Twickenham Green

A winter sunset over beautiful Twickenham Green, the place we call home. It takes time to find one's feet in a new country—or even an old country, once deserted, now rediscovered. Our life as adults, so full of potential in a place like London, packed with art, theatre, dance, opera, museums or just walking the streets admiring the architecture is tempered by the need to be home, close to our little ones—who, of course, create their own experimental art, theatre and other forms of drama. This too shall pass we tell ourselves, as once again, exhausted, we drop into bed at 9 pm...awakening early the next morning to count our blessings.

Finding work here is a curious experience. I feel like an alien visitor, suckering myself to a safe spot where I can breathe and feed, and slowly reaching out tentacle after tentacle, testing the wider environment, discovering and intermingling with other, native tentacles, experiencing reactions ranging from reeling in shock to tangled embrace, and occasionally sensing out my kin, following the friendly tentacle to it's own place of residence, or a nearby locus of activity, stimulants and noise. Some people call this networking, but that's to miss its weird madness. The activity has variation in energy...slow creeping out, sudden withdrawal, chills, vibration and warmth, its twisted pathways leading to twisted pathways; it is all extremities with only assumed connection to a centre, a soul, a story. Networking. A better term might be tentacling.

Christmas is coming. We heard a funny story from a friend, who didn't want to propagate the myth (and the accompanying coercive threats) of Santa Claus, so explained the history of St Nicholas to his six-year-old son, explaining that after Nicholas died other people wanted to carry on his tradition of giving, thus the Christmas tradition was developed. His son went to school the next day with the grim announcement to his friends: "Santa Claus is dead!" We wondered if this was better or worse than saying he doesn't exist.

Anyway, whether or not the ghost of a long-gone Christian monk brings you gifts, or you celebrate some other holiday, or no holiday at all, I wish you an enjoyable end-of-December, and an exciting and engaging 2017. Here's a Christmas picture Rayna drew of our family—foxes are very present in our Twickenham life :)

And now, a little self-promotion...

December Writing

Just one blog post this month, but it proved to be immensely popular. Take a look—it's covered in hearts, shares and tweets like lipstick'd auntie kisses on the face of a small boy on Christmas Day.

23 December 2016