Anniversary

Tuesday 30 August 2022 Today it's been 15 years since I moved to the UK. It makes me reflect on the times and tales, the person I was and the one I've become. I'm happier now than I've been for much of these years, but still question my decision to live here every day. And...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

Cambridge for Ukraine

Today I went on a march for peace for and solidarity with Ukraine. It was organised by Ukrainian scholars and members of the public with the intention of raising awareness of the severity of the conflict, and collecting funds for the aid effort. It was a sunny day and felt great to be out. My...

KORAX

Sivota Bay, Tuesday 24 August 2021. Morning There's a copy of Aesop's Fables in the boat library. The one about the Mother, the Child and the Raven sticks out to me. A mother takes her child to the seers, who predict that it will die young from a raven (Greek: korax). The mother shuts the...

The virginal

Sivota Bay, Lefkas. Tuesday 24 August 2021, afternoon Spending time with my parents for the first time in nine months is comfortable, safe and relaxing in a childlike way. My mother pays for lunch, my father pays for dinner. When there are sounds outside the boat at night, my father goes up to check. When...

News: Branches root in Epoch Press

"Some of the seeds in the bottom of the birdfeeder have sprouted, and little grasses have grown inside the plastic tube-shaped dispenser. How is that even possible without any soil? I look closer and see that the mouldy sludge at the bottom of the tube has formed some kind of nutrient base, enough for the...

On the night that England played the semi finals…..

......I was double booked. To see Ralph Fiennes perform T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. An incredible, beautiful, terrifying and dark performance, being life to the poems in a way I never felt when I read them. Time, life, enjoyment and responsibility; spirituality, nature and death. For 80 minutes I saw it all on that stage....