BBC Radio 4 journalist recording School Strike for Climate 2019, Cardiff, Wales. Photo by me.

“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” – Amy, Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

My daughter’s image flickers up on a wallmounted screen in our old Victorian attic flat. A fluff-puff ball of white is the first thing to see on this oddly modern intercom after she presses the doorbell. 

“Hello pom pom,” I say through the speaker. She lifts her face from beneath an extreme bobble hat, the fish-eye lens warping her dark-rimmmed glasses, “Helllloooo.” Gravity pulls her lead-weight bag full of books over to one side, and her with it. … Read more

I have decided to publish the children’s story I wrote and illustrated, whilst as an inpatient and during recovery from PTSD, after my mother’s suicide. There is a recording too, at the bottom of the page. I hope you enjoy.

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There once was a girl called Tinika, who lived with her grandmother near a beach called Huia.

Every evening, as the sun set, they watched the bright light begin its work at the Manukau Head Lighthouse across the bay. A strong beam of light would shine far out to sea, warning ships of the dangerous rocks and riptides. The light would sweep into their eyes and Tinika could see her grandmother smile. … Read more

The Consumer Print by SHOK-1 (click image for more information)

Pacman eats a power pill.

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Homo hubris:

Any human being who continues to embrace the Anthropocene as good; to dominate natural processes without cessation, to encourage all others to do so, and to be blind/deaf to any other ways of being, being foolish.

Homo ~ human, though etymology stems from MAN.
Hubris – excessive pride or self-confidence.

Mundus nemesis follows ~ it’s a correlating reflexivity:

Mundus ~ the world.
Nemesis ~ revenge. A downfall caused by an ‘inescapable’ agent.

The world seeks revenge in that natural processes responding to Homo hubris will create hell for Homo hubris AND all other species. … Read more

Newts, Pond, High Vinnalls, Mortimor Forest. Photo by me.

Today, it is me. But we are all connected.

I deal with love in my work everyday, it’s my legal and illegal tender, my blood-currency and reason for cellular being. I know about its multi-fractured complications. Fuck, it’s hard sometimes, especially when you feel you’re going under… again and again and again.

When there’s no silence, there is just noise.

Yesterday, I stood on the footbridge and watched two kingfishers pierce the heart of this noisy city. Yet I can’t find the peace, even in my wildest places or memories or rainforests. … Read more

Photo by me.

Leading British Medical journal, The Lancet, going strong as a traditional peer-reviewed publication since 1823, tweeted this today…

Today #ExtinctionRebellion begin 2 weeks of of non-violent political action against the world’s governments for their criminal inaction on the climate and ecological crisis@richardhorton1 writes about the part health workers should play https://t.co/rYYTGJCdZn @DoctorsXr

— The Lancet (@TheLancet) October 7, 2019

The statement is astonishing in three ways. The Lancet’s editorial team must be accepting of XR’s peaceful, though criminally disruptive actions, as legitimate. In turn, they confirm the world’s governments are indeed criminal in their failure to tackle the planetary crisis. … Read more

After the age of 7, I admit to never feeling comfortable with teenage boys. I avoided them, especially at night. Today, in my imagination, I was 12 years old again, in an old homework room at boarding school. Hot tears were running down my face from painful homesickness for my Mum and the wild I missed, whilst hugging a 14 year old boy from a care home, himself lovesick for a loving family he never truly had.

Lemn Sissay’s fearless memoir My Name is Why is a book of love by its absence. Lemn is the name given to him by his birth mother from Ethiopia, and means Why in the language of Amharic. … Read more

Autumnal Wye, by me.

It’s Autumnal Equinox in the Northern hemisphere, a point where night and day bridge equivalence like giant balancing scales. There is no opposition. All is flow throughout our annual voyage around the Sun. Yet light and dark are opposites.

Time flows constantly like a river, woven through life and death, change and recurrence: The sequence of days, the cycle of months, the rhythm of seasons ~ years pass.

The unity of these opposites provide the tensions needed in nature for existence. Tension, in this sense, isn’t necessarily about identity or conflict. It is more like the taught string of the musical instrument called life process, to be played with exquisite results. … Read more

I have not written here for a few weeks. Sometimes, those personal insecurities become a block. I’m OK now.

I love to write, because I love life. Today, I am compelled to write, because I love life, compulsively.

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Have you watched the documentary, The Great Hack? It’s on Netflix right now. 

I urge you to see it, listen and think deeply about what is being said. The human angles are clear. The story is of the dismantling of Western democracy as we understand it. It is one of electoral manipulation and an erosion of free choice. 

A group of clever but immoral individuals clubbed together to swing votes using social media data and the targeting of vulnerable demographic groups. … Read more

Ornicophony ~ inspired by the deafening birdsong to be heard on Llanbradach Hill, above one of the biggest coal mines that once belched out black dust in South Wales. #HopeOnAStick https://t.co/EOVI6WxH4t

— Ginny (@ginbat) May 27, 2019

Video Clip … Read more

Photos by me.

A rubble road crests a ridge above the old coal pit village of Llanbradach. Breeze blocks and plastics are decaying to dust, beginning to press themselves shallow into the chorography of this place. I stand on a jumble of human fall-out, taking in the views, and think of my father; and his father.

Llanbradach Hill is one of many swells in the geodrama known unsentimentally as the South Wales Upper Coal Measures Formation. Down deep, where it is warm, labarynthine tunnels have been blasted out by men long dead, and the spaces left uncollapsed now leak with water, gas and ghosts. … Read more