I’m outside, rocking gently in a hammock. My feet rest on lush green grass, on a beautifully laid lawn. New birds sing sweet, syrupy, lilting songs. The sky is hazy in the sunlight. I love the beginning of a new house-sit. Especially when the weather is warming up and life is becoming, post hibernation. Every year I forget what spring feels like and every year I remember again. I’m a child learning something new each day. The excited feeling of seeing a purple magnolia in flower, heavy blossoms laden with petals bobbing in the breeze, the sound of bees waking up, songbirds returning to their trees. I like to think as everything begins to grow, I get some of spring’s power too, to create, write, sing and compose. The newness of spring feels like I’m a baby listening to my mother singing a lullaby. Healing and bright.

Meet Tally. A fluffy ball of loveliness. She loves cuddles and attention. I’m so happy to get to know her.

I’m sitting in the Garden of Eden aka The New Forest in Dorset. The depth of birdsong is heady. The butterflies flutter, green grass abounds, scented flowers hold me in a springtime embrace. Last night we feasted with our new house-sit friends. I love getting to know new folk who we would never usually meet. Conversation flowed, deep and meaningful. Everyone has a story. So much poignancy, struggle and inspiration. We’re staying in a creative household full of writing, directing and editing. It’s the house of a BAFTA judge so a high tech movie room is delightfully essential. 3D specs will be used and my eyes will feel oddly independent of eachother. We’re here to look after darling Tally. She’s a beautiful thing with a high pitched meow. Her chatter makes me melt into a pool of cuteness. This is an exciting sit in a place of paradise. I’m elated to be back in one of my favourite forests 🌲

Unintended - Muse (cover) end of song with the floaty swirly bit 😃

Baywatch? No Bournemouth. New York? No Bournemouth again! (with just about the cleanest NY cab ever) Who was fooled? No one? Thought so.

Freedom

Yesterday a fearless seagull lady, today a delighted pigeon man lying down sprinkling food on his legs watching the birds feed off him. Reminds me of St Paul’s Square where I poured seed on my own head and waited enthusiastically for pigeons to land. In my defense, I was 9.

A feast of crows.

Flying seagulls and a brave lady.

Hanging out with bigger kitties today.

This bandstand was important to me in 1998. I was seventeen, in a musical theatre group and ready for the limelight. I sang Do-Re-Mi from The Sound of Music and Bright Eyes by Simon and Garfunkel. I sang to people in deckchairs eating ice-creams and I remembered all my words 🥳

I was always obsessed with arcades growing up. More the slot machines than the gaming areas. Whether it was a seaside or a theme park, neither visit would be complete without winning a cuddly toy or gaining a pocket full of 10ps. I went on a cruise once (aged 10 - with parents) where me and my newfound ship friends would sneak down to the deserted casino in the morning and play the fruit machines. They had fantastically flashy buttons (I think that’s where my button pressing fetish began).

Today at Bournemouth Pier I had a £1 budget but didn’t spend any of it. I realised it was more about watching others and enjoying when they won. So I watched and hoped as a lovely dad tried to win a sparkly whale unicorn for his daughter on the cranes. He tried. Nope. Getting nervous and excited. He tried again, it picked up and dropped but still rolled down into the hole….YAY! She was over the moon. So joyous. She said ‘I’m going to sleep with it every night’ and reminded me of me as a kid winning something special and professing my eternal love for it. It made their moment. It made mine too 😃

Here follows a fair amount of photos celebrating arcade madness in all its glory. From the child’s eye view of shiny coins to the trapped sparkly animals waiting to find new homes. Here’s to the vibrant madness of the arcade.

Love is in the air 💞

Bournemouth Prom. Windy. Sandy. Sunny. Wet. Flat. Loooong stretches of expanse. 9.2 km of walking. Got sand in my shoes and a zingy feeling in my body as waves crashed on rocks and ripples sparkled in sand. Love the wind and its pushiness to get you from place to place.

Wonderful lady, lacking fear of being accosted (in any way, shape or form) by rabid seagulls, I salute you.

As I dance round this house, getting high on energetic beats, working as a team with my love Simon to get our things in order, I realise something…. These are the best days of my life. I will always remember the love, freedom, exploration, laughs, cats, people, journeys, chocolate consumption and trampoline jumps. I’m loving life.

Moose (our nicknames) on the loose. This is what happens when we are left with a trampoline.

River Hamble in springtime + cute cuddly cats.

I’ve been longing to write. How amazing is that? To create imagery. To pour myself into words. This is a recent phenomena. I was a songwriter (a rhyming one) first. Now, with writing my blog, everyday feels like an old friend has come out to play as I scoot over the keyboard swishing and swirling (I use a Swype keyboard. It gets me into all sorts of auto-correct trouble but it’s a right laugh too). Today is our last full day in Warsash, next to the beautiful River Hamble which opens out onto the sea, with all its boats, sails, ropes and sparkles. I feel at peace by the water. I’m a mermaid at heart. The smell of the seashore is exciting and wistful. I walk easily here. It’s my favourite place - the flat. Today we pack up to pumping music and hope we haven’t mistimed our returning housesit’s arrival by a day. We sometimes imagine what it would be like if they came home early to discover us completely rocking out to their Sonos speakers. We’d have big smiles on our faces, a bunch of flowers on the table and food in their fridge so I imagine they’d be icebreakers enough 😃 Tomorrow we zoom to Bournemouth, a place where I lived as a teenager. The sand is golden, the sea clear. Magical giant conifers abound. I’m excited and thrilled about our little hotel getaway before our next sit. In a room with two single beds! New adventures and giggles are ready to be made.

Unintended - Muse 🎶 Latest song cover. I’ve always adored this one.

Where I fits I sits + amazing photo bomb.

Day 30. Yay I did it! Thirty days of hard energy dancing. A dedicated effort to improve myself with something I adore - trance music in all its forms. I can see that my body recovers faster now. It feels healthier. I know myself a little bit better. Know what to concentrate on and what not to give attention to. Coordination is better. My left arm is more fluid than it’s ever been and doesn’t just wobble around looking like a spare part. It has its own smooth moves. I’m lifting my legs with more strength and vigor. I’m high spirited and eager to explore more moves and more music. This is just the beginning. I want my heart to keep racing and raving. I’ve still got a lot of time to listen to fabulous beats made by ashtonishingly good music producers. I cannot wait to get back on the kitchen dance floor. Oh and I’m toying (and panicking) with the idea of giving up sugar for a while…. maybe that’s my next challenge… stayed tuned 😄 Fav tune - been dancing a lot today so there are a few. Anything by Arkham Knights (you make me dance so hard!) and I love the Tinlicker remix of Always by Above and Beyond. All this music really makes me fly. I’m so grateful to have these uplifting tunes and beats in my life. I’d be a different person without them.

I’ve been thinking a lot about conversations between people. About listening. About boundaries. I’ve had quite strong experiences where I’ve been left shaken, annoyed, confused, disorientated, in tears by what people have chosen to tell me. I’ve found out I’m quite sensitive with a big imagination so can’t handle too much drama or offloading. I take the original story they tell me and blow it up into something even more emotional and profound than it may have been originally. Then, the other person goes off having told me something massive and I’m left with their story and can’t let it go. I’ve told my mum not to tell me anything stressful she’s going through because I won’t be able to fix it. I don’t mean to sound callous and understand people need to talk, it’s just that throughout my life people have come to me because I’m a good listener. They don’t change their ways because of what I tell them, they just want to feel better about themselves by talking it out. And that’s fine. It’s good to talk…to the right person. In some cases a professional. But instead of telling them this, I’ve listened and been the good Samaritan and it gets me into emotional trouble. I have no boundaries about what I take on. It’s a kind of neurosis I think. Thinking about things too much and feeling them as if I were there. It comes in images usually. Not always pleasant on ones. It has meant that I’ve distanced myself from friends over the years because I don’t know how to tell them that I can’t always listen to them. It should be easy, to say what I feel but in the past it hasn’t been. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I should be able to tell people that what they say can make me feel real bad. Strange that it hasn’t been easy to do this. Immaturity I suppose. Recently it has happened with acquaintances too (people I house-sit for) and it still catches me out and I think ‘buggar, gonna have to get that out my system now’. I try and jump in with a ‘sorry I don’t think I want to hear this’ though sometimes it feels impolite. This means that these days, I try to only say things worth saying. I try not to talk about negative situations that have happened to me. My struggles and strains. Everyone’s dealing with their own shit. They don’t need mine as well. I want to surround myself with inspiring people who are light on the ear and happy in the heart. Hopefully with this self-discovery and self-knowledge I can welcome people in.

Let’s celebrate Hendrix and his cute fluffy paws.

Lovely gentle Simon. He left Hendrix on the chair and got another 💞