Light

I've come back to the most beautiful weather in Portugal and the sunrise was so bright this morning that I thought I'd left a light on all night. The skies are wide and blue with a feeling of space that I was starting to miss in the UK.

Before leaving, I went to my graduation at Lancaster, which was great fun. I wasn't quite the oldest, but getting there. I had to tell myself not to feel foolish. Anyway I enjoyed the whole thing, especially catching up with my tutor group who I'd only met at summer school. We've built up a great rapport over the past two years and can talk writing for hours.

My notebooks are bursting with ideas and so is my brain but they're going to have to stay on the back burner until after Christmas. I like working that way as I'm a slow writer and love thinking time, eventually getting everything onto paper in some sort of order. I couldn't cope without notebooks and take them everywhere.

I'm now going to decorate the tree and see if I can stop it wobbling... and will the lights work this year?

Spells in Norwich

After a week in Portugal I whizzed back to England for a poetry workshop at the Writers' Centre in Norwich. I'd never been to Norwich before and had time to visit the Cathedral which is stunning. Why Norwich? I saw that Esther Morgan was giving a workshop and her book Grace is one of my favourite poetry books. I dip in and out of all the time. In fact I have two copies, one in London and one in Portugal as I got fed up with taking my copy backwards and forwards.

The theme of the workshop was Rituals and we also looked at writing Spells. It was a wonderful day in a fabulous house in the old centre of Norwich. I have a notebook full of ideas generated from this day with Esther. 
I started a spell poem on the bus in London yesterday when I got caught up in the snarl around Chelsea Football Club: Take 5 hairs from a player's leg/bubble in a vat of ivy/at the time of the World Cup/and chant  "off-side off-side". 

Off the subject, but, in my insomniac hours, I noticed that Magma has put a link to my poem '&' on Twitter, that is certainly a first for me and I'm chuffed. I just need to learn how to Tweet although I do have a Twitter account and cheer from the sidelines.