Sometimes, I’m going to have to be with the fact that the words aren’t going to come. And I need to be ok with that if I’m going to make it all the way to December. Sometimes, I’ll be sharing an image, not words – a photograph that I have taken and which I love. Sometimes, a swan…

So, the moon did that thing she does – catching me by surprise. The sky was turning to twilight, and I realised that I had nothing for the dinner. So I threw on my coat, pulled on my boots and wrapped a scarf around my neck, and headed out to the shops. I had only walked a couple of steps from our front door, when I stopped… awe-struck. As always, the camera in my phone couldn’t capture its magnitude; the milky spectacle of its presence hung low in a rose pink sky. But I snapped the shot anyway, dissatisfied by how small the moon seemed in my photograph, compared with how…

What now feels like a lifetime ago, but was, in truth, only 5 or 6 years past, I worked as a teacher in a university English Literature department. Most of my classes were covering the basics – the first three semesters of the curriculum covering theoretical approaches to authorship, readership, text, context, representation and meaning through novels and poems and plays and short stories that ranged in period and style from Oedipus Rex to Tarantino’s script for Natural Born Killers. Occasionally I would teach a class or two on the Gothic Imagination masters course, but most of my time and energy was invested in these undergraduate classes. And then I was offered an…

Despite the cold weather, the chill wind and the heavy shower of rain with ice mixed in, my daughter and I went to a lovely wee yarn shop on the other side of town this morning. A shop literally brimming with colour and texture and creative possibilities. So lush! We were in the shop only a couple of seconds before I reached out to a yarn coloured the most exquisite shade of golden green. Instinctive. Like the colour called to me before I could even decide to reach out and touch. My body responded to the desire spontaneously – as if that colour were a magnet. I looked around at…

Do not touch a wild thing. As tempted as you may be to reach out your hand and stroke the soft white feathers, do not fucking do it. Keep your hand in your pocket. Keep your distance. Show respect. Show love. For this wild thing? It does not belong to you. It is not here for you. It does not exist for you. It lives solely for itself. And you do it no favours – no favours at all – to accustom it to your touch. It is not your pet. And it is not for you to try and tame it. Do not teach it that this civilising hand…