http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/ smilingquietly - LiveJournal.com Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:42:52 GMT LiveJournal / LiveJournal.com smilingquietly 17772962 personal http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/40015.html Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:42:52 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/40015.html 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 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/40015.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/39734.html Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:40:21 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/39734.html 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 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/39734.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/39583.html Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:33:06 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/39583.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/39583.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/39373.html Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:32:07 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/39373.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/39373.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/38951.html Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:29:49 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/38951.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/38951.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/38741.html Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:27:45 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/38741.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/38741.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/38501.html Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:25:28 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/38501.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/38501.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/38376.html Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:23:17 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/38376.html 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 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/38376.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/38010.html Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:21:28 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/38010.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/38010.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/37865.html Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:17:52 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/37865.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/37865.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/37426.html Wed, 27 May 2009 17:31:31 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/37426.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/37426.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/37308.html Mon, 25 May 2009 18:10:48 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/37308.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/37308.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/36867.html Mon, 25 May 2009 18:09:29 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/36867.html Sun shining, old friends chatting, flower bed gradually cleared of stones and weeds. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/36867.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/36681.html Mon, 25 May 2009 18:07:49 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/36681.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/36681.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/36401.html Mon, 25 May 2009 18:02:45 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/36401.html The motorway is busy early, and I don't really care, I just want to go home. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/36401.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/36199.html Mon, 25 May 2009 18:01:04 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/36199.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/36199.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/35964.html Wed, 20 May 2009 09:51:06 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/35964.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/35964.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/35653.html Wed, 20 May 2009 09:48:32 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/35653.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/35653.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/35422.html Wed, 20 May 2009 09:45:54 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/35422.html We found some papers in a drawer hiding all the information I was looking for... http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/35422.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/35163.html Wed, 20 May 2009 09:43:34 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/35163.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/35163.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/35028.html Sun, 17 May 2009 19:31:15 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/35028.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/35028.html public 1 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/34620.html Sun, 17 May 2009 19:30:12 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/34620.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/34620.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/34539.html Sun, 17 May 2009 19:22:28 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/34539.html I lost a road, then found it again and in it stories and melted chocolate cake. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/34539.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/34117.html Sun, 17 May 2009 19:16:12 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/34117.html There is a howling deep, it sounds the wrong note, and so it is silenced. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/34117.html public 0 http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/34010.html Sun, 17 May 2009 19:08:36 GMT http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/34010.html 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. http://smilingquietly.livejournal.com/34010.html public 0