urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly smilingquietly smilingquietly 2009-06-10T15:42:52Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:40015 2009-06-10T15:42:52Z 2009-06-10T15:42:52Z Eyes are threatening to close by Taunton, but the Gingerbread Latte picks me up and carries me several hours on to Penryn, food, and the entire first set of Tragic Roundabout - a gypsy ska combo with a good deal of keystone cops thrown in - and I eke it out to help me along the estuary and back to the place I am sleeping urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:39734 2009-06-10T15:40:21Z 2009-06-10T15:40:21Z If everybody ignored the please keep to the paths signs there would be no wildflower meadow, but if everybody obeyed the please keep to the paths signs nobody would know the delight of lying amongst the long grass and the wildflower meadow would have no purpose urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:39583 2009-06-10T15:33:06Z 2009-06-10T15:33:06Z I am staring at a suitcase on my living room floor, it has clothes folded in it and almost everything else I need, and it is the night before the day I am due to go away. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:39373 2009-06-10T15:32:07Z 2009-06-10T15:32:07Z They say to trust the story - and it is true - tell simply and without flourish and the story will cross over - but to really take someone on a journey - it needs a little more. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:38951 2009-06-10T15:29:49Z 2009-06-10T15:29:49Z I got into the rhythm of the English countryside, tea in the garden and cow parsley in the hedgerows, and after the weekend it was hard to find the real world again, although I'm sure that the English countryside is part of it somehow. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:38741 2009-06-10T15:27:45Z 2009-06-10T15:27:45Z It had the best and the worst of an English country fete, and the very best was the Shropshire Bedlams, Morris Men who give you the sense, just the echo, that these dances were once both about putting on a show to cast out evil spirits, and about making money in the lean times. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:38501 2009-06-10T15:25:28Z 2009-06-10T15:25:28Z It was the second river of the day, and the water was too clear, the sun too warm, the rapids switching from fast to still, and eventually it simply wasn't going to matter that we hadn't planned to swim. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:38376 2009-06-10T15:23:17Z 2009-06-10T15:23:17Z Britain is small and everywhere is on the way to somewhere else and today I am glad to be pootling through the border lands to reach the purple painted house where there is always food, sage advice and acceptance urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:38010 2009-06-10T15:21:28Z 2009-06-10T15:21:28Z I haven't measured the distance from the edge - in fact I've lined up the images on the page entirely by sight - but still the album looks good enough. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:37865 2009-06-10T15:17:52Z 2009-06-10T15:17:52Z There is nothing quite like watching football surrounded by people who care about the team - especially the eighty year old lady, hunched forward and alternately shouting , squeaking and shaking her fists at the screen. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:37426 2009-05-27T17:31:31Z 2009-05-27T17:31:31Z Gold skies south to the estuary, but turning the other way, we watch a downpour tracking its way down the lake and leave to avoid a drenching which does not come, but instead sends a rainbow to see us home. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:37308 2009-05-25T18:10:48Z 2009-05-25T18:10:48Z We move up the garden, shifting papers drinks and books from one slate patio to the next, as the sun reaches less and less, and I remember lying on the grass, doing the same with teenage revision notes and a flower patterned sheet. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:36867 2009-05-25T18:09:29Z 2009-05-25T18:09:29Z Sun shining, old friends chatting, flower bed gradually cleared of stones and weeds. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:36681 2009-05-25T18:07:49Z 2009-05-25T18:07:49Z The sensations of healing are strange - mobility returns at the corners of the mouth and moves inwards slowly, but perceivably - whilst a strange high pitch ping buzzes through my tooth many times, and every time, I jump. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:36401 2009-05-25T18:02:45Z 2009-05-25T18:02:45Z The motorway is busy early, and I don't really care, I just want to go home. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:36199 2009-05-25T18:01:04Z 2009-05-25T18:01:04Z I have a feeling, that for some of us, equipped with the biological response mechanisms for living a difficult life at risk of starvation, animal mutilation, conflict born decapitation, the fear response just feels like it has to get use, and so creates ludicrous levels of terror about things that are in reality minor, or alternatively extrapolates dangerous things that are of small and insignificant probability to seeming likelihood; alternatively I am getting old and increasingly paranoid about my own mortality. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:35964 2009-05-20T09:51:06Z 2009-05-20T09:51:06Z I wish I trusted my dentist today to be doing whatever is best for my health and the health of my teeth, rather than whatever is least difficult for him. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:35653 2009-05-20T09:48:32Z 2009-05-20T09:48:32Z I suppose it is not surprising, the year after a parent has died, to become increasingly focused both on mortality and on how lives can have meaning, I just wish that the focus was not so negative. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:35422 2009-05-20T09:45:54Z 2009-05-20T09:45:54Z We found some papers in a drawer hiding all the information I was looking for... urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:35163 2009-05-20T09:43:34Z 2009-05-20T09:43:34Z Sometimes, the tiniest of things causes a smile that winds its way round and round, inside me and outside me until I am all wrapped up. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:35028 2009-05-17T19:31:15Z 2009-05-17T19:31:15Z Academia is flawed - given the frequency of symposia and conferences, I would have hoped that giving a decent presentation would be a valued skill, especially when the subject of the event is storytelling. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:34620 2009-05-17T19:30:12Z 2009-05-17T19:30:12Z She chases images of flight across the centuries - Djinn, enchanted sofas, mechanical horses from the arabian nights, winged females from 19th century literature - and pornography - and I think it is perhaps no surprise that I want to paraglide in this year when I am launching into a quest for stories. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:34539 2009-05-17T19:22:28Z 2009-05-17T19:22:28Z I lost a road, then found it again and in it stories and melted chocolate cake. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:34117 2009-05-17T19:16:12Z 2009-05-17T19:16:12Z There is a howling deep, it sounds the wrong note, and so it is silenced. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:smilingquietly:34010 2009-05-17T19:08:36Z 2009-05-17T19:08:36Z At 6.30pm I didn't have a story - but I was telling one by 9.15pm, translated from French, reshaped a little and on a journey to become something more interesting.