Categories
October 23, 2025 3 CommentsMain picture by Henry Be on Unsplash 23 November 2020 The notion of categories has come up for me a few times these past days and weeks. Categories and rating scales. I am far from being an expert in measurement but I have designed myriad surveys in my professional decades, and even contributed to psychometric […]
Read MoreI nearly said “Micky”
October 23, 2025 1 CommentMain photo a “selfie” with a traditional camera, Easter 1988, our first weekend away, in Cornwall, some 6 months after the start of our relationship. 14 November 2020 To want to have sex, love-making, and intimacy (deep intimacy) in my life again was not a difficult decision for me to make when Mike was no […]
Read MoreWhat I Wouldn’t Give…
October 23, 2025 1 Comment10 November 2020 Painting by Julia – one of her last pieces, December 2018 Today is one of those days where Julia’s death, the reality of it, gets through to me… just a little bit more. Despite it always being present, always heavy in my heart, wearisome in my lungs, ponderous on my shoulders, tense […]
Read MoreOn Love and Risk
October 23, 2025 No Comments7 November 2020 Remember when, back in the 1980s, just as we were getting sexually active (if you’re my age), and AIDS hit….? There were all those adverts, in the UK at least, on billboards, in the press, perhaps even on TV – (no social media back then), of a gorgeous young woman or man…. […]
Read MoreResilience Is…
October 23, 2025 3 Comments1 November 2020 I could have gone a few different directions for this week’s writing. One was going to be about some death admin that was, in the end, straightforward and easy, if also hard. I might yet write about that, just because I do so love challenging my embedded belief that all admin (death […]
Read MoreFacing Death, Embracing Life
October 23, 2025 1 CommentAll photos my own, taken yesterday in the Drôme, France 25 October 2020 My beautiful friend Joan, one of the very very very few people who has (a) consistently been present, (b) more or less accessible, and (c) capable of sitting with and exploring whatever colour and shade of emotional energy has come up for […]
Read MoreMy Life is Not Your Excavation Site
October 23, 2025 4 CommentsMain picture by Sabina Music Rich on Unsplash 18 October 2020 I had an experience yesterday which was wholly disagreeable in the moment, and of which similar versions have happened various times these past months and years. The difference was that I finally felt able to handle the situation calmly, directly, and with more resourcefulness […]
Read More42 Moons
October 23, 2025 No CommentsFeatured Image by Mark Tegethoff on Unsplash 12th October 2020 I have long had an uncanny ability to work out time zones. What time is it right now in Sydney where they are 8 hours ahead? Or in Minneapolis which is 7 hours behind? Or if I want a call with someone in New York […]
Read MoreI want MIKE!
October 23, 2025 3 Comments5th October 2020 Main photo by Jane del Pozo, Dec 2016, soon after Mike’s diagnosis I am just back from a brave week of open water swimming in the waters of the La Maddalena Archipelago, off the north-east coast of Sardinia. Brave because it’s the end of summer – indeed early autumn (we had three […]
Read MoreLong Live Live Music
October 23, 2025 No CommentsMain Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash and others from GECA website and Guildhall Gold Medal Concert 2020 28 September 2020 One of the phrases that I hear, and that I use myself, in my still new, post-loss world, is “this life of after”. It’s a phrase that would do well to be used too […]
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