It has been over a month since my last post. Just realised that sounds a bit like I’m at a Bloggers Anonymous meeting, but nonetheless, it’s true.

Big changes in my personal life, the usual work/life pressures and a desire to spend more time on the Sage & Thrift project are the main reasons  but to be honest, I’m also struggling to write. This blog has been my hobby for two years now. In that time, it’s brought me so much joy. But for the past month, phrases like ‘I must blog, I haven’t written anything for ages, I need to catch up’ have been on an endless loop in my head.

And yet, when I look out of my window, there is a noticeable absence of people waiting to break down the door and demand that I write a blog post. All the pressure is self-imposed. Since being nominated in the Blog North Awards – the best feeling ever – I’ve wanted to build on that success. To create an upwards trajectory, write more, gain more readers. It seems that the gods didn’t agree with that plan!

Previously, my three times a week schedule worked for me, but it’s no longer practical. I’ve been re-reading ’In Praise of Slow’ by Carl Honore, which is one of my favourite books, and now I’m wondering if there could be such a thing as ‘Slow Blogging’? Not sure if it’s a complete contradiction in terms, but I think that fewer, more considered posts would count as ‘Slow’ – do you?

I’ve been striving to live Slowly (capital S intended here) in the rest of my life; seasonally, locally, taking time to consider the things that are important in my life, stepping away from technology sometimes and spending time on face to face interactions, not entering into lots of consumerism, and so on. It’s not always successful, but being considered in my approach to these things has brought me lots of happiness and it’s a cornerstone of Sage & Thrift too. Now I think I want to try to do the same with my blog. To slow down, take a breath and reconsider what it is about it that has always brought me such happiness in the past.

I like the idea of just writing once a week, and taking my time over each post, rather than trying to churn out a lot of content, purely to meet a self created schedule. It would enable me to work on Sage & Thrift (which I have big plans for) and make sure that when I do post something, it’s genuinely because I want to, not because I feel that I should, must, have to. I want to regain the feeling of joy that this blog has always given me and step away from feeling panic-stricken because life has got in the way of my three-times-a-week blogging schedule.

So, that’s the plan. I’ll be writing once a week, about the usual jumble of things that I’ve always written about, but I’ll do my best to make sure that each post will be worth your time reading. And, yes, I realise that even once a week is a self-imposed schedule. Old habits die hard. However, this will give me a way of fitting the blog into my life in a way that makes it pleasurable, and not a stick to beat myself with. You never know, it might be only temporary. I might suddenly find a fit of energy and write every day!

I joked about ‘Bloggers Anonymous’ but this has felt a bit like a therapy session for me. Thanks for reading. Normal, albeit ‘Slower’ blogging will resume shortly …

Sharing is at the heart of all our plans for Sage and Thrift. We want to build a community of like-minded people to come together to share – whether that is food, skills, resources or time. Food is central to that thought, purely because nothing brings people together like filling our stomachs.

The idea for the Cookbook Swap stemmed from my enormous and ever-growing collection of cookbooks. Regular readers of this blog will know that I cannot resist them. The sheer beauty of them together with the promise of perfection lying within each one draws me in like no other kind of book. Even though I know that I don’t have the room for them, it’s only a matter of days since I bought my last one – Simon Hopkinson’s The Vegetarian Option, which is excellent – and I cannot be the only person with this kind of habit, yet without either the money to fund nor the space to house such a collection.

I’ve done Cookbook Challenges, and culled a few from my collection to the local charity shop, but most of them I can’t bear to part with forever. Having said that, I am always happy to lend them out, and know that I would love to try new books for a while in return. Hopefully, other folk will feel the same way.

Too many cookbooks …

So, here it is the premise:

Come along to the Cookbook Swap – bring a book with you! One that you either love but have tired of, or one that you’ve never got on with. It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s a cookbook!

We’ll have a spreadsheet set up on the day, so we can take your details and the details of the book you’re leaving to swap. You need to be happy to lend the book out and know that it might come back a bit more spattered with cooking oil than it went out. If it’s too precious to you, leave it at home.

Then have a browse of the books available. Once you hopefully find one you like the look of, bring it back to us with our fancy spreadsheet and we’ll log that you’ve borrowed it. Take it home, cook up a storm, and bring it back to the next one. If you want to bring us some fabulous food you’ve cooked, so much the better …

One of the things we’re going to do is give out a little ‘passport’ with each cookbook. We’re hoping that people will write a little bit in them, just to say what they cooked and how things went. This will help us to build a record of how each book has been used and a bit of history of the swap.  Plus, we’re getting a stamp made with our logo on, so it’s rather a good excuse for us to get stamping crazy. The passport will stay with each book for as long as that book is part of the Cookbook Swap and then go home with the original owner as a memento of the project.

So, if you’re in Leeds on Sunday 21st April, between 2-3pm-ish and you’re interested, do come along. We’re very fortunate that the lovely folk at Brewbar Espresso (located just underneath Leeds Art Gallery) are letting us host the event there, so bring some pennies to buy yourself a cup of their fabulous coffee, and we hope to see you on the day!

Seed and Bean are chocolatiers with a difference, as they are one of the very few ethical chocolate producers in Britain. It’s organic, fairly traded and sustainably produced. Excellent stuff. Award winning too – they’re rated as 100% ethical by the Ethical Company Organisation.  But to be honest, although that is a wonderful result, it doesn’t help if the chocolate itself isn’t great. Their five Great Taste Awards suggest that it is actually really good.  Which is why I was excited to be given the chance, thanks to the brilliant Millies in Leeds to try some of their wide range of chocolate for myself.

After some deliberation, I chose Creamy White Chocolate with Lemon and Poppy Seeds, Rich Milk Chocolate with Sicilian Hazelnut and Almond and Extra Dark Chocolate (72% cocoa) with Pumpkin Seeds and Hemp Oil. If I’m honest, I was choosing rather more grown up flavours especially to make sure they’d be less attractive to my Dairy Milk loving daughter!  Other flavours include lavender, espresso, cardamon, and chilli and lime, alongside the more usual white, milk and dark, so it would make a good gift choice for a serious food lover too.

Beautiful chocolate. Image courtesy of Seed and Bean and Millies.

And, let me say, the taste does not disappoint either. First to be eaten was the White Chocolate with Lemon and Poppy Seeds. I sometimes find white chocolate too sickly-sweet, but the lemon oil helps to somehow cut through that sweetness and the little savoury crunch of poppy seeds continues that. This one was my favourite of the three that I tried. The fabulous Jo Murricane made white chocolate mousse with this chocolate, which sounds amazing. Might have to give it a go myself!

Then, the Rich Milk Chocolate with Sicilian Hazelnut and Almond. I didn’t actually open this one myself. It was opened for me. The conversation went something like this:

“I’ve had some of your chocolate”

“Well, that’s ok – what did you think of it?”

‘Erm … It’s really good. I might have actually eaten quite a lot of it …”

“It’s nearly all gone! I’ve only been out of the room for five minutes!”

“Well, like I said,  It’s really nice.”

After which I made damn sure that I got to try some for myself, before it all vanished. And, he wasn’t wrong. It is really good. Smooth, rich and creamy, with a lovely light taste of the nuts it contains. Very moreish too. Obviously. So, my cunning plan foiled, it appears it’s not just my children who eat all my chocolate. I could sulk, but I suppose that it’s a good way of demonstrating how great tasting it is – so good it gets stolen from me by my loved ones!

The final chocolate of the three I tried was the 72% dark chocolate with Pumpkin Seeds and Hemp Oil. This is definitely a grown up chocolate, to be eaten slowly, a square at a time. Definitely not a chocolate to be wolfed down in one go (which is a good job, otherwise I’d never get any!) it has an unusual, somewhat savoury flavour, but I liked it. I also think it’d be an interesting chocolate to cook with.

Having tried these three very different flavours of chocolate, I’ll definitely go back to Millies for more, assuming that I find a decent enough hiding place to keep it …

It’s been a while since I wrote about a skincare company and Sweet Cecily’s is exactly the kind of brand I like. A small company based here in Yorkshire, creating hand-made skin care with natural ingredients and complete with pretty packaging, there is a lot to like. I look forward to trying out more of their range in the future. The Sea Buckthorn Berry hand cream looks particularly good for us gardeners!

The kit I bought contained all the weighed-out ingredients for five pots of orange essential oil lip balm and the little pots, lid stickers and instructions needed, all inside a cotton drawstring bag. My daughter added all the ingredients to a double-boiler saucepan for me to heat up. Everything melted easily together and there was the perfect amount for the five tins included. I then poured the melted lip balm into the little pots and left it to cool. It took hardly any time at all and so as an activity, it wouldn’t have been enough on its own. But – plenty of time was needed for creating five mini masterpieces to decorate the lids and so Eve was happily drawing oranges all afternoon!

Originally, the plan was for Eve to give out several pots away to friends, but in true diva fashion, she has decided to stockpile it all for herself. I have been honoured to receive a pot of my own to keep though, so I’m happy enough. The lip balm contains a lovely combination of shea butter, cocoa butter and almond and calendula oil and so is really moisturising and the orange essential oil adds a lovely fragrance. My pot is made all the more special because of the unique picture that has been drawn for the lid, which makes me smile every time I see it. I keep it in my bag and use it every day. I really recommend this kit as a gift, it’s been a great success.

If you’re the sort of person who likes your Marlowe and Shakespeare served traditionally, Colin Teevan’s Doctor Faustus probably won’t be your cup of tea. Personally, I’m happy for myths and legends to be re-imagined in a modern context—it replaces the natural evolution of stories that happens in oral traditions—and as the Faustus tale explores such a juicy question—what it means to lose one’s soul—it’s ripe for adaptation across centuries and continents. Luckily for both of us, we really enjoyed this version, and admire the boldness of both Colin Teevan for adapting such a well-known and loved piece of work and the Playhouse and Citizens Theatre, Glasgow for producing it.

From the Playhouse trailer,  we were expecting something much darker than the lurid show we saw.

The sense of menace came in the form of Mephistopheles (Siobhan Redmond) who, we both agreed, stole the show. Jo said that she wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see her floating rather than walking across the stage; she oozed otherworldliness. Mephistopheles’ excellent performance was closely followed by Alasdair Hankinson’s back playing Marilyn Monroe. We’ve never seen someone act with their shoulder blades before and Hankinson has set the bar high!

Flanking the main stage space with a secondary set—rows of vanity mirrors, suggesting a theatre dressing room—was a clever touch, creating a blur between audience and actor and allowing us to be in on the jokes played on Faustus—we see a male devil gleefully don a wig, veil and wedding dress when Faustus asks Mephistopheles for a bride. This distinction was played with again, right at the end, when the edges of the theatre backdrop lifted to expose a part of the Playhouse backstage area, repositioning the audience emotionally from being outsiders looking in to complicit in the scene; a small act with a massive effect.

There were a few really nice details in the piece, from a brief moment at the opening of the play when the ‘off-stage’ characters all sit up in their chairs and lean, as one, towards the action, to an Elvis rendition of Robbie Williams’ ‘Angels’ in a Las Vegas scene.

Jo did have rather a WTF moment about a rabbit. In a scene of debauchery, one of the participants appears in a bunny head. Apparently, nightmarish equals giant rabbit. Cue her version of Tito’s rant about dwarves in dream sequences (Living in Oblivion). There. She’s said her piece. I’m sure she feels better now …

The language in the contemporary parts sometimes felt a bit too obvious, and as a result,  sometimes it felt as though Mephistopheles lost a little of the otherworldliness introduced and performed with such brilliance in the first acts. We perhaps didn’t need to have such blatant examples of evil in order to believe… Having said that, we did enjoy the contemporary acts of the play, and the contrast between them and the original Marlowe text; they were bold, quite fun and introduced a bit more of the conflict in Faustus’ mind.

Whenever Faustus begins to examine the wisdom and morality behind his choices he is told to ‘think on the devil’ and a distraction is created to divert him. Similarly, the heavyweight ideas in the fabric of the play disappear once the show is done, leaving behind a sense of having been thoroughly entertained.

Doctor Faustus closes this weekend, but if you get the chance, do go along to see it. We’d love to hear your views …

I have to admit that I’d not heard of London born, Nigerian raised Shinobare before, but I did know one piece of his work – Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle – because it was on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, and is now on permanent display in Greenwich. It’s his movement towards the creation of works both for public spaces and for the open air that makes it a perfect time for this exhibition at YSP, and the commissioning of two new pieces of sculpture, which are part of this exhibition and titled Wind Sculptures, underlines this. I loved the fact that he asked the general public what they’d like to see on the Fourth Plinth, and that Nelson now is a recurring theme through his work.

In the hours spent at YSP viewing this exhibition, and listening to the curator, I’ve gone from knowing nothing of Shinobare to being a firm fan. The entire collection is suffused with a sense of playfulness and yet the subjects chosen are those of the most serious, from climate change to class inequalities and the historic pursuits of the aristocracy. Revolution Kids, half-human, half-animal sculptures carrying replicas of Gaddafi’s golden gun and Blackberry phones, are Shinobare’s response to the London riots, and convey perfectly the way in which he manages to mix the serious with the playful to create work that is really engaging, and almost comical, yet with a serious underbelly that occasionally has a rather more sinister feeling to it.  Food Faeries (about the globalisation of the food market)  is a pair of headless sculptures of winged children carrying fruit that really made me shudder a little.

Revolution Kid (Fox Boy) Copyright: Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Colonialism, race, globalisation and identity are also recurring themes, and Shinobare uses ‘authentic African’ batik fabric – which was first mass produced in Holland and sold into West Africa in the 19th Century – as a way of confounding expectations.

Alongside the thoughts of identity come those of ‘aliens’ – which made me think of refugees and human ‘aliens’, and here Shinobare again turns the idea of alien life on its head, with the inclusion of flying machines more akin to Leonardo’s inventions than what we expect from science fiction.

Alien Man on Flying Machine (2011)
Copyright: Yorkshire Sculpture Park

A really diverse range of work is on display from the period 2002 to 2013,  including film, photography, painting and collage as well as sculpture, which demonstrates Shinobare’s desire to be impossible to categorise. It feels like a wonderful opportunity to really learn a great deal about his work over the past decade.

I truly loved this exhibition and I think that everyone would find something about it to enjoy, whether that is the boldness of the satire, the contrast between the seriousness of the subjects and the fun of the interpretation, or even just the bright colourful nature of each piece of art.

The exhibition is at the beautiful Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 1st September 2013 and I will definitely be returning for another viewing of this remarkable artist’s work.

Meat used to be revered. Reserved for High Days and holidays, a piece of meat would be cooked – perhaps for  Sunday dinner – and then the left-overs used through the week to make more dishes. Thrifty cooks still do that now, and there are a proliferation of good cook books and websites on thrifty cooking and eating. But what makes my stomach turn is the unthinking way in which meat is eaten all the time – and largely poor quality, untraceable meat, in mince, burgers, chicken nuggets, etc etc.

It’s simply not sustainable for the planet for an ever increasing population to eat meat in the quantities we do. Huge emerging middle classes in quickly developing countries are now eating more like the UK or USA, when previous traditional diets were largely vegetarian. Great swathes of rain forest are getting cut down to graze beef cattle. Field after field of grain is grown – not to feed people, but to feed animals that will then feed people. The difference in resources required is enormous.

And as for fish, it is a worry that the humble mackerel, once the king of under-appreciated fish, has now made it’s way onto the MSC‘s list of unsustainable fish. I’d say the MSC is the best place to look if you’re interested in making good choices about the fish you eat.

I’m not suggesting that the world turn vegetarian. Though it would help, and it will be interesting to see what impacts the recent horse meat scandal has on the long term eating habits in the UK – though really I suspect very little. What I’m suggesting is that, by reducing the amount of meat we eat, choosing it carefully when we do eat it, and really enjoying it, instead of mindlessly buying another burger, we might help reduce the impact on the planet’s resources. I know that it is something of a middle class answer to talk about ‘making friends with your local butcher’ as not everyone has the luxury of either the time, money or indeed butcher, to make that decision, but choosing to eat less meat is within everyone’s grasp.

So, I shall climb down from my soap-box now.

What I’ve realised after a month of vegetarianism is that it can be much cheaper. A bag of lentils as a source of protein is far less expensive than even the cheapest cut of meat. I wanted to spend the month cooking proper food, not heating up vegetarian pre-prepared stuff, and I found that everything I cooked was cheaper than a meat containing equivalent.

I ate more vegetables too. I realise that this sounds obvious but I do not think for one second that a vegetarian diet is immediately healthier than an omnivorous one. After all, crisps, sweets and chocolate are meat-free, and I have met vegetarians in the past who have existed largely on chips. But when I’ve taken the time to cook new vegetarian dishes, it’s felt really positive, and not a second rate option.

I have a goal to try one new vegetarian dish each week for the year, and I’m keeping a little record of what I’ve cooked. I have been using Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s ‘Veg Every Day’ and Sarah Raven’s ‘Garden Cookbook’ a lot, and also the recipes which come from Abel and Cole. My veg box is a place of ever increasing interest because of this shift in my eating and I can only hope that my allotment will be too.

I said that I’d had a month of vegetarianism, and since the end of January I have re-introduced meat into my diet. I’ve eaten meat twice. On both occasions, it was a really considered choice, in places with a strong provenance. I didn’t regret my decision, and thoroughly enjoyed what I was eating. Mindful eating definitely is a key, in my mind, to that decision. Apart from those two occasions, I have remained meat free and I am likely to carry on eating like this for some time.

(Incidentally, if you’re looking for good articles on the recent horse meat scandal, and the UK attitude to eating horse meat, try Them Apples)

Otello, based on the Shakespeare play, was performed by Opera North at The Grand Theatre in Leeds. There’s plenty of room on the internet for reviews about the performance but, for us, the opera trip was a catalyst for debate about what assumptions we had about opera, what the barriers to engaging with it as an art form were, and why people might think it’s not for them.

Me: I’ve always thought opera was for posh people, who dressed in fancy clothes so they could see other posh people, who were also dressed in fancy clothes, singing in another language. I know I’m not the only person who feels this way, and, having sat through my first opera, I now know that my assumptions were wrong.

Me: When I mentioned on Twitter that I was going to the opera, I got lots of questions about what I was going to wear.  When I looked around the audience, there was a distinct lack of evening dress. Everyone was just in smart-ish clothes – just the kind of thing you’d wear for any night out in town. I’m wondering we get a lot of our perceptions about opera from seeing it on period dramas or something!

Jo: I can understand why people think there is snobbery around opera. There was a ‘shushing’ incident during Otello. I don’t think the sush-ers meant to be rude, more that people get passionately involved in the performance. Powerful music needs powerful silence to let it breathe and be fully appreciated.  Most every situation has a kind of etiquette or ritual attached to it.

Me: Another thing much of the audience had in common was grey hair, but actually, because opera deals with dramatic emotion, it’s perfect fodder for younger people. I wonder if it’s because opera seems to have a feeling of being ‘classical’ – most people could name something like ‘Madame Butterfly’ but not a contemporary opera. Is there even such a thing?

Jo: Popular music is full of songs about love, jealousy, defiance and betrayal. Our greatest hits aren’t about having a nap or walking your dog. Music that grabs your heart doesn’t deal with the in-between moments of life. That’s true of all kind of music and opera is no different.  ’No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.’ WH Auden.

Me: As Otello is sung in Italian, I was afraid it would be difficult to follow but the English sur-titles made it easy to understand what was going on. The language wasn’t at all complicated—the story and dialogue are stripped down to the bare bones. However, although the sur-titles were useful, they often reduced the emotional breadth of the music to just a couple of lines of dodgy dialogue.

Jo: As I got into the performance, I found the sur-titles really distracting. Next time I’d like to research ahead of time so I won’t have to read them. I think it’s like Saint-Saëns Danse Macabre—once you know the story, you can’t help but hear the instrumental characters in the piece.

Me: Although the production was impeccable, the opera itself wasn’t for me. There were some stand-out moments—the love duet between Otello and Desdemona—but for someone visiting the opera for the first time, Otello might not be the best choice. I think it’s a mistake to assume that because people know the Shakespeare play, they will find this particular opera accessible or appealing – even though the music was stunnin. They feel like two very separate entities.

Jo: I can’t fault the production, it’s just not an opera I’d choose to see again or recommend. The story didn’t satisfy me. I felt no investment in the characters: Desdemona was too wet; Otello wasn’t solid enough for his status; Iago’s strength was in the music; and Emilia just made me cross! Musically, my highlight was the love duet, ‘Gia Nella Notte Densa’.

Me: For me, the most impressive parts of Otello were when more than one character was singing at once and all their emotions and perspectives are woven together.  After eight years of living in Leeds, and countless visits to the theatre and ballet, I’m so glad I’ve finally seen an opera; I’m definitely a convert and a new fan of Opera North.

Jo: It was a huge privilege to stand on that stage; I now feel a personal connection to the theatre. I’m looking forward to booking my next Opera North performance, Dido and Aeneas. It’s only an hour and it’s sung in English and the cheapest seats are going for £15—it’d be a great place for anyone tempted to try opera out for themselves.

So, opera is for me, after all. Which, I’ll admit is something of a surprise. Now, I really do think that opera is for anyone and everyone  – so, if you get the chance, do try it out. And if you’re lucky enough to live somewhere where you can see Opera North, then grab that opportunity. Overwhelmingly, again, it seems that the only way to decide if you like something is to try it. Otherwise you’ll never know…

And then, like a ray of sunshine on a gloomy day, I remembered that January is also the season of the wondrous Seville orange, and that means one thing and one thing only. Marmalade!

Luckily for me, Jo, my partner in Sage & Thrift is as optimistic about our capabilities as I am. When I asked “Do you like marmalade?” she replied “Yes, as long as I don’t get to eat it only after you’ve made me go for a crazy run…” I fear she knows me all too well. But my plans were rather more sedate than a mud-filled 10k and this time just involved the pair of us, a stack of oranges, a mountain of sugar and a well-thumbed copy of the Women’s Institute book of preserves.

Now I’ve moved onto the more challenging things. A couple of things that I’ve recently got rid of have made me cry. Firstly an enormous, half-finished Beatrix Potter cross-stitch. I started this in the summer of 2006, when I was pregnant with my daughter. It was one of those ‘I’m going to be a perfect mummy’ kind of plans. I was going to finish it before her arrival, get it framed and smugly hang it in her bedroom. And then it all fell apart. Thirty weeks into the pregnancy,  I became really ill with pre-eclampsia and HELLP syndrome and she arrived far too early for me to finish it. But in all honesty, even if the pregnancy had been text-book perfect, I was unlikely to have managed it. The simple reason? I didn’t really enjoy it. It was far too big and complicated and I’m just not very good at sitting still and concentrating on one thing for that amount of time. A lesson in not trying to be someone I’m not, perhaps.

I suppose it was the first of my failures in the attempt to be a perfect parent. These days, I am definitely not a perfect parent, and far less stressed about the whole thing. But six years after I started that damn cross stitch, there it was, every time I opened the drawer in my bedroom, taunting me about my failure and giving me a giant dose of guilt. Every time I came across it, I thought fleetingly ‘I must finish that’ before hastily shutting the drawer and putting it – and the guilt – out of my mind. Not this time though. This time, I got it out of the drawer and sat thinking about it – and having a little cry – before asking for a second opinion.

Thankfully, I have the best friends in the world, and so that second opinion was a wonderful one. One that said ‘you’re not a failure for not finishing this. It was started with love, and that love still exists, even if the finished article does not’. The love that I have for my daughter, and the six years worth of things we have shared more than makes up for not having finished one lousy cross-stitch. It went into the bin and I don’t have any regrets.

The second thing that I have finally got rid of is a guide book for Mongolia. From 1999. Hmm. I was supposed to go to Mongolia for a few months through a Raleigh International scheme, but no-one told me until I’d got to the end of the application process that because I was in the final year of my degree, I was ineligible. Marvellous. Still, I have hung onto the dream since then. I long to visit Mongolia; the vast open spaces, wildlife, last vestiges of a nomadic, horse-reliant culture and the reintroduced takhi (Przewalski) horses are something I refuse to get to the end of my life without witnessing.

Hence my ancient guide book.

I know, though, that if I ever do manage to finally make it to Mongolia, I’ll need a new guide book. So why have I hung onto this one for so long? It is the misguided belief that my dream is somehow inextricably linked with it. That without the book, the chances of me finally getting to realise a long-held ambition are doomed. This is replicated across many other things that I own, and that I’ve struggled to let go of. Half finished plans, guide books for places I’ve planned to go but never visited, books bought but never read, kit for various activities and sports going dusty…

The other reason I have hung onto things is because they have links to memories; places I have been, people I have known, experiences I have had. In some cases, the memento or souvenir is rather nice. In the vast majority of cases, it’s an old bus ticket, an unused piece of equipment, an ancient t-shirt. What I have come to realise, is that I don’t need to keep all of these things in order to retain the memory. I have never forgotten my old friends, regardless of whether I have kept mementoes of things we have done together. I’ve never forgotten holidays that I have taken or adventures that I have had, whether or not I’ve kept the tickets! And, as a friend of mine pointed out a while ago, I could always take photos of things before letting them go, if I really need to.

So, it is time for me to let go of these things. To rely on my friends to help me with the invisible tentacles that each item might hold around my heart, and to help me see that my dreams and my memories are not linked to my things, but rather that they live on inside me.

In my last post, I mentioned an article by Lesley Garner that I’d found, amidst my clutter, about de-cluttering. The irony is not lost on me. This time, I’m going to quote from it a little: ’Clearing clutter means shedding dreams. But the funny thing is, I can throw things out because I still believe in the dreams themselves. The clutter is the husk of hope that never flew. But hope itself is inexhaustible. De-cluttering is necessary because new dreams need space to grow in’.

In clearing my house of the clutter from unrealised dreams, I am not killing the dreams themselves. In clearing my house of the clutter from things in my history, I am not wiping out my memories. I am making space, both for my mind and body to live in and for my new dreams to grow in.