance today. The route is split into five sections, the longest of which is only 35 miles, and we are basically riding two big loops around Petworth and I know most of the roads and will never be more than 30 miles from my parents’ house where I’m staying, so it all feels completely manageable. It’s bright and clear.

I don’t know anybody and I don’t care and I set off and everything is lovely and I ride past the house I am currently in the process of buying and my heart feels like it might burst. The first checkpoint is the boot of a car and the second is a service station. I could use a bacon roll, but all that’s on offer is pasties. ‘I’m not pasty-ready yet,’ says a nice chap next to me. I’m not either but I need to eat so a 10am pasty it is, and we have a bit of craic before it starts to get a bit cold and drizzly and off I go again.

Things go downhill. I am suddenly cold and lonely, and my head is full of the dark thoughts, the sadnesses, the losses, the humiliations, that have encompassed the past eight months and a fair few prior to that too. I have a good old cry, miles fly by and tears pour and the bike keeps rolling. It at least feels amazing, I took it to Duncan after the Bristol audax and Made Demands and I now have a new-to-me Liv saddle, a shorter stem and an extra spinning gear (32t if you’re interested) and there are less crunching grinding noises as he re-riveted my slippy mech. There’s still a bit of noise though. This bike has always had slippy gears, I think it’s just part of its DNA. I’m still crying and my legs keep going and I suddenly notice i am swooping down the most gorgeous road, next to a stream running through a wood with a carpet of emerging bluebells, and the surface is smooth and there are gentle ups and downs and rounds and abouts, and I’ve completely forgotten what I was blubbing about because this is just joyous. I must remember where this road is. I’ve got no idea where it is, maybe I dreamed it.

I catch up with pasty chap, whose name I don’t get but we’ll go for Peter because he looks like a Peter, and he’s good company. He’s an ex-cop, retired, has ridden LEJOG every year since he was 18 - he’s now 57 so that’s a lot of LEJOGing. We pace together for a good long while but I am faster than him up hills and I think I’m fitter than him, so after a while he says to leave him behind and I pick up a new companion. Gerry (or Jerry, we didn’t discuss spelling) is also good company and is at the same stage of divorce as I am - we exchange a decree nisi high five and a great deal of deep and meaningful reflections on life, the universe and everything.

Other riders drop in and out, one tells me he thinks I’m strong, he’s wearing fancy sunglasses and some kind of racing kit and I am flattered. I start to notice that a few men overtake me, then I pick them back off at the next hill, then they overtake me again, then I pick them off on a hill again, and after a while they drop back. Are they trying to race me, or is this just the flow? Am I just a bit fitter? My legs feel like they could go on forever.

There’s a bit of a climb at about 170k up Farthing Down - it’s really quite a climb, if I’m honest, but after this it’s just Chichester and then back home on the A283 and I have ridden that road soooo many times. I decide I will time-trial it (I’ve done ONE time trial practice, reader, but get me with the strategies) as it’s undulating but fast and I still feel like I’ve got lots in the tank. I had reckoned without a headwind that reduces my ‘speed’ to about 7mph. It’s a slog and I see G/Jerry, who had eventually pulled away, up ahead of me. I catch up with him. He’s tired and happy to see me and we roll back together grumbling good-naturedly about the sloggy windy bit.

We are home way before sundown. That was - god, that was easy, if I’m honest. I ride home slowly, but by the time I turn into my parents’ road I have already started to pick up speed again. My legs have lots left in them, this is good, this is promising.

London, April 7

The Shark is billed as ‘hilly’ and I’m not sure I’m up for it. I’m even less up for it when I get to the start at Cutty Sark and am confronted by reams of Rapha and Castelli. Where, please, are all the old men on steel-framed tourers? Where are the scratchy pre-merino wool jerseys and faded bibs? Where are the Carradices? Where are my people?

I don’t know anybody and I’m anxious and miserable about it because everybody looks pro af. I’m blinded by all the bling. I am not in Rapha or Castelli, I am in black leggings with glow-in-the-dark love hearts on them and a black jacket from five years ago and my shit helmet because I left my pro one on the train a while back and I look like a chubby Hell’s Angel. We start and it’s one big group and I hate it. I don’t know where to be, I’m not sure how fast to go, everybody is talking loudly and laughing and going what feels exceptionally fast to me and getting too close and they all know each other and seem supremely relaxed and confident and nobody else looks like a chubby Hell’s Angel. Riding out of South London is horrible, and I seem to be trapped between two couples on speed dates. I can’t cope with 200k of this.

Eventually the groups string out, and then the first hill is upon us. It doesn’t feel like much to me, then I round a corner and it’s mayhem. The hill suddenly sharply increases in gradient (I find out later it’s 25%) and all across the road people are weaving around on bikes, grinding to a halt, and getting off and pushing. I settle down as I pass two of the speed-daters who dropped me earlier. Perhaps this will be OK after all.

As we head out into Kent I pace with a guy with a Carradice (MY PEOPLE! MY PEOPLE!) who I christen ‘Audax guy’. He climbs like I do, he’s fairly steady and consistent, not one of those ‘go flat out on the flat then stall halfway up a gentle slope’ riders. There’s also another chap on a steel-framed tourer who is super efficient up hills and sits quite upright. He’s one of mine for sure. And finally an older guy behind me whose neon yellow MTB jersey keeps catching my eye round corners. We don’t talk, but we all ride together and take it in turns to lead and it’s nicely companionable. We all roll into the first checkpoint together, and I sit with the older chap whose name I don’t get but I suppose Mark will do, and he says he’s with some friends who have already dropped him. I say it’s a bit rolling, as all we’ve done is climb and descend. He looks a bit shellshocked. ‘I wasn’t expecting this,’ he confesses. ‘My mates just asked if I fancied a ride to the coast.’

Audax guy heads off earlier than I do, but as I set out from the checkpoint despite all the hills so far, and knowing there’s lots to come, I feel pretty strong and I catch him quickly. He seems happy enough to ride together but we don’t really talk which is if I’m honest, perfect. i don’t feel chatty, I don’t have small talk, I just want to keep going. We do chat ahead of the South Downs, because we’ve got a bit of a climb and I’ll probably get up it faster than him but he’ll catch me on the descent, and we make this known to one another with few words and up High and Over we go. Somebody is on all fours at the top. Audax guy catches up and introduces himself as Steven and we go and look at the sea.

Steven and I ride most of the way back together, Mark is with us for a bit then drops away. The route is largely the same, lots of climbing. I love it. I love the steady inclines, the sitting down and getting stuck in, the slog to the top, the relief when it’s over. I love how my natural fear of descending gets smaller as I get more tired and can’t be bothered to hang on the brakes or worry too much because I need the break before the next climb. Steven is easy company, we chat a bit, he’s doing LondonWalesLondon too so we talk about that, and about our bikes, and just general stuff that I can’t really remember now but I know it was pleasant. At the last checkpoint it’s drizzling so we hit up an audax hotel with cheese twists and cake, and take it in turns to take photos of our bikes.

There’s two serious hills before the end, in quite quick succession, and I can tell Steven is getting tired. He says he’s going to stop before the final climbs for a minute or two, and I say I’ll keep going because I don’t like stopping if I can help it and I REALLY don’t like getting going again. He says he’ll try and catch me. The last two climbs are monsters. Halfway up Toys Hill I pass a girl who has stopped to smash a gel. ‘It just keeps going,’ she says in horror. It does keep going, but so do I. Long, long descent. I know there is one more big climb but I don’t know where, but all of a sudden there’s a sheer wall of concrete upon me and I don’t know what’s going on. I have to stop halfway up or I’ll die. It’s horrendous. I might do the walk of shame. Shit, there are riders behind me, I can’t do the walk of shame. I get back on my bike and heave up to the top.

Steven catches me not long afterwards, and so does gel girl, and a couple of guys who have been in the general vicinity for a while, and we roll back into London together. Gel girl has a broken elbow. RESPECT. I do not have a broken anything, and I don’t feel broken either, but that was tough. Steven is happy and so am I so we lead the group home together, I feel like a bit of a rock star, especially as I changed my soaked jersey and jacket halfway round so I don’t look like a chubby Hell’s Angel. I do look like a chubby pac-a-mac model but there is a LOT of Rapha behind me.

600k in a month is done, and now we up the distance. Some people do 600k in a one-er. I wonder if one day I’ll be one of them.

Three laps

I like threes, because they are predictably different. The first iteration is always horribly hard, the second surprisingly easy, the third has a twist in the tale. I find this applies almost universally, whether to love, losses, hills, or just laps of Richmond Park.

On the world’s slowest club ride to Richmond Park this weekend I was told about the three laps ‘challenge’. The goal is to ride it in under an hour, a feat a completely unscientifically proven only 20% of cyclists achieve.

I like threes and I like Richmond Park and I definitely like the idea of being top 20% material so I rolled up on my Eastway to see how I got on. I am exceptionally curious about what I can actually do on a bike. I think I can tick ‘get from A to B’ off the list quite comprehensively, but I want to know what else is out there. The more I ride my bike the more I want to ride it and the more I learn about what other people do on their bikes, the more I want to do that too. The more I think ‘well why not?’ and the less I think ‘well obviously I can’t do that…’

Also I need an excuse to show off my beautiful road bike, which I cleaned and fettled and taped the bars a ridiculously pleasing shade of lime green in readiness for an audax (long-distance cycle) I then never managed to attend. It’s been glaring at me irritably ever since, all dressed up with nowhere to go. I put on my nice kit to ride in so it doesn’t feel unappreciated.

I’ve ridden plenty of laps of Richmond Park and never once timed myself. However Barry, 70, my club’s time triallist extraordinaire, has seduced me with talk of steel-framed TT bikes from the 1980s with downtube shifters into wondering if I have any speed in these legs of mine. He makes time trialling sound really romantic, I have visions of first light on hazy summer mornings and that secretive silence of usually busy roads and the magical otherworld of Things People Do When Other People Are Asleep. I expect crucifying myself along the A24 at 4am in June is not quite like this, but that’s the image Barry has put in my head. The charmer.

I have deliberately not researched the distance and average speed required first. All I know is three laps, 60 minutes is the target. If I research it and find out it’s actually really hard I won’t do it, my confidence is erratic to say the least at the moment, so ignorance is bliss.

If there’s a technique to riding at speed, I don’t know it, so I just shove my bike into a massive gear and pedal. Up the hills I drop a couple of gears but not many. It hurts consistently. I don’t know how I’m going to keep this up for an hour. It’s a brilliantly sunny day and there’s loads of cyclists out. They all look much happier than me, many are faster without exerting any apparent effort at all.

I have a thrilling teta-a-tete with a chap on a mountain bike, who surely - SURELY - I should outpace on my carbon fibre dream machine and I can tell he surely - SURELY - thinks he should outpace a woman, and we back and forth until he admits defeat and slopes off to the cafe/goes for a planned cafe stop that has nothing to do with me.

Later, when it hurts more, I have an even more thrilling tete-a-tete with a red Jaguar E-Type being driven by a heap of tweed with a face like John Cleese. I think. I can’t really tell and my legs hurt.

I don’t think I’m ever going to be a sprinter. I know my legs are strong but they operate on a time delay, much like the rest of me actually. They never quite fire at the moment I need them to. Thirty seconds LATER, look out world, here I come. Only everybody else is already over the first hill. Last night I trained sprints at BMX (incidentally, did I mention my legs hurt?) and I had the same problem of that time delay before my brain connects to my legs, when I sort of windmill pointlessly with no real impact wondering when it’s all going to ‘kick in’. By the time it does, I’m at the first roller and my pedals catch.

It’s like that, but in Richmond Park.

A woodpecker flies over, low and undulating. Its red cap flashes brazenly in the unseasonal February sun.

I should be wearing a cap. I’ve got a new helmet from Liv Cycling and it needs a peak. I wonder if the helmet is making me more aero. Grip the drops, drop the elbows, I can feel my core is engaged but my thighs are bashing into my ribs. Is that supposed to happen or is that my ‘winter coat’?

Halfway round the last lap I am pondering how incredibly strong my legs feel and how amazingly fast I must be and they just go. Ping, snap. I’m pedalling through treacle with a headwind in my face and I have to switch all the way up to the top of the big ring to compensate, and I’m still slowing down. This won’t do but my legs won’t work, they’re all over the place, going in every direction except forwards and round. It lasts for a few minutes, then all of a sudden I’ve forgotten all about it and have cut up a mint green Nissan Micra and heartlessly slammed the Eastway across a set of cobbles to get round a mini-roundabout at more speed. It doesn’t mind. This bike never minds, which is more than can be said for the driver of the Nissan Micra.

Oh thank god, it’s the end.

68 minutes.

When I get home I google, and discover that a lap of Richmond Park is circa 6.7 miles which means to achieve this in less than an hour I need to ride at just over 20mph. Today I averaged just over 17mph. Directly afterwards I rolled home feeling like I got hit by a bus. By the evening, I hardly feel it at all.

I like little challenges like this because of what you learn about yourself. Today I learned I’m not as fast as I think I am. I also learned that there’s probably a better technique to time trialling than putting your bike in a big gear and pedalling hard. I never felt like I was going that fast, even though I couldn’t make the bike go any faster. This feels paradoxical and I expect there is a way around it. Google will know.

I also learned that I can recover extremely quickly, which I did suspect, and that next time I want to try a timed challenge I could pick a day on which I did not train two hours of BMX and not eat tea the evening before.

There might be other ways to shave off that eight minutes. I could ride at a different time so there’s less traffic and pedestrians to negotiate. I could try riding clockwise, to see if that makes a difference. I could get rid of some of the winter coat. Or, I could just ride a bit faster. Next time, I expect I will.

Riding the change

I want to but I don’t want to today.

Get up and wash your face, brush your teeth, plait your hair. You don’t need to shower, you’ll only get sweaty anyway. It doesn’t matter that all your usual kit is dirty, wear the fancy stuff, embrace your inner roadie. At least your bike’s still filthy from the weekend and your overshoes are plastered, that’ll balance it out.

Your bike is right there, you literally have to walk past it to get out of the door, so put your helmet on, your shoes, the mucky overshoes, gloves, keys, purse, stuff them in your stupid frame bag, snacks down the back of your jersey, it doesn’t matter that your thick gloves are still wet because you didn’t put them on the radiator, you have other gloves, just put those on.

You don’t need a jacket. It’s not that cold, you’re not going to be out forever. Just get out the door.

Put your headphones in, don’t worry that everybody hates cyclists in headphones, everybody hates cyclists whether they wear headphones or not. Put that song on repeat, it’s all you’ll want to listen to anyway.

It doesn’t matter that you took a wrong turn, you need the miles, you know where you’re going, you know all these roads like the back of your hand, you know umpteen different ways to get there, just take a different route.

Stop fretting that you should have brought the cross bike instead to make it harder, just ride singlespeed for the training, bonus points because removing gears means one less thing to bother with. Just pedal, keep your legs spinning, keep moving forwards.

Don’t worry if you push too hard and blow out, you know you recover fast, all that BMX, your legs can take it, you won’t lose them.

That phonecall you need to make, the conversations you need to have that you don’t even know how to start yet, the work you need to pull in, the questions you need to answer, the plans that need to come into being, the hands you have to hold while you do it, the skills you need that you still don’t have, the things you want that might not come to you, the books you still haven’t written, it’s all going to be fine, if you just keep going.

Watch everything begin to turn.

Things are going to change whether you want them to or not.

Race day jersey and shorts c/o Liv Cycling

A loose list for 2019

If I were to pick a word to describe 2018, it would be hard to go past ‘shitshow’. A year that cost me my marriage, along with several other significant relationships, and even my beloved dog, isn’t likely to attract gleaming accolades.

But I am nothing if not an optimist and last year was valuable beyond compare in terms of finally leaving behind old and dysfunctional ways of thinking and being, and finding a version of and vision for myself I am positively and all-encompassingly excited about. It was also extremely useful for observing and understanding patterns in relationships. It’s tempting to sit and blame other people for fallout (and to be fair there’s been plenty of blaming, I’m hardly claiming to be Zen-like here) but it’s a far more useful exercise to reflect on my part in it all, and consider what I could do differently in the future and conversely, what I would not do differently. The changes of 2018 were harrowing but they were all the right changes.

I also had my first novel published, an event that sadly was completely overshadowed by the disintegration of my personal life. The book is out there in the world and hopefully remains the start of something, as opposed to a catastrophic symbol of the price of creative expression and ambition. In my darker moments I think of it as just that, but those moments are becoming less frequent.

Writing goals do remain out of reach at the moment so for 2019 my to-do list is primarily cycling related. One of the advantages of divorce and shared custody is that I have a lot more free time, and what better way to spend it than on a bike? Interspersed with the odd bit of skating, swimming and surfing. In no particular order, here are the plans for this year.

1. London-Wales-London: A 400k audax (aka ‘bloody long bike ride’) that came on my radar thanks to sports psychologist Josie Perry. I’ve never ridden anything like this distance in one go but am assured it is possible, and the second I read about it, I was pretty much in. Training for LWL will involve a fair few distance events, all of which are excellent excuses for a weekend away on the cheap, which is essentially 50% of my 2019 plans in a nutshell.

2. London series BMX: I only started BMX early last summer but it’s safe to say I’m completely addicted. I managed one race last year, at the Olympic track in Stratford where I and one other ‘mature’ female were shoved in with bunch of men on cruisers (BMX bikes with larger wheels) and I tailed around last and finished about fifty metres off the pace. Regardless, it was one of the best things I’ve done. BMX is ridiculously good fun and completely immersive, builds general bike handling skills, is excellent for all-round fitness and is one of the few things that takes me completely out of my own head, largely through blind fear, and allows me to occupy my body 100%. For a deep thinker like me this is gold dust.

3. Cycling instructor training. I have wanted to do this for years but for various reasons it wasn’t possible, this year however I have taken the plunge and will be training in February. Once the course is done I will be able to work as an instructor, ideally mainly with children but also with women, especially mothers and older women who might feel they don’t have the time to cycle or it’s just ‘not for them’.

4. Mechanicals. Along with starting BMX, learning how to maintain and fix my bike properly was one of the best things I did last year. I went to drop-in sessions at London Bike Kitchen in Hackney, where the extremely tolerant and very lovely Amy provided tea, great conversation and expert coaching in how to wrestle with various metal implements. I have also taken to frequenting my local bike shop, Wallington Cycles, where I am learning a great deal in return for tea, snacks and general banter, which seems an excellent deal to me. Most recently we built a wheel with a dynamo hub, a nifty little invention that uses the power generated by cycling to run lights and even charge things via USB (the shrieking when we were able to charge a mobile phone from it was off the chart). Tinkering with my bike setup is enormously satisfying and if you want to get all deep about it, which obviously I do, building my competence has been absolutely vital to restoring something of my rather shattered self-esteem. In short, doing stuff is super empowering.

5. South Downs Way. I grew up very near the South Downs and that landscape has a strong and profoundly soothing emotional effect on me, a bittersweet combination of home, awareness of the passage of time, and righteous suffering. The latter might be all the hills. At the moment I ride there on my cyclocross bike but even my plucky, can-do attitude is failing in the face of narrow drops, no suspension and a saddle forged straight from Hell. It’s really more mountain bike sort of territory. I haven’t been able to look at my mountain bike since my marriage ended, as it was representative of one of the few things my ex husband and I did together. However the last time I rode on the South Downs I concluded that the emotional pain of dusting off my mountain bike would still be lesser to the physical pain inflicted by my cross bike, which is progress, in a weird way. I’m less bothered about riding the whole 100m end-to-end, as it’s really a landscape I like to wander around on rather than rip through, however my cousins live in Winchester providing an ideal place to collapse at the end of it, so at some point it probably needs to be done in a linear fashion, either in part or in full.

6. Hills, hills, hills. Climbing and descending fill me with a combination of excitement and fear - or nausea, as it’s generally known. In terms of using physical activity as a way to address one’s fears, hills are a prime contender for me. I also happen to really love them even if I am prone to anxiety over heights and I worry hugely about corners when descending, thanks to being a generally off-kilter, right-handed-left-footed sort of person and the lasting physical impact of two pregnancies in quick succession. A few weeks ago I dug out a list of the top 10 climbs in Surrey and nailed four in a day, which felt like a good start.

Jersey and shorts courtesy of Liv Cycling.

7. The one I can’t even write about yet. A while ago a friend contacted me suggesting a cycling challenge that filled me with incredulous terror, so obviously I said yes. We are now making plans. I’m too worried about jinxing any of it to say what it is, but it will happen in September, take around two weeks and be Lots of Fun, Hellish and generally Quite The Adventure.

8. Stand up on a surfboard. I mean, this has to happen at some point, right?

9. Observe my response to landscapes. A bit existential, this one, but I am fascinated by the concept of a personal response to a landscape or environment. After my marriage came to an end I went on several trips to parts of the UK that hold meaning for me, and observing and experiencing my emotional reactions to these places was enormously healing and really deepened my knowledge of who I am and where I came from. Fundamentally the desire to know where we’re from is steeped in our DNA. Whether I was on a bike or in water, the way I interacted with these landscapes brought me understanding I couldn’t have gained in other ways. For example Northumberland, where I was born, holds deep associations for me with the mother bond and significant formative relationships with females including my relationship with my own daughters. This year I want to continue interacting with a range of landscapes that hold significance or curiosity for me.

10. Skate like a girl. Skating is about the only thing I do that has no purpose, goal or achievement attached other than the experience itself. As a friend observed, most skaters really are ‘just about the skate’ and in the adult world it’s rare to have something you do just for the sake of it, for no greater ambition or with nothing to prove. Skating is also what the always-brilliant Lucy calls a site of mutual fulfilment - something my daughters and I can do together that feels exclusively ours and impacts on our confidence in and unity with one another. Skating is by far the most fiendishly difficult of all the sports I do, takes the most effort for the least obvious gain, and holds that fear factor that renders me unable to think or process anything other than the moment.

From stay-at-home mother to working mother

After six years at home full-time with children, including a year and a half home educating, I have now shot to the other end of the spectrum as a pretty much full-time working mother.

I will post about work itself another day, because that’s enough to warrant an entirely separate blogpost. Today I wanted to talk about the transition from stay-at-home to working mother.

This isn’t the first time I’ve worked since having children, but it’s the first time I’ve been away from them for more than the odd meeting here and there. I do two days a week in town in an office, and three from home. I spend four days a week consulting for a NGO, and the final day is devoted to other clients, book promotion and outdoors journalism.

The main change from how I worked in the past is that I don’t fit work around the children. I have had varying degrees of success juggling work and children in the past but overall I don’t find it a good solution.

I can’t stand being glued to a computer or phone while they ask me for snacks and attention. But avoiding this scenario is easier said than done, because it means I have to take complete responsibility for my time. I can’t expect my children to prioritise my work and I can’t expect my clients to prioritise my family. Therefore I have to choose what I prioritise and when. My way of doing this is to only work when my children are physically not with me. This is new to me, and new to them, as they have been physically with me every single day for the last six years.

Emotionally it has been something of a journey. It’s been hard for the children as they miss me, of course, and they have had to get used to firstly school and nursery, and secondly a childminder. On the plus side Noel is at home three days a week so they are spending a lot more time with him, which makes all of us very happy. But it’s not really my place to discuss my children’s emotional journey so I’m going to focus just on mine.

The main issue has been guilt. I know, major shocker right?

There was the obvious guilt of leaving my children to go to work.

Followed by swiftly reminding myself I wasn’t leaving them, they were with their father most of the time and with a qualified professional who I know and trust the rest of the time.

Followed by swiftly reminding myself that regardless of whether they were with their father or a qualified professional, I am entitled to pursue my own career.

Followed swiftly by being annoyed with myself for the entire thought process because did that mean I judged other mothers who worked and labelled them as ‘leaving’, read ‘neglecting’ their children?

Exhausting.

Then came the guilt that I whisper it love my job and am ambitious for my career and personal development. One day, after dropping Cherry and Violet off and heading back to crack on, I was seized with an overwhelming compulsion to jack in a new client right now, shelve my future books, park the journalism (my profession of 15 years, no less) and find something locally based, in an industry I do not enjoy, that would pay the bills.

In that moment I genuinely felt it would only be acceptable for me to be away from my children if I was doing a job I don't like. That should be my natural punishment for leaving my children to work. You can't, went the silent internal judgement, expect to 'have it all'.

I’m so thankful for the school run, because I find thinking while walking so much more productive than thinking while sitting at the table at home. It’s a powerful metaphor. You genuinely move through your thought processes, one foot in front of the other, always forwards. You don’t get a chance to get stuck in your head.

By the time I got home I had seen the compulsion for what it was, a toxic combination of my guilt and self-doubt talking. A strange hash of learned beliefs about the role of women, and mothers, contrasted with my true values which have not always been supported by rhetoric or experience. 

And then there was the guilt when my children asked me why I had to work. It’s so tempting to fob them off with the standard ‘to make money so we can buy nice things’ response, and reassure them I’d much rather be with them all the time and life is just unfair and I am at the mercy of 'the man' and dragged away from them against my will.

But this is not true. I don't just work for money and while it might be harder for my children to hear the truth, I trust them to be able to handle it. I told them I worked because I enjoyed having a purpose and being of service, and I love to write and make people happy by telling stories and this was what I wanted to do with my life.

The hardest part of all is not saying that I wish I didn’t have to work and could still be at home with them all day. Because while I do miss them and think about them, and look forward to the times when I can be at home with them, I don’t wish I was back at home full-time.

The time had come for all of us, for our worlds to get bigger. 

The children were ready for more and it was Cherry starting school that prompted a chain-reaction of events. I’m not saying for a second we could not have met her changing and developing needs home educating, but school was our solution and a choice in which she participated fully. With Cherry at school, Violet's circumstances also changed and home educating was no longer meeting her needs, and so we agreed she would start at school nursery. Noel was also ready for things to change, for more time at home and with the children and less time in the office. And I was ready for the exact opposite. Less time at home, more time out in the world again. This was the solution that worked for all four of us, together.

It’s also not necessarily a permanent fixture. We adapt to change as our needs change. Noel and I are adjusting and adapting our work schedules and at times he will be at home and me at work more more, at other times, I will once again be the 'default parent'.

At some point in future school may no longer be the right thing for either or both of the children. The great thing about having home educated is that you know what’s possible, and you know school is optional. If school isn’t working for us, we will remove the factor of school.

It’s not just our worlds that have got bigger, our minds have too. We have stepped out of the mindset of following the paths dictated to us – school! Office job! Full time work! Money for nice things! And instead we’re putting ourselves at the centre of the equation and asking, what do we want, and how can we make these things happen, for all of us? There are no right or wrong answers either. There's no shame if the priorities switch, if earning money becomes more imperative, or if  we decide to jack everything in temporarily and road-trip for a year. (I would quite like to do this at some point, wouldn't you?!)

If there’s one thing our family is learning to be, it’s adaptable. That’s what our species does, after all, and it’s what makes homo sapiens so incredibly successful. We adapt.

Reading, synchronicity and the shadow

Synchronicity: ‘A coincidence in time of two or more causally unrelated events which have the same or similar meaning’. Jung.

The Surface Breaks, Louise O'Neill; Mind of a Survivor, Megan Hine; Owl Sense, Miriam Darlington

I often find themes emerging in my reading, where unrelated books come together into one particular area of inquiry. I love these happy little coincidences that I see as synchronicity in action because they remind me of the profound magic of books and reading, and how truly powerful books are.

My latest bout of unwittingly thematic reading has concerned another Jungian phenomenon, that of the shadow.

The shadow is the unknown dark side of our personality and it exists just beyond our consciousness. It’s where we tend to hoard our more base and less Instagrammable urges – greed, anger, selfishness, sexual longings, power cravings. I like to think of my shadow as the world’s most debauched party taking place just where I can’t get to it, which is probably just as well, because the hangover afterwards would be off the chart.

The shadow is in my view essentially a structure created by fear of the true nature of ourselves. The parts of my nature I fear the most are my imagination, and my emotions.  And the reality of my shadow is that I do everything in my power not to come across it, which means severely tempering both of the above.

But the student must have been ready, because along came three books that opened the door to that debauched party in my psyche.

I went to an evening with bestselling author Louise O’Neill to listen to her talk about The Surface Breaks and from the second she came into the room I could feel I was in the presence of somebody unafraid of the shadow.

She’s open about her goals for writing, as she said, she doesn’t care if her characters are likeable, she cares that they are honest. They are. And how. Raw and brutal. I admire her more than I can possibly express for her comfort with discomfort, or rather her willingness to endure discomfort.

And when I read The Surface Breaks, which I did in one sitting like a woman possessed, what stayed with me afterwards was how incredibly uncomfortable it was. The main character is in permanent discomfort at best, excruciating pain at worst.

The book, a feminist re-imagining of The Little Mermaid, is beautiful, and powerful, and thoughtful, and brave, but it’s also really uncomfortable. The antithesis of my happily-ever-afters with their quaint teashops, cosy nights in front of a roaring fire with hot chocolate, and other simple pleasures.

Life, after all, involves both.

O’Neill inspired me to think about my own shadow in my writing, and reminded me that writing is a journey. It’s a lifetime’s work to get to know oneself, especially when we change all the time, and I see all creative endeavour as a product of deep self-knowledge that allows the truest expression.

If we don’t explore the whole – the bad side, the shadow, the darkness – how can we express the real?

After The Surface Breaks I picked up Mind of a Survivor by Megan Hine, which has been on my TBR for ages and of which I was reminded after listening to The Wild Show.

This is nothing like gritty fantasy-based YA. This is nonfiction, part memoir and part guide, a deep look at the mindset of survival and examples of that mindset in practice. 

And while some of the incidents Hine describes seem carved from fantasy – a night in the middle of the Nairobi desert warding off a pride of hungry lions armed with nothing but a small campfire, for example – this book is no less real. No less aggressive in its shattering of some pretty little myths we’ve long carried around with us.

Hine reminds us that survival can be as much about self-preservation and caution as it is about heroism and courage. And she also reminds us that the wild is neither nurturing and protective, nor hostile and unforgiving, but utterly indifferent. It does not care if we live or die.

I think that indifference, that truly bleak knowledge that somebody or something just does not care, is worse even than the darkest parts of the shadow. It’s the least human characteristic of all. Even a desire to cause harm, is generally rooted in a universally shared human experience like pain or fear. Simply not caring, is non-human to a terrifying degree.

Much of our relationship with nature relies upon us humanising it, controlling it and cutifying it to better cope with this vast indifference. I thought of this often as I read Owl Sense by Miriam Darlington, one of the most psychologically aware pieces of nature writing I’ve ever had the pleasure to read.

Her study of the native owl species of Europe takes her on a journey of inner and outer knowledge and progress and Owl Sense is as much a personal development book as it is a study of nature and wildlife, in my view.

She talks often about how we both mystify owls, using them to inform legends, and attempt to bring them under our control by turning them into cute must-have fashion accessories. She talks about her discomfort with the growing pile of owl memorabilia she accumulates during her quest, the piles of knick-knacks, bags, cushions and other accessories with cute owl prints and motifs.

Through nature, she draws attention to human nature. How fragile our perceptions can be, how easy it is to ride roughshod over the true nature of a thing in our attempt to reduce it to something within our understanding and ultimately, control.

In her tale of the Exeter eagle owl, she demonstrates how even the most awe-inspiring predator and creature of legend can be reduced to a pathetic joke if it exists out of time, and out of place.

I think we can do similar for the shadow. Not mock it or dismiss it like Darlington’s poor eagle owl, but simply accept it. Acceptance of a thing removes its power over us.

Funny, how we try so hard to humanise nature to remove its power, projecting onto the great outdoors what we’re afraid to apply to the microfacets of our own selves.

Stop everything! You can now pre-order my novel!

I’m UTTERLY ECSTATIC to let you know that Summer at Hollyhock House will be published on Thursday August 2 2018.

And as if that weren’t enough, it’s now available for pre-order. 

Even more excitingly, if you think you can handle any more excitement (not sure I can tbh) at the time of writing it was only 99p so please HOTFOOT IT OVER TO AMAZON RIGHT NOW to snap it up at this most bargainous of bargain prices.

But what’s it all about? I’m so glad you asked. Here’s the blurb, just for you.

An uplifting romantic comedy from a new voice in women’s fiction! Perfect for fans of Trisha Ashley, Debbie Johnson, Jenny Colgan and Holly Martin.

 Wow, am I in esteemed company or what? I adore all those authors from the bottom of my romantic little heart and to be compared with any, let alone all, of them, is just beyond flattering. What do you mean you didn’t ask for a running commentary? Point taken. On with the blurb.

One long summer changed Faith forever….

 Faith Coombes should have been over the moon when her long-term boyfriend proposed to her. But instead, she broke up with him. Rob was safe, reliable, nice and…boring. Nothing like the only person who had ever broken her heart…

 Unable to afford the rent on another flat and desperate for a new start, Faith takes the plunge and moves back to the village she grew up in, returning to the house that holds so many memories for her.

 Hollyhock House, the family home of her best friend Minel, also belongs to the boy who meant so much to her all those years ago.

 As Faith falls back in love with the sprawling surroundings at Hollyhocks she also finds herself falling all over again for the only person who has truly hurt her.

 Can Faith come to terms with her past? Did she make the wrong decision in breaking up with Rob?

 Or does her heart really lie at Hollyhock House?

 Summer at Hollyhock House is a charming romantic comedy full of lost loves, missed opportunities and second chances. This summer read, perfect for the holidays, will have you laughing out loud in parts, close to tears in others, and above all, championing Faith as she searches for what is most important to her.

So there it is, my debut novel, summarised in 219 words. I can’t tell you how truly, madly, deeply in love with this book I am. I honestly poured my heart and soul into it, and I am so beyond grateful to now be able to share it with you.

The fear of promoting my work

Yesterday I posted on Instagram about how hard I find it to promote myself and my work, and why that's going to change. It seemed to really resonate with a lot of people so I thought I’d go into a bit more depth about it here.

On the surface I don’t promote myself for one major reason. Time. I don’t have a great deal of it, to put it mildly.  I have kids, a business, a marriage, a house, a dog, a life. Promoting myself and my work feels like one more thing on the endless to-do list. Time and again it slips to the bottom, then falls off completely, because I just don’t have time.

It genuinely makes me laugh that I still use that tired old excuse, the same excuse I used to use for not having written the novel I always wanted to write. Time. Oh, that old chestnut. Who has the time? Who?

Nobody has the time. You have to find it. Make it. Beg, borrow or steal it if you have to, but don’t assume that there’s a ‘them’ and ‘us’, and the ‘them’ are sitting on great swathes of free time not available to the rest of us. We all have the same 24 hours, how we differ is in what we choose to do with them.

Once we move past that great red herring, we start to see a truer picture.

What if people don't like my work? Think it's rubbish? What if I get awful reviews, what if I get great reviews and go to pieces under the pressure of living up to expectations with my next book, what if I get no reviews at all? This last scenario actually worries me the most. And in a twist worthy of a murder mystery, it's also the most likely scenario, if I don't promote myself. 

These are genuine reasons why I have to force myself to promote my work. But they're still only scratching the surface.

Underneath these semi-logical worries is a boiling mass of far less coherent and rational fear. 

Fear of being seen to try, lest I fail. A big part of me would prefer to just shrug and say 'well I didn't really bother promoting it in the first place' if the book doesn't sell well. A big part of me would like to look as if I achieve effortlessly, rather than admit to the graft. 

Fear about the true nature of creativity and talent. The pernicious belief that talent is something bestowed only upon the worthy few, who never need lower themselves to anything as base as promotion because they are simply destined for greatness. It's like I've got a Conservative politician trapped inside my head, convinced that abundance and plenty should only be gifted to those already born into it.

Fear to learn more about myself. To find out if my hopes, dreams and expectations are realistic, or if they need adjusting. Fear of finding my limits. If I refuse to try and fulfil it, my potential can remain limitless forever.

Fear to expose myself through my creative work, which is uninhibitedly of me. Today my publishers sent me their proposed blurb for the back cover. It took me 20 minutes to work up the courage to read it, and I did so from behind my hands, peeking through my fingers as if I were sitting next to my dad watching a graphic sex scene on TV. It’s that excruciating, that squirmy, that exposing. Somebody else’s interpretation of my creative work. 

Fear of being 'found out', that dreaded imposter syndrome that assures me each and every professional achievement of my life to date was a gigantic fluke. Fear that the dissenting voice is right, that vicious, manipulative and destructive criticism is simply 'honest'. 

It all comes down to fear. That's the very heart of it. And I know I'm not alone in this. That it never gets easier, I know no matter how many books they write, no matter how well they sell, I know authors all struggle with this each and every time they begin the journey all over again with a new book. I know all creatives struggle with it, whatever their form of expression. 

I understand the purpose of fear. I know it's my beautiful, brilliant brain's way of trying to protect me. I know it's essential. If I had no fear about how my work would be received, it would mean I hadn't invested anything of myself within it. 

But I’m also bigger than my fear. I'm ambitious, and a grown woman, and I really, really want this. I believe in my book. I believe in myself, not completely but enough, just enough to keep me going when the self-doubt is at its very strongest.

I'm going to put self-promotion in its rightful place, at the top of my list. Not just for my book, but also for my journalism and my creative business.

I'm going to own the fact that I'm working hard on my social media, admit that I want to grow my following and engage with people who like my work and the things I am doing in the world. I'm going to make connections with my tribe, and seek inspiration from creatives I admire around the world. I'm not going to feel ashamed of being seen to try. 

I'm going to ignore that voice that tells me it's self-indulgent and vain to talk about my work, that it's vulgar to be seen to endorse myself in any way, that it's just not British to be proud of what you do, that I'm only setting myself up to be knocked down.

I'm going to recognise that's just another way my fear is trying to help me, by stopping me trying, so it can negate any possibility of me failing.

And I’m going to take my fear by the hand and say thank you very much for looking out for me for so long, but it’s OK. You can go. I’ve got this now.

I’ve got this.

Does any of this sound familiar to you? How do you approach and manage your own self promotion? I’d love to know!

Don't forget to sign up to my newsletter to be the first to hear exciting book news, nuggets of wisdom, reviews and general loveliness, and get the odd special offer or freebie!

How to be a writer: Write the book you love

I saw one of those posts on Twitter a while back. It was two pictures, the first captioned ‘drafting my debut novel’ was of a beautifully iced and decorated cake, gleaming white and sparkling with edible glitz, resplendent in its sweet perfection.

The second was captioned  ‘drafting my second novel’ and depicted a cake-shaped inferno.

I was experiencing the very same phenomenon at that precise moment. My second novel was rapidly turning into my own version of the difficult second album.

Somehow I was struggling more than ever to connect with the work, to really lose myself in the story I was trying to tell. The plot and characters felt vague and undefined, and I wrote myself round in circles, always coming back to the same point and deciding to begin again with a different premise, a slightly different treatment, hoping this time it would stick.

It did not.

Somewhere along the line I’d stopped writing the best book I could. The task at hand became more effort than enjoyment and this is always a very bad sign.

If I don’t enjoy and immerse myself writing a book I can hardly expect anybody else to enjoy and immerse themselves reading it.

I know that my creativity is fuelled by me doing other things, by periods of me not actively working on a novel. I know that scheduling does not work for me. But I was increasingly forcing myself to sit down with my laptop and write to a schedule.

And so I asked myself, if I know what I need to do to create, when did I stop doing it?

I stopped the exact moment I began to pressure myself that this book ‘had to be’. It had to be written as quickly as possible so I had a follow-up in the bag once Summer At Hollyhock House was published! It had to be every bit as enchanting and magical to me as that first novel, but better! It had to be finished as soon as possible so I could begin to churn out books and establish an income stream and eventually, a career! It had to be created and put out in the world before everybody read my debut then promptly went away and forgot all about me….

In amongst all that pressure I was putting on myself, and on this poor book which is still yet to be brought into the world, I had totally forgotten the reasons why I write in the first place.

I don’t write for money, or fame, or to please anybody or so my mum and dad will be proud of me or so I can boast on social.

I write because I love and need to write. I tell stories because storytelling is a fundamental part of the human condition and it’s one that’s particularly pronounced within me. I write because the words form in my brain and press physically against the inside of my skull until I release them via the channels of my arms and hands.

I write because I love and need it, and therefore I only want to write books that I love and need to write.

It really is as simple as that.

So write the book that you love. Write the book you wish somebody else had written, so that you could read it. That’s the book you were born to write. That’s the book you need to write.

Not the book that ‘is bound to sell’ or ‘the market is crying out for’ or  ‘is just like (famous author’s) book that sold really well’ or ‘that will establish me as….’ All of these are great to have, but they’re unreliable. The market will shift and change, demands rise and fall, trends come and go, fashions change like the seasons and pass by like the wind.

By the time you’re halfway through the book that’s ‘totally right for the market’, the market will have moved on.

Write the book that is pressing insistently into the inside of your skull. Write it because you can’t not.  Trust that the process will be enough, that the journey will be reward, and that if it’s meant to be, the market will make itself known when the time comes.

If you've enjoyed this post, I'd love you to sign up to my newsletter to be the first to get exciting book news, writing tips and advice, outdoorsy whimsical musings, and the odd exclusive offer or freebie! Just click here to sign up. 

Why I set my novel in summer

As you’ve probably guessed from the title, Summer At Hollyhock House is set in summer. I started writing it in earnest about this time last year, as gunmetal-grey skies rolled over bleak, spindly silhouettes of bare trees and the only sign of colour and warmer days to come was the crocuses and narcissi poking their cheery little heads through the relentless gloom. Maybe I was just craving some warmth and life and colour but it wasn’t so much the imagery of summer I had in mind when I was writing, as the feeling.

I grew up in a small village in rural Sussex that does summer very well. The village green, its crowning glory, is always packed in the warmer months, surrounded by majestic horse chestnut trees and playing host to cricket, football, rowdy mobs of children and families enjoying picnics and games of rounders. A walk around the outer rural lanes is like a stroll through the Chelsea Flower Show, magnificent gardens heavy with high-summer blooms sending sweet, heady scent wafting into the air. It’s always lively and busy, there’s always something going on, everybody’s out and about and full of chatter and activity and the odd inevitable complaint about how hot it is.

It’s impossible not to feel happy on these heady summer days, happy and hopeful and like you belong. That’s one of the feelings I was looking to capture with my novel, the sense of belonging.

But when I really think about summer, and what it means to me, and what it was I wanted the book to capture and reflect, I think about the mornings.

Now first things first. I am not a morning person. I drag myself protesting out of bed every. Single. Day without fail and while yes it’s easier in summer when there’s soft light pouring in through the windows and the air is balmy, I’d probably still rather just roll over and go back to sleep. I’ve always been this way, since I was a young child my mother had to shake me complaining out of bed every morning. In fact there was only one thing that could stir me into action voluntarily, and that was if I was going out to ride horses.

Horsey people start their days early, some yards get cracking at 6am. I worked for several such yards in my formative years and the prospect of a day of the irresistible combination of manual labour, the company of animals and time outdoors was enough to boot me out of bed and get me moving. Up, get dressed, eat breakfast half-asleep then out of the door and onto my bike. Even then I’d be half wishing I was still in bed.

Outside the sun would already have risen in the sky and the air would be fresh, not yet warmed up after the cool night. The dawn chorus would be in full swing and the village green would be basking in the early morning rays. On these mornings, there was rarely another soul to be seen, the odd solitary dog-walker maybe, making the most of the peace and quiet before the serious business of the day began. But usually I was alone. Just me and my bike and wherever it was I had to be. Whizzing past those gardens as their glorious displays began to unfurl themselves, ready for another day of basking in the sun. There were hardly any cars on the roads at such an early hour. At dawn the village didn’t belong to people. It was its own world, private, secretive and busy with the movement of insects and birds and foxes returning home after a night of pillaging, but devoid of human activity.

Despite the aloneness I never felt lonely. I felt infused and imbibed with the magic that surrounded me and it really was magic, not hocus-pocus but true and deep earthy magic. The dew on the grass, the fat, pale droplets gleaming irrediscent on the petals of roses. My favourites were the peachy-yellow ones that turned pink at the edges. I wondered if fairies drank that dew from the petals every morning, before the world awoke. If the sun was already heating up, mist would rise from fields behind thick hedges over which I could just see, from my vantage point on my two-wheeled steed. Rabbits often frolicked in the morning rays, even the odd deer, enchanting looking creatures of fable who would be alerted by the noise of my tyres on the road and raise their heads, startled, ready to run lest I pose a threat.

No, not lonely, I’ve always enjoyed solitude since I was very young, and the whimsical thoughts in my head seemed too uncool to consider voicing out loud. But it did often occur to me how much I would have liked to share this with somebody or something. If instead of the bike, I was riding along on my own pony, a chestnut Arab with a gleaming coat and pluming tail, skittering and darting at the shadows cast onto the road. Or a dog, trotting along faithfully at my heels, occasionally breaking away to bounce into one of the fields and pursue the unfortunate rabbits.

And then when I got older I would sometimes wonder what it would be like if that person was with me. That person, the one who saw right into my fanciful heart and didn’t scorn my notion that the world of the morning was a bridge between two realities, the one of people, and the one that lies beyond most of us. The world of my favourite childhood authors, where trees have spirits and animals can talk and there is magic and mystery beyond the human eye, visible only to those who really want to see it.

Sometimes, I wondered if I let my eyes lose focus and let the landscape around me meld into a blurry mass, radiant with colour and texture and scent, I would be able to see it. And then if I turned my head I would find beside me that person, they would have materialised next to me, and they would be able to see it, because they could see me too.

Can't find the time to write? Try this one tip.

Yesterday a lovely woman in an equally lovely Facebook group I frequent posted about her creative block. She's desperate to find the time to write, but as a mother of two children under five, she has no idea how to fit it in.

Sound familiar? Yep, to me too. About two years ago I went on something of an epic quest to find the time to write. I read books, blogs, features and articles all devoted to helping writers carve out the time to dedicate to their craft. All the advice was helpful, but none of it actually helped me achieve what I was looking for. As the mother of two children under five at the time, both at home full-time, I literally could not find the time to write.

I think this is a really common problem. You don't have to be a mother to struggle to find the time - you could have a busy job, or ageing parents in need of constant care. I don't think many of us are sitting on great swathes of free time, ready and waiting for us to devote ourselves to our creative work.

Last year, something changed. I did find the time to write - or more accurately I made the time to write. Nothing in my circumstances changed, however. My children got a bit older, but they were still at home full-time, Noel was still at work from 7.30am to 7.30pm five days a week.

What changed was this one little tip I'm going to share with you now, and I promise you if you follow it through fully, it will change your situation too. 

I took my writing seriously.

That's all. 

Truly all that needs to change is how you view your writing. Once you stop seeing it as something you'd like to do one day when you have time, and start viewing it as an important part of your day to day life NOW, the rest will follow. 

I learned this the hard way. If you're thinking now that I sat down and made a schedule and set myself a word-count a day and allocated the time accordingly, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. I did take my writing seriously but not in a positive, thought-through, structured way.

What actually happened was I became so compelled by the reflection I'd been doing, and the story that was forming in my head (you can read more about that process here) that I turned my writing into a kind of guilty secret. An addiction, almost. I wrote frantically and furtively whenever I could and I felt racked with guilt the entire time. I write for a living, but I was at the time a full-time home educating mother of two children five and under. Any time outside the children 'should' have been devoted to housework, family time, my marriage, and any paid work I could round up to help keep the coffers at a reasonable level.

I didn't have a book deal to justify the output of time and energy. I wrote because at the time I felt I had to, this story was literally pouring out of me, pressing physically against the sides of my skull, and if I didn't get it out my head would explode. I told myself I had no choice. I had to follow this compulsion, and so I did. But I did it whilst filled with shame and guilt and a nagging feeling that I was being selfish, unfair on my family, and neglecting my duties.

Nonetheless, it worked. I took my writing seriously. I prioritised it. I made it essential, and in doing so I found the time, and the belief, to see it through.

What I learned from this was mind-altering. I learned that:

I need to write. This is a fact and it's irrefutable. I can't bury my creative urges any longer.

Writing is a priority. It's important, it's part of who I am and it demands to be respected. If I don't respect it thoughtfully and positively, I will do so negatively and through crippling shame and self-doubt. But I will do it anyway.

If I view my writing as essential, as a part of the whole that makes up who I am, I can view it differently. I can make the time, set aside the time and find the time. I can justify the odd CBeebies marathon when I absolutely have to nail a scene and the children are at a loose end. I can negotiate with Noel time at the weekends to write in a more thoughtful and respectful way, making allowances for everybody's needs. I can sacrifice Netflix, get up early, stay up late as and when I need to, because the writing takes priority. It doesn't feel like a sacrifice, or a chore. It feels essential.

If I view my need to write as shameful, selfish, indulgent or 'not important', I will write anyway, but I will do so through a cloud of negativity. I will not feel proud of what I achieve. I will not have the faith in it to see it through to the end. I will sabotage and disappoint myself to prove my worldview that writing is NOT a priority, it's a nice-to-have.

I should not need to justify my writing, but as I do, here's how I see it. It's important for my children to see me doing my creative work and understand it's important to me. It helps them view me as a rounded human being, not just Mummy, and it helps them understand their own creative callings are important, positive and to be respected.

I can - and do - make money from writing. But this is not the goal. I didn't write my novel to get published and make heaps of cash. Now it is being published, heaps of cash would be lovely, thanks. But that's not what I had in mind when I wrote. I wrote it purely and solely because I wanted to. The process was the reward. Finishing it was the goal. Everything else comes afterwards, in its rightful place.

And so now I do prioritise my writing. I make the time. I take it seriously. I do it positively. I haven't quite got to the stage of planning daily word-counts yet - I don't think I'll ever work this way. But I do make time in my days, and in my weeks, to write. I treat it as important and allow it the time and space it deserves. 

To prioritise your own writing, try the following:

Think about why you write. Do you want to make money? If so, that's fine, but if that's the only goal then you will struggle to prioritise your writing until you have a book deal, and you won't get one of those until you write. There's an obvious cycle of self-defeat in there. So think why else you want to write. What do you want to say? How do you want to feel? What creative expression of yourself do you want to put out in the world? How would the process feel? How would a creative outlet improve other aspects of your life, and how you feel about yourself? Those are your initial motivators. The rest will come later.

Think about why you don't write. I know, you don't have time. The bills need to be paid, the kids need to be looked after, the house won't keep itself tidy, dinner won't cook itself, and your boss emails you at 4.30am on a Sunday morning expecting an instant response. What's actually happening here is you are prioritising everything else in your life, namely your servitude to others, over your creative calling. How can you take back some of that time for yourself? Do you need to cook from scratch every night? Do you have to entertain and play with your children 24/7 or could they be persuaded or assisted to entertain themselves from time to time? Would your partner, a friend, a family member, help out? Can the hoovering wait another night?

Look for your snatches of time. The ten minutes you spend waiting for the kids to be ready to head out. The time you spend scrolling while you wait for dinner to be ready, or for the kids to wake up. If your laptop (or notebook) is set up, within reach and turned on, you can reach for it the second you have a second. Just don't forget to save as you go.

Look for your chunks of time. Could you swap the sofa with your partner and Netflix for the laptop once or twice a week? Can you cancel any social engagements you aren't massively looking forward to, stay home and write instead? Could you set an alarm half an hour earlier and get up and try writing in the mornings? You might have to try a few things before you find what works for you. But if you don't try at all, you'll never know.

Think about how you'd do it if you were being paid. If you had a book deal, or an hourly rate, or a brand interested in working with you, you'd find the time. How?

Then go find that time anyway.

I'd love to know how you get on, and how you find the time to write.

Ways to overcome creative block

If you're in any way creative you'll be familiar with block. It's the moment when you sit staring at a blank screen, unable to type a single word. When you look at the scene in front of you and the image on your camera and the difference between the two feels insurmountable, and the disappointment washes over you.

It's that voice whispering in your head 'what are you doing? You're not a writer/photographer/artist/maker and you never will be. Who do you think you are, nurturing your grand ambitions? You'll never do it. Just do us all a favour and stop trying.'

It could be a lack of inspiration, or it could be that the inspiration is clearly formed in your head, you have a vision of how you want your creation to look, how you want it to make people feel - and the reality is you have blankness. A nothing. An empty space. 

For me, and I suspect for many of us, there is nothing more intimidating than empty space. 

There are entire books and courses devoted to overcoming block and I thoroughly recommend checking them out, and finding what works for you. But at the end of the day it's unlikely anybody else can solve the conundrum for you. Nobody can unblock you. You have to eventually work out how to do it yourself. It can be with the help of others, but the final push always has to come from you.

Here are some ways I overcome block. I'd love to hear your strategies so please do leave your insights in the comments below.

1. Go for a walk. Yes, that old cliche, but for me it truly works on two levels. The regular experience of being in nature fuels my creativity, in ways I don't fully understand yet. Truthfully I don't know why it works, I just know that it does. I take in much of what I see on an unconscious level and store it somewhere in my mind, waiting for it to become relevant. A walk is also hugely helpful for smaller blocks - struggling with plotholes, connecting scenes or even just working out what relevance that isolated chapter I wrote has, and where it fit into the overall story. The physical act of walking and the immersion in nature occupies the body and the senses and leaves the mind free to find the answers.

2. Talk to somebody. And choose them carefully. Last year I met an amazing woman, the very wonderful Sas Petherick, at Sisterhood and something about her really stuck with me. When I was wrestling with a block and all my usual strategies had failed, her presence crept into my head and I reached out to her.  She didn't tell me how to overcome the block, because that's not something somebody else can do. But she helped me see how I could overcome it myself. Her warmth and wisdom and aura of complete belief in me was the real gift, this is what helped to thaw out whatever icy armour I had constructed around myself. I highly recommend checking out Sas's work - her fantastic podcast Courage and Spice is a great place to start.

3. Sit with the feelings. When block hits often what I am truly afraid of is exposing parts of myself, because creativity is such an expression of self. Let yourself feel the shame and doubt and mortification and fear, let yourself feel whatever it is you have to feel without distraction. For me there can be guilt too, about devoting so much time and energy to a creative endeavour for which there is no guarantee of any monetary return. I 'could' have spent all that time doing paid work, or tidying my house - no sorry, that one isn't going to fly - but the point is, I 'could' have been doing something more worthwhile. But then what's more worthwhile than your creative work? 

4. Search for inspiration. Look at the work of others in your field and allow yourself to reflect on what you admire about them. Don't try and copy them - trying to do somebody else's work will never produce anything as valuable as the work you alone are meant to do. But look to them for inspiration and remind yourself that others have walked this path, and you can too. Chances are that person you are so admiring suffers from block too. The only difference between you and them is they found a way to overcome it. 

5. Switch off and sleep. Don't consciously continue to ponder the dilemma but don't push it away either if it continues to prey on your mind. Watch your thoughts and let them float up and away. The ones you need will always stick around. Don't leap out of bed to scribble down flashes of inspiration - trust that what you need, will still be there in the morning.

6. Alter your expectations. While you should never compromise your creativity and devalue your work 'to get it done', accept that all work is essentially work in progress and will never be perfect. There are times when you will have to make creative decisions that will cause you a great deal more work than you initially anticipated and if your gut tells you this is what has to be done, you've just got to suck it up and do it. But other times, anything is better than nothing. I struggled massively with writing a synopsis for my novel. I was putting unbearable pressure on that short document. It had to sum up the plot, introduce the characters, reflect the style and setting of the novel, encapsulate my personality, and be written in the tone and feel of the novel. In 500 words. And it was vital I got it 100% perfect because if nobody read my manuscript because the synopsis didn't sell it in the right way, that was me screwed. Yeah, not going to happen. So I wrote a basic plot summary and sent it off before I could question myself. It did not reflect my unique style and introduce every character and showcase the setting and it was not written in the tone and feel of the novel. It was, however, 500 words of plot summary. That, I hoped, would be enough. It was. 

7. Love the pain. Once shouted at me by a seriously fierce personal trainer who wanted me to hold a squat position plus two 8kg kettlebells for two minutes. LOVE THE PAIN, CATHY! Yeah my butt did NOT love the pain. But I did it anyway and my butt is off the scale KAPOW/vaguely toned. Sometimes things are going to hurt but there's beauty in all human emotion, pain included. If you're creative this pretty much comes as standard. Fierce weeping is part of the process whether that's tears of relief, joy, sadness or just downright frustration. Love it. Embrace it. It won't last forever. And if you are feeling the pain it's a sign that you're in touch with your true self, and that's where creativity comes from. Yourself. 

How I wrote a novel

This year I achieved a lifelong ambition. I wrote a novel.

I've wanted to write a novel since I was about six years old. I have multiple unfinished drafts saved on this computer, on previous computers, on computers lost to time, on computers that probably predate time (BBC Micro, anybody?). Until this year, I never managed to finish one.

I would begin and I would know how it ended. I could never do the middle bit, connecting the dots, getting the characters from A to B. Slowly my interest and motivation would slip away, or I would start afresh, try again only to find the same cycle repeating itself.

This year, that changed. I wrote an entire novel from start to finish, sent it to my agent, she got me a book deal and I will be a published novelist in 2018. The whole process was breathtakingly quick. I began in January. I had a deal by July.

In fact the whole process was breathtaking, full stop. It was fascinating. If you search online for 'how to write a novel' you'll come across many well-thought out blogs and articles and tips and exercises all designed to help. Most of them involve things like, planning and writing out the story structure, getting the plot outline completed, developing your characters, going through various creative exercises on paper (if your character went out for lunch, what would they order?) and other very sensible and helpful tips. It's all highly organised and linear. 

I did none of the above. I have no Instagrammable notebooks filled with spider diagrams, scribbled notes and sketches. The process of writing my novel was as far removed from a planned and organised creative exercise as it's possible to be. It was completely unlinear - it was cyclical. Here's how it all worked, and what I learned.

1. I got depressed. I began the year in a pretty bad place in terms of my self-image and general mood, and it got worse as I approached my 36th birthday. I felt impossibly low, stuck, drained, self-defeating and had no idea how to get myself out of it. On a surface level I continued 'as normal' but inside me everything was on hold. I had literally nothing inside me other than empty space and lack. 

2. I got reflective. Through a series of events and happenings my personal history became pressing in my mind and I became fixated upon my teenage years. I listened to music from the era on loop, remembered the people I knew, the places I went and the emotions I felt, and I played it all through as frequently as I played The Prodigy and Utah Saints. At first I wondered if I was experiencing a period of mourning, having entered my late mid-thirties, for times long gone and emotions and experiences I would and could never repeat. But then the internal processes began to change - again - and I started to wonder what might have happened if I'd made different choices or decisions, if I'd avoided certain people or become close to others - I began to play with my own history.

3. I got inspired. I began to write a story that was in no way based upon my own personal life or experience, but was definitely informed and inspired by the process I'd been through above. I have had this happen before - a creative surge, out comes between 15,000 and 40,000 words, and then it stops. I ride the wave and then lose it and have no way of getting it back. I assumed this would be the case, and I wrote anyway. 

4. I dug in. Parts of the book were excruciating to write, for reasons that would make no sense to anybody but me. Although not autobiographical this book was a creation of mine, something generated and put into the world by me alone. This meant exposing the parts of myself about which I feel most vulnerable. At times I literally could not type the words, I knew what I had to write and I could feel the words in my head, waiting to flow down my arms and onto the page, and I could feel resistance and blockage along with shame and humiliation. I could sit for hours staring at the screen, waiting to be ready, waiting for the excruciating feelings to pass. I believed enough in the outcome to override the fear, and so eventually, I wrote what I had to write. This was the first time I had found the courage to write what I needed to write and not duck out.

5. I couldn't let go. When the first roadblock happened, the first indication that this was not going to work, I was running out of steam and losing the creative flow, I expected I would just stop. I didn't. I kept going. I started again, a different iteration of the same story. I did this several times. I wrote chapters that kept to a chronological order and chapters that didn't fit anywhere but I felt that they would do at some point, and I felt I was writing them for a reason, so I did.

6. I went to the other side. I put all other aspects of my life on hold (as far as this is possible) and wrote. I wrote from the second I woke up until I was needed elsewhere, and until the second I went to bed, usually at about 1 or 2am. I was bursting with energy. I didn't need much sleep, I had to force myself to remember to eat, I lost a ton of weight and I felt a true vibrance within me, a genuine connection to the flow of creativity, that I hadn't ever really allowed myself to experience before. I'd skirted around it, had moments of inspiration, days here and there when the words wouldn't stop coming, but I never let myself really lean into it. This time I went all the way. I dived in and let it swallow me whole.

7. I began to trust the process. I saw that I went through cycles of intense creativity and productivity, and that these would slowly tail off and I would need to rest, get a few early nights, stop trying to force it and wait for the inspiration to return, trusting that it would - and it did. Every time. I wrote whatever I felt I had to write in that moment to keep the flow going. I wrote entire vehicles and characters into the story that I would later remove, but I wrote them anyway because I felt I had to at the time. I didn't really know why, nor did I question it. I wrote whatever my brain, or my heart, told me to write. I surrendered.

8. I abandoned all goals other than finishing. It became clear to me that if I kept trusting the process - trusting myself - I was going to finish this book. I put all thoughts of publication out of my mind, stopped worrying about whether my agent would want to read it and whether she would consider it worthy of submission. I didn't have to encourage myself or 'fake it til I made it'. I genuinely wanted to finish the book, to finish the book. That was the only goal. I retained of course an inkling that this could become something big for me if I did finish it and if my agent liked it and if somebody picked it up - but at this stage that was too many 'ifs' and all were out of my control. The only thing in my control was whether or not I would finish the book, so that became the goal, and that's what I did.

9. Once I'd finished, I started at the beginning all over again. I read and re-read and re-read and made change after change. Some small, some big - some so big they entailed almost a complete re-writing of vast parts of the book. I continued to trust the process. If my instincts told me something had to go, it went. If my heart said 'this isn't working,' I stopped trying to make it work. When I saw I needed to make changes that would mean yet more hours upon hours of writing and rewriting and would be difficult and an effort, I made every single one anyway. I trusted that it would all make sense in the end, and I kept going. I also trusted that I would know when I was done, when it was ready, when it was time to stop tinkering and go on to the next stage. 

10. I sent it to my agent. This was a HUGE step. This was the start of me stating my intention to put my work out there in the world. I was terrified and the 'what ifs' were off the scale. I've been working with my agent Isy since 2009, but only on non-fiction. This was something entirely new and different. We hadn't worked together since The Girl's Guide to Life on Two Wheels was published in 2013 - this felt as scary as starting from scratch, but with the added fear of losing the respect of somebody I value. What if she came back saying 'no this is just not going to work, please stick to non-fic in future'? I believed in the book 100% and I felt magic in it. If she didn't get it and feel it too, would that invalidate everything I'd worked towards?

11. She loved it and asked me to prepare it for submission. I froze up temporarily and struggled to rework certain parts based on her feedback. Then I struggled to create a synopsis - I think I spent about three weeks staring at a blank screen, completely unable to even start. The prospect of falling at the final hurdle loomed large in my mind. I tried various strategies, and they all failed. I wanted my synopsis to be PERFECT. What I finally sent was not perfect. It would do. That was all I was capable of, and it would do.

12. Feedback took a while to come in and the first couple were rejections, but still positive and encouraging. Then the offer came in and I basically didn't tell anybody other than Noel and my mother and one close friend. I had thought I would be screaming it from the rooftops. Instead I said nothing. Eventually I put something on Instagram. I've struggled to refer to it much since. Too many what-ifs again. What if they change their minds? What if they're not happy with the final edit? What if it doesn't happen, after all? What if it's a spectacular failure and everybody laughs at me and I get review after review saying 'this is shit'? WHAT IF?

The process is ongoing, in a cyclical way. At the moment the second edit is with my publishers, and soon there will be more editing, refining, tinkering, titles, cover designs and all the exciting stuff. But all cycles come back to the beginning and right now that's where I am - almost back at the beginning, one cycle has ended and I'm waiting for the next one to start.

Throughout this process there have been standout moments. Finishing, getting good feedback from my agent, getting a deal - they were all huge. But the real standout moment happened much earlier. It happened after those awkward, difficult times when I sat staring at a blank screen knowing what I had to write and feeling unable to write it, waiting to be ready to break through the block, refusing to shut down my computer and let the novel slip away as all its predecessors have done, because I couldn't find the courage to do what I had to do.

The standout moment was when I realised I was going to finish. That I was not going to stop and I was going to do whatever it took to finish the book. Not in a half-assed 'well I'll just put up with some parts that don't really work for me just to get it done', but finish truly, with the knowledge deep inside me that I'd done the absolute best I could. I hadn't shirked or taken the easy way out.

That was when I realised that the hard part - the middle bit, the connecting chapters, keeping the story going, retaining the flow - wasn't hard at all. In fact it was the easiest part of all. 

That was the moment I chose to trust the process, while realising that the process isn't really a 'process' at all.

The process is me. When I chose to trust the process I chose to trust myself. I chose to believe in myself. That was the moment it all changed. That was the magic. 

Home education planning for 2017

At the end of last year I wrote this piece for the Telegraph about our first 'term' of home educating.

This term I wanted to begin with more of a plan. Last term was very haphazard and I was conscious that Cherry in particular doesn't respond well to chaos and disorganisation. We also welcomed a puppy into our family which brought what routine we had created to a screeching halt. 

Last term was very hard in places, and at one point we were considering both children attending a Waldorf-inspired kindergarten for three mornings a week as I genuinely felt I couldn't cope with the responsibility of full-time home education. For various reasons this didn't happen and I am now very glad. 

I feel I have a better idea of what home education is and how it is working for us, and how it will continue to work in the future. Through all of this I have been able to look at my children and ask myself some fundamental questions - are they happy? Are they learning? Are they engaged in the world? Do they have discernible interests, passions and lines of inquiry? Are they interacting socially? Are they growing as human beings? Are we all, all four of us, learning and growing? Despite some challenges, so far, the answers are always 'yes'. 

For a long time I have been really excited by the idea of inquiry-based learning - following children's interests and offering mentoring and guidance, and allowing these interests to unfold into self-directed learning. It's a simple concept that felt almost impossible to put into practice at several points in the last few months.

However at the end of the year some strong interests and obvious lines of inquiry began to emerge, disparate but connected. 

At the same time, all the reading and thinking and learning I have been doing - exploring approaches from unschooling to Charlotte Mason to classical to Reggio-inspired - started to come together in a more holistic and connected way. 

Finally, Noel and I began to address the environment. We converted the spare room, piled high with junk and clutter, into a playroom. This has been a long time coming - we decided back in August to turn the space over to the children - only now did we have the vision and the funds to make it a reality.

At the beginning of 2017 I feel in a good place and ready to plunge into home education with a refreshed and enhanced enthusiasm.

We will continue with some of the routine we created last year. Violet will still attend her preschool for three mornings a week. Cherry will continue with her sports class, her drama class and will start gymnastics classes. 

One day a week we all attend a beautiful outdoor homeschooling community. We have made some good friends there and although I have struggled personally with my confidence, with social awkwardness and at times with my parenting in this space, I very much feel we belong there. 

We will also continue to spend time outside every day, this is a top priority and won't change. Nature study will carry on, we started following Exploring Nature With Children by Lynn Seddon last year and we will pick that back up again.

Cherry and Violet are incredibly at home in the outdoors. They never struggle to occupy and entertain themselves and their play lasts for hours. The learning that happens is a joy to behold, as is their capability, confidence and resourcefulness.

But indoors they are less at home. They are more demanding, argue more and are less inclined to occupy and entertain themselves. They have long play cycles and do a lot of dramatic play and storytelling but they rarely sit and play constructively with toys - I hardly ever find them building with the blocks, for example. 

I am hopeful having their own playroom will encourage them to explore materials and resources more. I invested in a little curriculum called Building Structures With Young Children that I plan to work through with them, but at the moment we only have a small bucket of wooden blocks at our disposal. I may leave this until we can invest in a couple of resources - I think they would absolutely love rainbow blocks, for example, and be far more motivated to explore them.

We used Christmas as an opportunity to invest in some resources like geometric shapes and puzzles and a maths set so we are well set up to begin some guided investigations into shapes, patters, measurements and other basic mathematical concepts. 

They love to help me cook and both of them are highly capable in the kitchen. They love cooking and baking and so this year we will be branching out from our staples, trying new recipes together and building on their skills.

They have also started asking questions about nutrition and the general properties and content of food, so we will begin to learn more about food groups and the function of food as fuel for our bodies. As keen gardeners and cooks they're pretty au fait with where their food comes from, but we haven't yet really talked much about the ethics of food, packaging, production processes, eating meat and so on.

Cherry learned to read last term, to the level of being able to read a simple early reader by herself. We used a phonics-based programme which she initially enjoyed but later began to complain about. I also felt the reading material within the programme itself became pretty poor as it progressed. So this term we will add sight words instead of focusing purely on sounding out words. 

In terms of inquiry and project work, Violet remains very interested in space and Cherry has a few interests on the go, including New York, tall structures and electricity.

Over Christmas they watched and fell in love with Ice Age: Collision Course and Cherry asked about friction, so this led to a short but enjoyable inquiry and they both completely grasped the concept and were able to make accurate predictions about the friction generated between various surfaces and objects. 

Finally I invested in a Reggio-inspired arts curriculum for us to work through. We do a lot of art and Cherry and Violet love crafting and creating. Having a structure to follow and ideas of how to present provocations and talk about the materials with the children is really helpful to me as I struggle to overcome my perception of myself as 'not good at art'. It's a bit like having a friendly helping hand. 

With children this age I think the main challenge of home education is simply being with them so much. They are still very young, although both are past the demanding dependency of toddlerdom. Violet is experiencing some big emotions at the moment and Cherry remains highly sensitive, extremely spirited and very demanding in new and different ways. She is quite simply a child who requires a great deal of attention and interaction - she always has been and I can't see this changing any time soon. 

My relationship with both of my children is at an all-time high point. I feel extremely confident in my parenting at this moment in time, but I know how quickly this can change and Cherry in particular hits phases hard and head-on. There is always something new just around the corner.

Managing this, and retaining some semblance of balance so that I feel I have enough interests, get enough exercise and maintain enough of a healthy inner life, is the ultimate goal.

At the end of the day I'm also a housewife, keeping everybody fed, clothed and content is part of my remit too.

I am not a natural home-maker, I am not tidy or organised and I frequently procrastinate and try to avoid taking responsibility. But on the plus side I am extremely resourceful, creative and determined.

More and more I am finding ways to make home life work for me - for all of us. Rather than try and force myself into somebody else's model, looking to Instagram or self-proclaimed 'Monica's' or Marie Kondo I am starting to find a way of running our home that fits in with my personality and my true self as well as with the wants and needs of everybody else. Noel is strong in areas where I am weak, and more and more he and I inspire each other to be our best selves. 

I am so excited for what this year may hold. I hope I can document it a bit more - already this year I have used my DSLR every day, instead of just snapping on my iPhone, and it's just a simple gesture but it feels significant in a number of ways.

Firstly it shows that I have my hands free enough to use the thing - a first since I had children. 

Secondly, it shows that I am investing a more expensive and professional tool in recording our daily lives, which feels like it gives moments and experiences more weight and meaning. Life is to be lived, enjoyed and reflected upon, not just snapped in a rush.

And finally it feels like a representation of an awareness of being mindful and present, of observing my children rather than responding to predicted or learned behaviour. More and more I can step back and watch and learn, rather than constantly rushing about with my hands full. Much of this is a reflection of their age and capabilities, of course, but I hope that some of it is indicative of my own personal growth as a mother and as a person.

It's been a journey for me too - the most exciting journey of all. I can't wait to see where we all go. 

Wild learning: Structured outdoor learning

It's safe to say I am completely fanatical about outdoor learning, mainly because I can see about a billion benefits and not one drawback. 

It's great for children physically because it means they are free to move around - in fact most outdoor learning requires movement. We all know kids who 'can't sit still' but even the more gentle and relaxed children, who are quite happy to sit for long periods of time, would be better served moving their bodies.

It's great for them mentally - the benefits of time outdoors and time in nature are well-documented and I won't waste time repeating them here. It's great for kids educationally, because outdoor learning is hands-on and allows them to see concepts in action, in a relatable space. It also provides a product or outcome, which isn't essential for learning but I certainly find my children like to see they have accomplished something.

It's great for nature and our planet, because children who know about nature and the Earth tend to care about it and want to look after it. You can care about something without any prior knowledge of course, but it's generally accepted the more you know, the greater your interest and the greater your interest, the more you care.

And finally it's great for us parents, whether we are home educating or not, because it gets US outside (see above about myriad of benefits) moving about (ditto) caring about the planet (ditto) and experiencing things alongside our children. Ultimately that connection, those shared experiences and shaped memories, are what parenting is all about. 

Win-win-win-win.

I freely admit I'm an unschooler at heart. I believe wholeheartedly in child-led and child-driven play and activities, I am almost neurotic about not wanting to 'teach' my children anything because I want them to learn for themselves, and so on.

My ideal outdoor learning scenario would involve my children spilling out into the great outdoors and occupying themselves with some fantastic activity, den-building or stream-damming or tree-climbing or bow and arrow construction. Something wholesome and physical and labour-intensive that also helps them learn valuable lessons spanning social skills and teamwork to maths, science and literacy. 

All while I sit and watch.

Certainly some of our time outdoors takes this format. Admittedly Cherry and Violet have never built a shelter, bridge, dam or bow and arrow, but they have climbed plenty of trees. They have also amused themselves for hours, endless hours, with sticks, stones, leaves, feathers, bugs, beetles and other creatures great and small. 

But there are other times when we head out and all they seem to want to do is climb up my face asking for snacks, ignoring uneaten sandwiches and apples with one bite taken out of them. During such times, I find it helpful to have an activity or two up my sleeve to give them a bit of structure and direction. 

Here's some of what we've been up to lately:

Nature journalling

I've been in love with the idea of keeping a nature journal since I read The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady when I wasn't much older than Cherry is now. I adored art at school and it was one of the few classes with which I really engaged. However I became painfully aware that I 'couldn't draw', for this reason art GCSE simply wasn't an option, and I last drew at the age of 14 before dropping art completely. Despite all this I recently felt motivated to buy Keeping A Nature Journal by Clare Walker Leslie and that inspired me to pick up my pencil again.

Unsurprisingly, I draw like a 14 year old who 'can't draw'. Nonetheless I absolutely love drawing and sketching my observations when we are out in nature, and as I do it so much, Cherry and Violet do too. Nature journalling is deeply satisfying and very meditative for me, and hugely useful for them as they learn to focus and observe, to draw what they see, and to identify and name species. 

Map-making

Cherry in particular likes the concept of maps at the moment. It appeals to the side of her that likes structure and order - the side of her that makes unschooling basically impossible for us. More on this another time! This week while Violet was at preschool Cherry and I headed to a beautiful park close to our house to make a map of the local area.

We began with constructing the outline from sticks, this allowed us to do some counting, sorting and basic geometry as we talked about shapes and sides and bunched the sticks into fives to count and sort. Once we'd chosen our shapes (I made a triangle, Cherry a square) we paced out ten steps in five different directions to choose objects to put inside the map.

We ended up with a visual representation of species common to the area, which meant we could talk about what grows in the park, what animals and birds live in and use these plants and trees, how they use the different parts, and generally explore some connections.

I loved this map-making exercise, the idea came from a lovely book called Play The Forest School Way which is full of activities and games for outdoor learning. I am sure we will be visiting it again. Cherry really enjoyed it and got very into it, after initially protesting that she didn't want to be in the park and wanted to go home and snuggle on the sofa, it took very little time for her to become absorbed in her task.  

After we'd made our maps we sat and drew them. This was tricky for Cherry as she became frustrated that her drawings were quite crude, so I demonstrated a few techniques to her and labelled her items for her. Again, I struggle with things like this as I am so passionate about them doing things for themselves, but I am having to realise that sometimes she really does want more hands-on help guidance than I am currently offering and it won't shatter her self-esteem for life if I occasionally take a more 'teacherly' role.  

Patterns and symmetry

I came across this lovely idea from the wonderful Cathy (Cathy's are just the best, aren't we?!) at NurtureStore. Cathy is an outdoor-loving, home-educating mother who has just set up a new resource called Seasons School, full of great ideas for learning in nature with the flow of the seasons. After seeing one of her posts on Instagram, I had to try this activity straight away and luckily we were in aforementioned National Trust property so I was able to grab everything we needed straight away.

I created a frame with sticks and a pattern on one side using natural objects (leaves, seeds, snail shells etc) and invited Cherry and Violet to complete the patterns, explaining the concept of symmetry and things being the same on both sides.

Here's a disclaimer though. I had hoped they would become very interested and make their own patterns, or patterns for me or one another to complete. However just as I called them over, a fellow mum sat down right next to us and opened a packet of chocolate fingers! That was pretty much the end of my nice little learning activity, Cherry did at least complete her pattern (very quickly) but Violet abandoned hers entirely and chocolate biscuits became the focus instead. 

We are sailing

We attend a group held in the most stunning location, in the woods next to a gorgeous, but fairly small, lake. Recently a small bunch of us hired the venue for a day of lake exploring, including sailing little dinghies. 

I always think learning through experience can't be beaten. The day itself was wonderful, a friend had brought a larger dingy and I rowed Cherry, Violet and myself out onto the lake to enjoy some blissful tranquility. The children also floated about on little dinghies of their own. Later we sailed leaf and bark boats. I didn't talk explicitly about sinking and floating and the grander educational principles at work, because this really was more of an unschooling experience. The learning was in the doing and the observing. Later on, when we come to discuss such things in more depth, they will have that experience to draw upon.

That's another thing outdoor learning offers - experience. True experience, not a reconstruction or modified, health-and-safety approved imitation, in my view just can't be beaten.

The Gateway (Our life outside)

When I worked as a journalist in London I never noticed the seasons. I only became aware of them very vaguely, noticing one day that all the trees I cycled past had turned russet-brown, or realising one day in March that the air felt warmer and lighter, heralding Spring.

Since settling into life as a mother the time I spend outdoors has increased exponentially. In a way it's like coming home. I grew up in the countryside, was always outdoors, lived and breathed mud and snails and cow parsley and ponies and grass and air.

As soon as I became a mother I swapped days in an office for days outside. Not always necessarily for the most noble of reasons, I hasten to add. Going out for a walk was one way, often the only way, to cope with Cherry's relentless crying. Wandering across the common after her nap became a way to fill and move the time until Noel came home.

But despite these tough moments, it was mainly for the joy. Every joy, every small victory, every tiny magical moment of the early days and weeks and months of her life, happened outside. The first time I took her out in the carrier, watched the sun bathe her tiny precious face, and sat on a bench and drank in the enormity of my life changing forever while the common outside my front door remained steadfastly the same, always evolving but always constant.

The picnics and walks, the sunshine on her smiling face, the splashing and paddling on hot summer afternoons, her first hesitant stumbling steps. 

When Violet was born we spent three hazy golden months, as summer gave way to autumn, outside every single day. We would leave for a park in the morning after breakfast, Violet snug in the sling, and return for naps, then head out for a walk by the river in the afternoon.

Life with two children under two was actually blissfully easy, compared to what was to come. But even when life with two very young children became harder than I thought possible, there was always something I could do to make it a little easier on all of us, and that was to open the front door.

Somehow, somewhere, in the last four and a half years a sense of a deep connection, a grounding, has snuck up on me. Somewhere along the line I have become the parent I always wanted to be. In no way perfect, but definitely a parent I want to be. A parent who remembers what it was like to be a child herself, how it felt.  

I have also discovered many things I learned as a child are there, in the back of my mind, still accessible if I want them. The bird books I pored over mean I can now identify most common species from sight. I don't know how I know it's a mistle thrush. I just look, and it comes to me.

Cherry, Violet and I live outside. We do of course spend time in the house, more so in the winter and more particularly this winter and early Spring when the endless damp, cold, grey weather finally got to all of us. But even so, we spend vast, vast swathes of our time and lives outdoors. From March to November it's pretty much all day every day. As the days cool and the evenings draw in, we find other ways to get our fresh air fix, playing football out on our cul-de-sac under the streetlights, going for walks with our red torches, spotting Christmas lights. 

Again my motivations aren't always noble. It's often the only way I can keep us going through the day if tempers are fraying, the walls pressing in, there seems to be no physical structure big enough to encompass my daughters' relationship when they are in those moods.

Through the two and a half year of intense sleep deprivation Violet brought with her sunshine-y, joyful presence going outdoors was often the only way to keep me going through the day too.

Everything is made so much easier, so much better, once I step outside.

A friend of mine once said 'I'm a better parent outdoors,' and I agree. But actually that statement isn't big enough for me.

I'm a better person outdoors. 

Our front door has become something of a gateway. Stepping outside of it has led all of us to more than I could have possibly imagined. And the person who has benefitted most, is me.

In the last four years I have watched years and years of pent-up hurt, fear and rage melt away. I have felt myself come creeping, slowly slowly, out from inside my head and into the rest of my body. I have become more aware, more present, more confident, more content and more alive. I have come back to myself. Become myself.

As I watch my children begin their journeys with a strong sense of self and connection with nature and the outdoors I realise more than ever how outside is a true gateway.

For them it's the first, and in my view the most important, gateway to learning and knowledge. Counting sticks and stones, creating art with sticks, leaves and berries, telling stories and creating theatricals with snail shells, wildflowers and of course, sticks. 

The outdoors prompts thousands of questions. Endless speculation and wondering across its vastness. But there is something so comforting in it too. The predictability of the seasons, the steadfastness of the sky, the constant cycle of life.

As I lay next to Cherry last night, waiting for her to drift off to sleep, she said to me 'Mummy, what's bigger than the sky?'

I thought about it for a while and said 'Space is bigger than the sky.'

She nodded. 'And my collection of stones?'

'No, Cherry. You have a big collection of stones but it's not that big.'

'Well what else is bigger than the sky then?'

I thought about it some more and said 'How much I love you. That's bigger than the sky.'

She nodded with satisfaction. 'Yes, Mummy. And I love you longer than the sky too.'

For my children outdoors brings a deep understanding of their wild natures and the wildness of nature. A connection to the world that will hopefully see them become protective and cherishing of it.

A gateway that will always bring them home.

*This is a blogpost written as part of a competition run by Canopy & Stars for a place on the #CSCollective

A trip to Norfolk

Last week we headed for Norfolk for a blissful week of countryside, seaside, no signal and roaring log fires. 

We've already travelled pretty widely with Cherry and Violet, from home turf like the Isle of Wight to the tropics of Singapore. Noel has always hit the nail on the head though when he sums up holidays with our children as 'really hard work, in a different location'. 

This was the first holiday we've had where this wasn't the case. It was also the first holiday where our children haven't excitedly risen at 5am each day and become progressively more hyper and demanding as the week went on.

I think the two factors are related.

It really is incredible the difference it makes to your wellbeing, mood and general quality of life when your children 'lie in' until almost 7am. 

In fact this was one of the most relaxed holidays we have ever had. We seemed to have lots of time on our hands for running, yoga, workouts, reading, writing and all the other things we seem to find it hard to squeeze in back at home. I admit part of this might be because we took a completely relaxed approach to letting Cherry and Violet watch TV - they had as much as they wanted.

It actually surprised me that they didn't just want to watch TV the whole time - I think secretly I've always worried if I let them have free rein with the telly they'd never want to do anything else! But they were really keen to go out, do things and play with each other as well as watch TV. I guess I should have more faith in them really. That said both Noel and I have always noticed that Cherry can become quite aggressive after watching lots of TV, particularly Peppa Pig! For some reason that pink porker makes her fighty. So after a while we put the tablet with the Peppa downloads away and they stuck to CBeebies, movies or videos of DangerMouse instead.

Our cottage was small, perfectly-formed and completely adorable. Cherry and Violet were absolutely wild about it. It was the perfect balance, charmingly free of mod-cons, but still cosy and welcoming. 

I had a real thing about the windows and sills, from the way the light streamed into our bedroom in the morning to the gorgeous dried flower display on the kitchen windowsill. From the window in the living room we could see and hear a hedge full of sparrows going about their bustling business, from dawn until dusk. It was completely delightful. 

We spent our mornings in the cottage as Cherry and Violet were really content and happy and are always very adept at entertaining themselves in the mornings. We headed out around lunchtime every day, ate out and spent the afternoons somewhere outdoorsy and scenic.

And Norfolk really excels at outdoorsy and scenic. From the wild screaming beaches....

....to the sprawling forests....

...the flats and the fens and the wide open spaces.

Even the garden was stunning, and full of wildlife.

I can't get over Norfolk. The wildness, the remoteness, the flat-ness, the unbelievable primal beauty of the place. I didn't know big skies like that existed in the UK. 

We visited a couple of attractions - Church Farm in Stow Bardolph was a hit with Cherry and Violet, and I sneaked off to geek out on birds at the WWT reserve at Welney. But other than that we just made the most of the lovely cottage and the incredible natural resources.

I haven't felt this sad about the end of a holiday in a very, very long time. In the cosy warmth and flickering light of our cottage life felt far simpler and more straightforward than it does at home.

Obviously having Noel around all the time is a huge help - it's much easier to find space and time with two parents on hand at all times. Cherry and Violet also fought and bickered much less than they have been recently and that definitely helped. 

Our life at home isn't complicated by any means, and Cherry, Violet and I enjoy a huge amount of freedom. Other than Cherry's three pre-school mornings we have no commitments or schedule to keep to. And yet life does tend to close in, become more stressful and somehow less open and free. Space and time are two commodities that often feel lacking, and in Norfolk I felt we had both in abundance.

I suppose leaving that all behind is the magic of a holiday.

Finding the plot

I'm a bit of an outdoorsy girl, or as Noel puts it, a raging hippy. But only in the peace n love, earth-loving sense. (I'm a bit too married for free love and have always been far too clean-living for hallucinogenics.)

My mother thinks if it weren't for the house we live in I'd have us all in a yurt in the woods. She's only half right. I would quite happily move to a yurt in the woods tomorrow, but it's not this house that holds me back. I like our house well enough but there's no way I'd turn down a heap of land for a three-bed semi in the 'burbs. It's the townie I married that keeps me in bricks and mortar. Noel with his fondness for home comforts like central heating and electricity and running water.

I've never really dreamed about The Perfect House or The Dream Car or The Killer Wardrobe. It's always been The Land.

Land is all I ever wanted. I don't want masses of it. Just a reasonable amount, enough space for Cherry and Violet and their friends to run wild and build dens and camp out under the stars. And of course enough room for some horses. And chickens. And a pond with ducks and geese. And some space to grow fruit and veg. And an orchard with beehives. Actually if there was space for sheep or cattle, just a few mind, that would be great too.

And obviously I'd want a good part of it left wild. A wildflower meadow would be lovely - great for the bees in the orchard too. And I don't want to sound greedy but some woodland would just be perfect.

There would also need to be space to put up some outbuildings, stables for the horses although I'd really love stalls within an open barn that the horses could wander around in, and I'd want a sandschool of course and maybe a few jumps.

In the absence of the circa 40 acres of land I need to make my dreams come true, I downsized my vision a bit and signed us up for an allotment. Cherry and I chose our plot last week. I don't want to sound like an attention hog but to be honest her role in the process was quite limited. 

Then this week I collected the keys to the gate. We are officially tenants!

Now the real fun begins. In the spirit of all things hippy I want to work organically so first I will need to read up on organic practices and I'm looking forward to joining a local organic gardening group, which is not a sentence I thought I'd ever be typing until I was well and truly in the throes of middle age. Is 35 middle aged? Is allotment gardening middle aged? Who cares. I want to know about permaculture and crop rotation and organic matter and mulching and all that literal shit. It makes me happy.

The plot isn't in too bad a state, although there is a lot of clearing to be done. We have inherited a pear tree, which was actually the main reason I chose this plot. Ever since I scrumped an orchard of wild pears as a kid, standing on the back of my pony to reach the higher fruit, I have wanted pear trees. 

There's also other brackish bushes scattered around. At the moment I have no idea what they actually are. I look forward to finding out this year, and then I will decide whether or not to keep them.

Checking over the plot made me feel a little emotional. I discovered some sprouts at the very bottom, which never quite made it to Christmas dinner, and some long-forgotten spinach which has been well and truly chomped by the resident, at a quick count, eight billion snails.

I wondered who had the plot before us. How long were they there for? What were their hopes and dreams for it and why did they give it up? I felt a little like I was looking inside somebody else's life, trying to work out a little of who they were and what they might have been like, just by looking at what they left behind.

From this detective work I concluded that they were heavy-handed, if the broken fork and spade with the head sheared clean off were anything to go by.

Then I found an actual BONE in the compost heap and decided I probably didn't want to know any more about the previous occupants or how the spade head came to be sheared off.

Assuming there aren't human remains scattered about the plot, I'm really excited as to its potential. Our first task is to cover it in black polythene while we dig it over, although in future I think I will follow the 'no dig' method because I love finding uses for horse shit and I don't really fancy breaking my back digging 125 square metres of earth every six weeks.

Perhaps that 40 acres is a bit unrealistic for now.

This week we will be sowing the first of our seeds. Tomatoes, courgettes, sweet peas, broad beans and peas to go on top of the gigantic guinea pig cage by the French windows. Basically a homemade greenhouse, yeah? I really want to grow borlotti beans because they're super pretty, other than that I have no major squad goals for our first year as allotment holders other than to enjoy it and hopefully eat something at some point that we have grown from scratch.

I've always had a lot of success growing flowers, herbs and vegetables in our garden, so I am feeling positive about the plot. Not just as a place to grow food, but also as a bit of a retreat for me. Somewhere that's pretty much just mine (Noel's not really into The Good Life) where I can go to think, write and reflect. Bearing in mind the above caveat about not fantasising about The House I have always wanted a summerhouse in the garden that I can use as a studio for writing, crafting and photography. In absence of that, a table and chairs on the plot would be a perfect second choice.

It's corny but I guess I'm hoping this little allotment, a tiny slice of the land I have always dreamed of, will help me to grow too.