I joined an orchestraTrolls in the woodCan you also see a red squirrel?Being a donkey at aerialGetting lost with AnnaA Christmas Day walk with the Nolan’s
1 Dec Wave your arms about. Get out of your comfort zone, In order to grow
2 Dec Hands high, cross one leg, Then the other in fronter, Hands lower, and twist.
3 Dec Can't move until Jan. But they can fix the oven. Well, what can I do?
4 Dec It hits me now though. No Hogmanay in my house. Acknowledge sadness.
5 Dec Run to get the train - Then at New Street - no trains! What?! Alright, the bus then.
6 Dec Where is the valley? Left or right? Neither head south. Ha! Still find our way.
7 Dec Hello Vietnam lunch. Bright summer rolls. Pork and rice. Abi's leftovers.
8 Dec Sparkling twinkling frost. Tiny sideways, slip slip skid. Still stride to the train.
9 Dec Is what I want a hippo for Christmas? But what About the donkey?
10 Dec 9am lecture. I am not going to be late. There - 8.10, I'm here.
11 Dec Look! There's a pink cloud Floating in the sky above. It is beautiful.
12 Dec So many handshakes "Well done", "Pleased to meet you", "Thanks". I hope they are clean.
13 Dec Pie, gammon, parsnips, Seasoned Brussels sprouts, carrots but no salmon, Nick?
14 Dec Second violin. First concert. It's Christmas Praise with CCoC.
15 Dec Sky, a light grey blue. Glad I'm not wearing my glasses. Mizzle hits my face.
16 Dec 2025. The year of buying a house - Almost! More patience!
17 Dec List of jobs to do. List of what I need to pack. List of things to get.
18 Dec The toad swims breaststroke Taking up the space, slowly. In the fast lane!
19 Dec 50 sit ups then 40, followed by 30. You get it. I don't.
20 Dec Drive, back to the sun. Like we're chasing the darkness. I can see the stars.
21 Dec It's 3.26 The sun lowers its head to sleep. The longest night.
22 Dec 오늘 날시는 그래. 그레이. Grey. Dreich But walking I go.
23 Dec Trolls live in the woods. In winter, they grow green coats and sleep in red leaves.
24 Dec My dad once said that The Scottish sky is lower in winter when grey.
25 Dec Christmas Day with friends Andrew Carolyn Tom and Keith Walk, Yut, happy hearts.
26 Dec Off path, over and under uprooted trees, carved trenches, we follow.
27 Dec A crime drama binge. Morse in Oxford. Endeavour, Girl, Fugue, Rocket, Home
28 Dec I'm obssesed with the carpet of red pine needles Lining the wood floor.
29 Dec Is it normally Red in December? Or can it be climate change?
30 Dec A tangerine hue. Bare branches appear to glow, Hail the night's coming.
31 Dec 할머니! 이모! The boys hug, climb, play games and Paw me like a cat.
23 Nov Crisp winter sun. To Blenheim, walk with Alison. Cascading light falls.
24 Nov Spindly brown fingers Bereft of leaves. Standing proud, Still in midnight blue.
25 Nov 3.20am Woke up. Need a wee. Can't sleep. Perimenopause?
26 Nov 부넝색 하늘 입안에 구름. 하얀 풀. 사각사각.
27 Nov Teaching at 9. So, Getting the earlier train. Will give plenty time.
Cancelled, delayed trains. Fuck, I'm going to be late. Got slides ready. Run!
28 Nov Winter good food show. Ping Coombes, Ankursrum, Cheese, Rum. Funny James Martin
29 Nov I went swimming, then Spa with Helen and Hannah A Christmas concert.
30 Nov Sometimes, potatoes are the best part of a roast. Or the Brussels sprouts
A haiku for everyday is my winter project. And I don’t care that November isn’t technically winter. I hate the grey, the wet cold, the drizzle and shorter days, and it upsets me that the weather affects my mood so much. Recently, I read a BBC article that said that a seasonal winter hobby could help counter the misery.
So this project was concocted at an Enneagram day where we addressed the topic of narratives. And ‘I struggle with Autumn and Winter’ is one of my narratives. So, in pairs, we each explored how we could use each of our heart/body/mind centres to explore those narratives, and perhaps how to help ourselves.
“What would your heart centre say to you?” “My mum would say, write a poem or play an instrument.” “You could write a haiku everyday and then it would be your record of this Winter.”
I arrive at 10.26. Sunset’s last fingers still waving. Lights on the river gleaming.
I walk cobbled streets, twinkling squares. Face lit up by maps. Trying hard not to look like a stranger in a new city.
But my backpack gives me away. Besides, which of these smiling, laughing, Drinking, chattering merrily, Dining out because it’s the weekend, people care anyway?
My hotel is at the corner. Worn yellow. Hotel Continental. Chosen for its 3 stars and 5 minute walk from the station.
Hi – Hanna Sha? Yes. Please sign here. He gives me a key and I take the lift to the top. My room is round the corner at the end.
It is minimal and bare. I imagine I’m in a monastery. Then, I pick a stray black hair up from the pillow – 3 stars. I wash my face, brush my teeth, open the window.
The noise from the city centre spills in. Tomorrow I will round a corner and be awed by Kungsparken’s trees, running paths and blue skies.
But now, this circle says no to my travel adaptor. So I half-watch Bush Snr and Jnr silently charge my phone. And sleep, feet at the headrest.
Malmö train station at 10.30pm in the summer
Unexpectedly, I holidayed in Malmö recently. I was meant to be staying in Copenhagen for the entirety of my holiday but Covid and last minute AirBnB cancellations interrupted those plans. I loved Malmö. The cycle lanes, the parks, the pastries, the falafels, the breads… I ate the best kanelbullar (a cinnamon roll) at Slottsträgårten Kafé and fell in love with breakfast sandwiches at St. Jakobs Stenugnsbageri. I did eventually make it to Denmark and my friends there.
Breakfast sandwich with other pastriesThe best kanelbullar for Fika
I don’t know what the correct term is, but in Cambodia and I believe certain parts of northern Thailand, there is a difference in how they use the colours blue and green. As the poem references, a lot of vegetables and ‘greenery’ are described as blue. If you’re interested, I’ll write up more about it in another post. I’ve embraced how all encompassing the Khmer blue is in this poem that embraces the ombré, and it was mostly written after a coastal walk in Stonehaven.
When are the hairdressers going to be allowed to reopen? What am I going to do about my hair?
I heard this a lot during the 12 week lockdown earlier this year. It appears that managing our hair growth was something all of us bonded over during lockdown. I think that I’m not alone in wanting to have hairdressers classed as essential services that can continue to stay open if we go into tighter restrictions, or dare I say, another national lockdown.
By the way, I don’t normally like to post photos of myself on my blog, but I’ve taken the plunge for this post because I couldn’t see a way out of it. Anyway, this is me in my final few weeks as I’m having one of my goodbye *sob sob* lunches with friends. I think I’d recently had a hair cut.
About 4 years into living in Cambodia, I was finally brave enough to get a pixie cut.
It turned out to be perfect for life in a tropical climate, albeit at that point viewed upon as an unusual hairstyle for a female. In Cambodia, there is a custom of shaving one’s head when there has been a terrible tragedy. Normally you’d see the eldest in the family do this when there had been a death in the family. Thus when some of my Khmer friends saw my pixie cut for the first time, they thought that I had received some awful news and was very upset. Not so. There’s an interesting cross-cultural difference titbit for you.
I was still pretty attached to my pixie cut after I left Cambodia. It was one of the ways I could hold onto a remnant of me in Cambodia. Nonetheless, come May 2020, I asked on Instagram:
‘This is annoying. Maybe it’s time to cut my fringe myself or shall I endure growing it out?’
Most replied: grow it out.
Then in June 2020, I wrote a little ode to my pixie cut, which I’ve revised a little here.
Dear Pixie Cut,
Dear Pixie Cut, It’s been a long time since we saw a hairdresser. Now you tuft out at the back, You get in my face when we run, We can’t decide what to do about the fringe, And you tuck beautifully behind my ears.
Is it time for us to part, move on and let you grow out?
Can I hold onto you for one last cut?
In July, I was finally able to book an appointment with the hairdresser. I wrote a haiku.
4 months in lockdown. #Growingoutapixiecut Turned into a bob.
Yes, I decided the time had come to say goodbye. And honestly, I was alright with it. Time, eh. There’s no substitute for it being a healer.
By the way, are hashtags in poems allowed? Are they a thing?
From my first week in Cambodia until the end, they were all over me. I used to joke that people around me didn’t need to worry about putting on mosquito repellant because the mosquitoes would feast on me first.
My bites would swell up so much that in my first month I was on anti-histamines to try to convince my body not to get so excited about them. People kept telling me that it would get better after 6 weeks. The mosquitoes would stop making a bee line for me. Nope. It took many years of constantly being bitten before my body decided that a small bump was a sufficient reaction. Then when I got dengue, I decided that I’d had enough of living with mosquitoes. But that is a story for another time.
Other mosquito poems have been published on this blog, testifying to my special relationship with them. Haha.
However, the time date on the holiday photos tell me that it was 18 months into my time in Cambodia, on holiday in Kep, that I started writing this – my original mosquito poem – and Mosquito, a haiku. I tested it out on the group at breakfast. They laughed a lot. We laughed a lot and then I slapped my arm because I’d just been bitten! I’ve tried finishing this poem a few times since but it just didn’t seem to work. This week, wanting to spend an evening, not marking student work, I finally got it out, pulled together the various versions, got some feedback on it from some of the members of the original audience. Et voilà.
Dear Mosquito
Dear Mosquito, Regarding the note you left last night, Notes, in fact. Which I found indelibly written in red. Presumably to underline your point, as a mark of your love.
Inflamed with lust, Laced with a wee dram of poison, As if to say, if I can’t have you then no-one will.
It’s just that, And, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, I mean no disrespect. But wouldn’t you agree that we appear to be quite unsuited to each other? I don’t react well to you. My defences go into overdrive.
Besides you’re not the first suitor of your ilk, who has been pursuing me.
Let me explain. Was it your great, great, great aunt who chanced upon me? Hmmmmmm… Untouched, uninitiated in this mating ritual. A slap here, a sting there.
Did word somehow get out that I was Prime and ready, Sweet and easy pickings?
One after another, persisting with their whining salutations and affectionate greetings. Arousing me after each visit. You’d each leave. Drunk on my blood. I thought, this is my destiny.
We played tennis together. It was electric. You won, love/40.
I’ve clapped my hands for you. Waited up in the wee hours of the morning to find you. I’ve rubbed on lotions, anointed myself with oil to repel you.
Mosquito, explain. What is it that you find so irresistible about me? My bare skin? My blood type? My sweet scent?
Well, you leave me no choice But to say that I have grown tired of your voice. Wised up to your morning kisses. The suffocating silences. The nightly visitations. Your methods of seduction don’t beguile me any more.
I joined a creatives group in the new year while I was in Aberdeen. Caralyn, the same one who encouraged me to blog again, talked me into going along with her and frogmarched me to introduce me to the group leader. This was very much necessary because the shy introvert in me was reluctant to make any new friends.
I should backtrack a wee bit to provide some context. My first month following my return from Cambodia was bewildering. I didn’t know what was going to happen next or where I was going to be, other than I was back living at my mum’s and it had been the right time to end my Cambodia life. I was exhausted from my life being flipped upside down. That October felt particularly cold and I kept looking aghast at people dressed in shorts when it was below 6 degrees celsius. As I pulled on my four layers and searched for some thermal clothing, I started to experience regular moments when I felt like I couldn’t breathe properly, and I’d be scared to fall asleep in case my body forgot how to breath while I slept. This is me, who has never suffered from anxiety.
My struggle with the cold.
Two things really helped. Firstly, I got help. I engaged a coach to help me go through this transition. Someone I didn’t know who had gone through major changes moving from one country to another. She gave me a structure to the transition. When things got hard in month 3, she reassured me that months 3 and 4 normally held the most tension as friends asked what you had decided to do, when you had decided nothing because those decisions still felt overwhelming, like the circumstances were too fluid to make any concrete decisions. Secondly, a friend reassured me that my panic was a common reaction to major disruptive changes. He agreed with my recognition that this season was a ‘winter’, so to take it easy, do very little “productively”, to remember to take deep breaths and do a little exercise. It helped to normalise my situation and after that first month, I could breathe a little easier.
By January, I was quite happily in the rhythms of my ‘splendid isolation’ or ‘my winter’ in the North East of Scotland. The name inspired by Britain’s 19th century foreign policy of splendid isolation and all the Brexit chatter. After the turbulence of the last few years, the peace and stillness was exactly what I needed. In all honesty this is what I had nicknamed this season of my life weeks before self-isolating and social distancing were to become a thing. The flip side of my choices was that I had reverted to being a shy turtle. Eyes peering out over my scarf and hat. Checking out who the safe people were to talk to before deciding that I’d rather be talking to trees.
Some of the trees I would talk to
I was also intimidated by the thought that this creatives group would be made up of all art school/’I studied design/drama/writing at university’ type people. However, in actual fact, yes some of the group are like that but the group is made up of a variety of people with different craft/art/food/creative writing/photography/design interests and passions. I surprised myself by enjoying their company and the discussions. The following weeks, I went back and started making new friends.
When I moved to another city for a new job three weeks ago, I didn’t expect to be able to continue to be part of them. However, because of the Covid-19 lockdown measures, we moved to meeting online. Each week we focus on something different. This week, the focus was on peace.
I found myself meditating on this song by Mosaic MSC every time I went outside for my daily walk/run. It begins, peace, bring it all to peace. Apt, right? I would pray for family, friends and people I knew who were ill or in the vulnerable group, or in difficult/stressful/anxious situations to know God’s peace. An hour before we were due to meet online, I suddenly worried that my meditative peace prayers wouldn’t count as a creative output. Thus, I quickly cobbled together this haiku on peace as my contribution instead.
Peace
Piece by piece, step by
Step. What was overwhelming
Becomes breathable
It began as a thought, ‘what if I did a play on words with peace/piece’. (There are a couple of quilters in my creatives group.) For me, it evokes memories of marathon training, running up hills, the times I began a couch to 5k programme after time out because of injury. Then there is the sleepless 48 hours when I had a dengue fever rash that covered my entire body and as I cried alone in pain and frustration I kept reminding myself that this too will pass.
I had to learn a lot about pain, rest, asking for help, sabbaticals and self-care during my Cambodia years but especially so in the last two years. One picture that has really comforted me this year has been of God’s hands holding me in this dark vacuum as I feel like I’m falling. He has got me. You might not be religious, but I’m sharing that picture in case it offers you some comfort.
One more thing. When all the things that you rely on to keep you happy are stripped away, if you can, do one thing each day FOR YOU that you enjoy, whether it’s quilting, DIY, reading a book, burning onions, binge-watching a TV series, talking to the guinea pigs. That’s self-care. Do the things you have to do too. And remember. This too will pass.
Life runs a bit slower with these wee feet alongside you.
As you know, I live in Cambodia. Since the birth of my nephew, anytime I visit the UK, I’ve taken to spending a couple of weeks at my sister’s and hanging out with my nephew (and my sister and brother-in-law). This time at 18 months old, it was an absolute delight to see more of his wee personality coming out. Thoughtful, inclusive, at times ever so sweet, commanding, wanting to be helpful and involved, he made us laugh A LOT. So I wrote this poem to capture this moment in his development.
I’m 18 months and I can do that too
I can do that too,
You know.
I’m 18 months old.
I can feed myself.
I have my own bowl, plate and hands.
“HhUM”, I say, when I want something you offer me.
“Kh-heese” is my favourite.
You’ve given me a fork and spoon?
I know what they are.
Mess makers on my face and floor.
“No.” I don’t need your help for that.
Nor when I compose on the keyboard
with my knees and palms.
I’m being post structuralist.
Stay 2 feet away from me.
I can get my shoes and bring your trainers too,
So that we can all go outside.
And I know which direction our walk should take.
We’ll walk past “mee-Ow”
Climb up ‘big step’. “o-Oh” and gingerly go
down them. Walk over black and white stripes.
‘run run run run run’
down hills.
On our way to the
“Ddu- Ddu-” that go “wak-wak”.
“Ball” is my favourite game.
When I wake up, “ball” is where I run to.
I have three officially.
But a tangerine or a stacking up cup works too.
If you throw “ball” to me, I will like you.
But when you throw it on your head,
I’ll scrunch up my eyes and laugh
when it hits my head too.
I love to play with “ball” so much.
Going outside to play,
Wrapped up in my thick coat and wellies makes me happy.
I’m a good kicker. Everyone tells me,
‘Good job.’ ‘Well done.’ when I send the ball to them.
I get upset when –
I don’t understand why – “ball” runs away,
like it doesn’t want to play with me.
Uh huh uh huh HUH HUH HUH.
I make my ee-mo* run and kick it back to me.
“Der” I point to the big screen.
Why watch it on your small phone
When it’s better bigger?
Cast it “Der!”
The music makes my legs
jump and arms wave.
I love it more when we dance together.
I’ve been watching you.
How you do it.
And I can do that too.
*ee-mo: 이모 in Korean. Translates as aunt in English. This is the basic form for what you call your mother’s sisters. Your father’s sisters are addressed as 고모 (go-mo). Ah, *rueful smile* – the specificity of korean titles. For a more detailed overview on the Korean family and kinship terms, check out this blog post on the talking cupboard.
My CELTA course in Birmingham and the summer’s astonishing heatwave have coincided in July 2013. It has meant that I’ve become a rail commuter again and I get to traipse through Birmingham New Street’s revamped station. I rather like its new look.
It’s a shame that they haven’t done anything about the narrow escalators and stairs that connect the platforms and the concourse.
I think that we’d had an input session on teaching writing one morning in which we’d discussed how we could encourage ESL students to write poetry. It reminded me of how I always preferred to write poetry than prose at Korean school when they set their writing competitions: poetry requires minimal words and I was the weakest student in my group. Somehow, I managed to wow someone with my creative outputs and won a few prizes. Ironically, they were dictionaries!
I’ve been reading the Psalms and Norman MacCaig’s poems during my commute. The combination of all these things has culminated in me writing a wee one of my own.
Birmingham New Street Station in a Heatwave
It’s okay,
It’s fine really,
until you’re at the top of the stairs and then –
My nose!
My nose!
Assaulted by these people’s
sticky, sweaty,
familiar smells. Their stale scents
stick at the back of my throat.
Descending the steps into
sultry staleness.
Dim, dingy, dirty.
Pining for fresh air.
Stalemate.
Waiting for my shiny steed to whisk me away.
