To branch

To reach, to grow, to break. To be alone. But also to belong, to hold, to partake. To be strong.

Summer solstice

It’s the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, and I’ve just finished what I know will be the best book of 2022: Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson. “You stroke each of the dogs’ heads and watch them cower at your gall. You’re descending at a hellish pace but there’s no fire...

Friday 17.06.2022. Evening

Hottest day of the year in England and Wales. And Spain and France. Unnatural. It’s still warm in the house when I go to bed, and I hear mozzies and flies and bees that mistook indoors for outdoors when they saw the light of my lamp. Yesterday’s mozzies and flies and bees lie dead on...

Wednesday 15.06.2022. Afternoon

After watching Life After Life, the TV adaptation of Kate Atkinson’s novel, I’ve been thinking about death and the circularity of time. I live in both the past and the future, as well as savouring the now. I’m back in Wendover for a couple of weeks. This means no swimming, but instead there’s the cat...

Saturday 28 May 2022. Midday

Having avoided writing and exercise – things that make me feel good – all morning, I eventually sit down in the garden to feel a bit shit about myself. Sometimes my fear of failing is so deep and complex that I think it's actually success that I fear more: starting something, working hard and then...

Sunday 22 May 2022. Evening

The swimming spot in the river Cam, Cambridge, May 2022. Photo by Jessica Zarins Went for a long swim this morning. So long I struggled to warm up on the cycle home. It felt incredible, to not be in a rush and to just follow the river. The rest of the day I spent in...

Went to Riga. Came home

I've been going to Riga almost every year since 2016 (pandemic excluded). The first time I hoped for a sense of inherited belonging, that I'd feel at home in my ancestral city. It wasn't without disappointment that I realised that I'm not Latvian, but Swedish-Latvian, and don't belong in Riga, but belong where I create...

Sunday 8 May 2022. Afternoon

Using my old mechanical pencil for the first time in years. I bought it at the very high price of 87 SEK in 2002. My old school friend Sofia Eriksson was shocked that I spent so much money on a pencil, but I was thinking that I'd keep it forever. And I used it for...

Thursday 05 May, evening. Visit from a traveller

A travelling craftsman is staying in my house while they work at a fair nearby. We share stories in the evenings over food and wine, and discuss the state of the world over tea and chocolate. The traveller is from an Eastern European country which gets headlines in the west for its far-right, pro-Putin ideology,...

Down to the river

On the day we learn that the most powerful nation on the planet – that was once hailed as the leader of the free world – are planning to withdraw 50 year old women's rights, I head to the water. My wild swimming has been irregular since the autumn, but this changes with today. I've...

Monday 2 May. Morning

I saw a kingfisher on my walk in Coldham’s Common, and knew it would be a special day. The darting electric blue and brown belly you only see when it lands was unmistakable, and I thought this is the fourth kingfisher I’ve seen in the five years I’ve lived in Cambridge. And it was a...