I’ve had many surprising incarnations in this life so far; academic, nursing assistant, footballer, rugby player, au-pair, epidemiologist, fancy-dress enthusiast, ice-hockey player, circus performer, professional gardener, artistic doodler and occasional duck. But in forty years, writing is the one area I’ve most deeply yearned to express myself but rarely found the courage or pluck.
And so now I’m travelling this inner journey of exploration and expansion at last, a curious cartographer of inner worlds and outer reflections in the mirrors of life, gently unpeeling layers of my created self to unearth the rich bedrock beneath. And I offer my journey here, to whoever it may reach, as a token of connection, courage, love and trust.
ByClare Watkinson
I’ve always loved the word ‘crinkle’. It has such happy, playful edges; an exuberant breed of wrinkle, nestling in furrows of amiability. Far more excitable than a fold, but so much kinder than a pinch! It’s the pleated corner of a smiling eye or the puckered crumple of seersucker. And unlike the meekly silent ‘wrinkle’,…
ByClare Watkinson
Whatever situation I find myself in today, and however uncertain it might appear, I’m going to imagine – just for now – that I landed there as a seed. No matter the challenges I face or the feelings they stir, I’ll be an incipient kernel of growth; plump with fecundity and eager to emerge. Maybe the…
ByClare Watkinson
As the leaves begin to drift and decay, so too do my thoughts. Here I am once again, in stout wellies and overcoat, tending to the damp and depleted garden of my boggy autumn mind. Here comes the dwindling of daylight, and the slow creep of dormancy; the building weight of mud clinging to the…
ByClare Watkinson
In the midst of the socially-distanced hiatus – and within the space of a single week – I found myself travelling the roads of our two most deeply-held rituals through an unfamiliar landscape of erosion, its layers of social-sediment freshly exposed by the flash-floods of the pandemic. There were many reasons to grieve in the…
ByClare Watkinson
As many charity shops will testify, lockdown was a perfect chance to sort and de-clutter, seeing many of us rummaging through the top-heavy totem-poles of our possessions with mild stupefaction over what we’d previously thought to need, keep or want. So it is too with the clutter of the subconscious. For the first time in…
ByClare Watkinson
A week and a half ago, between the opening and closing curtains of a wedding and a funeral, I did my very first podcast; another leap into trusting the flow. And I notice, as I begin to let go of the old, the new and unseen doors that start to shimmer and glow, subtly lifting…
ByClare Watkinson
We were enjoying morning coffee on the veranda when the phone rang, tautening the string in me that already knew who it would be. ‘Oh Clare’ Mum began gently, ‘I’m afraid it’s not great news.’ Over the last few weeks my stepfather had been drifting on the ebbing tides of his life, a listing vessel…
ByClare Watkinson
As I walked barefoot across the lawn this morning, delighting in the nodding penstemons and bee-deep lavender, my pleasure was interrupted by an abrupt encounter with a small turd. Fear not, I didn’t step in it. But oh, what a rude little serpent of distaste! Like the discovery of an overripe spot on your nose…
ByClare Watkinson
It began when I fell in love for the first time; heavily, painfully and inelegantly. He was much older; I still had braces on my teeth. We were together for a year in Edinburgh before I had to leave for Oxford and start the betwixt and between of long-distance longing. But however willfully I battled…
ByClare Watkinson
For anyone climbing anxiously aboard the blogging-bus for the first time – wondering how to make sense of the bewildering array of route maps, unintelligible fare systems and suspiciously-stained seats on offer – please know that you’re not alone. And since it’s a process of travel rather than arrival, no direction can ever be wrong….
ByClare Watkinson
Dearest Clare Who Doubts, I know, with all my heart, how very hard this is right now; how tempted you are to give up, and how loud the voices of doubt. I know how very real the imagined corpse of your future seems – pale and bloated with inadequacy in the gully below – and…
ByClare Watkinson
I’ve spent the majority of my life writing in various air-raid shelters of protection – furtively, secretly, shyly – while harbouring a deep longing to emerge into the light. I’ve never known the courage to claim each illegitimate child of creativity or the confidence to celebrate our relationship without fear. But it is the act…
