“At the still point of the turning world
….there the dance is” – T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets: Burnt Norton

Walking through the park recently, I placed myself in the present moment. I was rewarded with birds.

A fallen branch had lodged itself in the middle of the stream. Hidden beneath it sat a moorhen on her nest.

Her partner paddled towards her, bringing reeds. She wove them into place.

I stood, watching, for half-an-hour. She stood, to re-arrange her feathers, and I spotted six grey-green eggs in the nest.

Passers by joined me, asked what I was looking at. I taught moorhen facts to an American woman; I showed the nest to nearby duck-feeding children; I made new friends.

Later that day, on another long walk, I took my earbuds out so that I could take a phone call1 from a prodigious poet warlock fabulous friend.

Ninety minutes later, the call ended, and one earbud had gone missing. I invoked Saint Anthony and retraced my steps.

No luck. I retraced them again.

I’d lost hope of finding the earbud. But the search rewarded me with a magpie feather, a three of spades2, and a five-penny piece.

Then I found the earbud, underneath the bananas in Tesco. Thank you, Saint Anthony.

Attention is an odd thing. Like the stylus on a record player, it is the single point of contact between our experience and the all-that-is. It matters where we place it.

Despite 37 years of meditation practice3, I spend most of my time replaying the past or rehearsing the future.

I tell others that I suffer from a “defecit” of attention, because my stylus skips from groove to groove.

The present moment is easy to miss. Yet whenever we return to it, things happen.

Focusing attention on whatever is now present is a form of prayer. It may also be the mechanism by which magick works.

Perhaps the universal consciousness rewards our attention. Perhaps attention simply reveals what is already there. The difference scarcely matters. Magic happens when we pay attention.

So shut down your computer, put down your phone, go outside, and attend to nature. See what happens.

Andy Wilson

Hello to the many new subscribers who arrived here via a recommendation from Andy Wilson’s Traveller in the Evening site.

As many of you will know, and as heralded in his final post, Andy recently died, just a couple of months after receiving his diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer.

I first met Andy on a training course for a long-forgotten piece of enterprise software. We bonded over a love of experimental music, in particular the band Faust.

Over the next thirty years we repeatedly lost touch and then found one another again. When we reconnected a few years ago, I was fascinated by the extent to which William Blake and Christianity had come to shape Andy’s life and thinking. We had many conversations about both. At my invitation, Andy joined several online deep-reading sessions with The Eugene Halliday Association, where he made thoughtful and often provocative contributions.

Andy could be stubborn and feisty. Last year, after a minor disagreement, he blocked me on Facebook and we again lost touch.

I am deeply grateful to the mutual friend who told me of Andy’s illness. Andy and I made our peace. And I was able to visit him in his final weeks, and help him with the publishing software he was using to prepare a new book.

I do not yet know whether he completed the book before his death. When I learn more, I will share news here.

Farewell, Andy.

An update on my life

Regular subscribers may have noticed that my last post was over nine months ago. I wrote it on the day I set off on a 500-mile pilgrimage across England, from Cornwall to Norfolk.

The pilgrimage was wonderful. I wish I were still walking.

Life since then has been much harder, often unbearable.

I did not expect ever again to reach the kind of low points which I wrote about in 2024. In fact 2026 has been far worse.

I would like to repeat my plea from that earlier post: please sign up for the Zero Suicide Alliance’s suicide awareness course. You could save a life.

I believe that I am now slowly recovering.

What helps most right now is human contact: messages; conversations; invitations; opportunities to meet new people. All of these matter more than I can easily express.

I am also struggling financially. If you would like to support my work, purchases from the Peakrill bookshop and paid subscriptions to this Substack are greatly appreciated.

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A note from the ancestors

The T.S. Eliot quote with which I opened this article has, like the poem that contains it, enriched my life. I return to it often.

I was delighted to discover, while researching the life of my grandpa Harold Sumption, that he too used this line, in an article he wrote for the Quaker magazine Friends Journal in 1972:

Running a small press means, for me, following my gut. I don’t choose books because they fit a publishing plan, or will be big sellers. I publish them when they grab me as a reader, and I want to share them with you.

Alison J Carr’s The Night is one of the best books I've read in the last couple of years. With its Kickstarter ending in just two days, I want to share the reasons why it first grabbed me, and why I'd love more people to read it.

The Night is a coming-of-age story. Clearly autobiographical, it also feels archetypal, as its hero, the Girl, feels her way into her relationship with the night; with sex; with risk; with men – on her way to becoming the Showgirl and, ultimately, the Goddess.

She had words but they did not work. To be there in an encounter, but completely erased—projected onto until you do not exist. This is what it is like to be a Girl. Hyper visible and yet completely invisible. A screen for all kinds of fantasies, none of them emerging from the Girl, none of them about the Girl.

I found echoes of female friends’ lives in the Girl’s experiences; and echoes of myself in the male supporting cast.

I shared the book with my wife, with other female friends. The most common response was: “this is me”.

It has always been important to the Showgirl that there are parts of her that are secret. That she does not understand. It is important that she does not protect herself. That she is reckless. It is important she lets go of the regimes of control. The attitudes and the safety belts.

I bumped into Allie recently and told her how much I love the book. She replied that she had just sold the last copy of the original print run. This felt like a nudge from the gods of chance, asking me to bring the book back into being. Once we do, I hope that women can read it and think, “this is me,” and men to realise, “so that’s you”.

Allie & I agreed to produce a fancy hardback edition of the book, limited to 100 signed copies, with an afterword and with more pictures. And so we set up the Kickstarter.

When she entered the shed, a choir of snails greeted her and told her that the shed was haunted by the ghost of a dancer. The dancer was born with a third leg which she had amputated in order to have a conventional dance career. But her dancing was always chaotic, frenzied, unbound, as though she was possessed by the amputated leg.

You can read Allie’s latest post about The Night here, where she talks about how, for this new edition, she’s added drawings in green and blue, representing different aspects of her personality, alongside the original red and gold watercolours.

Please visit the Kickstarter where you can pledge to secure a signed, hardback limited edition of the book, as well as some of Allie’s original artwork.

Departures

It is the microseason of departures.

Curlew, lapwing, oystercatcher, and golden plover have gone from the moor. Swallows will be next. Kestrels and buzzards have moved in to take their place.

On the verges, ragwort, devil’s bit scabious, and Autumn gentian are the year’s final blooms.

Thistledown is on the breeze. An apocalypse of flies devour the rosehips.

The weather suddenly turns cold; I dig a plunge pool.

The Night

Alison J Carr & I are trying to kickstart a new edition of her fabulous novella The Night. But it’s not going very well. Please help: visit the Kickstarter, back it if you can, and share it with friends. Otherwise this very special book won’t get published, and I’ll be sad.

Awen and Abwoon

I spent the weekend with druids. I learned a lot from fascinating talks by Ronald Hutton and Kristoffer Hughes. And I learnt that, during their ceremonies, druids chant “awen1” three times.

Awen is a Welsh/Brythonic word usually translated as “inspiration”. Like inspiration, it has its roots in words for breath, spirit, wind. It is sometimes represented as three rays: /|\

I was struck by awen’s similarity with “abwoon”, the Aramaic first word of the Lord’s Prayer. Abwoon’s meaning is also infused with spirit, and is far more poetic (and ungendered) than the “our father” which has come, through Greek and Latin, into our English translation of the prayer.

Fascinating that two so different languages – one Indo-European and one Semitic – have such a similarity. I wonder whether this is because these languages share common roots further back in time, or some co-evolution caused by correspondences in the physical way that the A-W-N sound is produced.

Inspired by the words’ similarity, and in the breath of inspiration, I wrote a druidic version of the Lord’s Prayer using Aramaic translations suggested by Neil Douglas-Klotz’s book “Prayers of the Cosmos: Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus's Words”

Breath that births and bubbles through the universe,
Come cleanse my heart, make it a shrine for your sweet sound,
Instil your will in mine, make good with heart and hands,
Let light play out in harmony on stars and land,
Bring bread and understanding to us, bite by bite,
Unfurl our faults, as we free others from their knots,
End evil in us, urging inappropriate acts;
From harvest, sing in harmony, till harvest next.
So mote it be.2

Pilgrimage for Peace

On 1st September, I will be walking the first steps of a 500 mile pilgrimage for peace. Four of us are walking the Michael & Mary lines from Cornwall to Norfolk, talking to strangers along the way, encouraging hope, connection, and change. I talk bit more about it in this short video:

I have no funding for the walk, and no income during these two months other than the occasional book sale. I’ll be mostly living on noodles and the kindness of strangers. Please consider donating to my Ko-fi or to dan@sumption.org on PayPal, buying books from the Peakrill bookshop, or taking out a paid subscription to this Substack, so that I can afford the occasional pub lunch.

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Here in the North Pennines it’s the microseason of micromoths & horseflies. Sneezewort & yarrow are finally flowering in the verges, as marsh orchids and clover crisp from purple to brown. Fledgelings are everywhere: swallows, wagtails, pipits, skylarks, curlews, lapwings, oystercatchers, even black grouse, joyfully test their adolescent wings.

Long ago, and far away, this all happened:

Navigation

I’ve heard it recounted in so many ways,

“you were facing out”
“you were on the roof”
“you were back by the tiller, messing about”
“there were branches above”
“we said: be careful”
“we could all see what was coming…”

But I remember exactly what happened.

I was walking up the narrowboat, from back to front. Sky and banks were clear: blue sky, green fields.

I had a choice: go through, inside the boat – where it was twisty, crowded, dark and cramped – or take to the edge, outside: more direct and fun. Here’s how you did it:

You had to face in to the hull, and grip the handrail on the roof, while shuffling your feet along the lip, the narrow ledge that ran the whole boat’s length. I’d done this so, so many times before. I was what they’d call “an expert”.

I’d joined this family holiday late, for awkward reasons I’ve since forgotten. (Bedwetting, probably). We mostly motored down canals, but this was the Wey Navigation.

A navigation: something that’s not quite canal, but neither is it river. A channel between the two. A portal, deep. Deeper, here, than river or canal.

I was seven now, at junior school. Of course, I’d learnt to swim when I was three or four; when I was just a kid. (I think everyone did). But I was so much older now, and hadn't practiced. Some kid knowledge doesn’t last.

So, you had to grip the handrail on the roof, while shuffling your feet along the side, facing the boat. OK, perhaps I had grown cocksure, perhaps I would have even tried it facing out. But this was easy, I was something of an expert.

Until, that is, I slipped.

My feet slipped, and I gripped.

My feet slipped on the puddled ledge. I gripped the rail.

My feet went out from under me, to empty space.

My hands gripped.

My hands gripped. And gripped. And gripped and gripped and gripped and gripped.

My feet had slipped but still my hands were holding fast. My seven year-old arms held my seven year-old body suspended in space.

The weight of one whole body, the never-ending weight of that. No body’s arms are never-ending.

My superhero hands I always thought I’d have, just did not work the way I thought. I slipped, I could not grip, and so my fingers, then my hands, let go.

I fell.

My feet, my body, then my head splashed down into the water. Down, then further down, into green.

I used to know how to swim. But now I did not know. I kicked, I turned, I spun, I reached.

I moved each muscle in my body, each and every different way. And yet, my body did not rise. I stayed underwater. The Navigation was very deep.

I thrashed again and then I found my superhero powers. Here they are! I saw the surface! I saw air.

The surface went away again.

I thrashed and saw the surface and I thrashed and thrashed. I pull-pushed every muscle in my body, every different way. I turned and span and rolled and yawed, saw brown and green and sometimes, briefly, silvery air.

I saw the top! And then it went away again.

I saw the surface! Suddenly my face broke through. I took that breath my body screamed to take. But body dragged me down, and down, and down again. I had seen the surface, but I never would again. Never, ever, ever, ever, nevermore. I had no force for fight. I had no energy, and I was done, so I went down.

☙ ☙ ☙

I am going to die.

This is it. This is what it’s like. I’m dying.

It looks nice down here.

The water presses on my eyes; I see things. I see weeds.

The weeds all grow the same direction: up.

I am going down. The weeds are going up.

There are colours in the weeds if you just look at them.

The green and murky brown give way to subtleties, to blue and purple, red, maroon and shades of grey. Here there are so many colours.

This is the most beautiful jungle I have ever seen.

There are animals in this jungle: fish.

The fish swim unconcerned between the weeds.

This, for fish, is life.

I could stay here; I could get used to this.

I could stay here forever. I could stay forevermore, beneath the water, in the jungle, with the fish, down here.

WhoooshSwooosh! Something is pulling me beneath my armpits.

I’m grabbed, I’m held. And something pulls me up. And up. And up.

And up; and up; and up; and: goodbye fish!

☙ ☙ ☙

Goodbye fish!

We burst out of the water, my uncle and I. We were back up top, and, suddenly, he’s swimming for my life.

Dragged up and held, my energy unneeded.

I was a passenger. This was easy. Life – living – was easy.

Living, easy; eyes closed; held; no effort; ferried to shore.

I could have got used to this.

Getting me out was hard, my jumper full of bilge. But it was done and I was handed to the bank. I was kept alive.

Keir’s money, from his pockets, was all soaking wet. In the boat, he hung out pound notes on the line to dry. “This one’s for you. Next time I do that, you have got to pay me back.”

Book news

I have just published A Moorland Notebook by Terry Howard. Terry, as well as being my father-in-law, has led walks in the Peak District for over six decades; his gentle campaigning and “trespass rambles” catalysed the modern Right to Roam movement, and helped secure 2000s’ Countryside & Rights of Way (CRoW) Act.

A Moorland Notebook was first published in 1993 Sheffield Campaign for Access by to Moorland (SCAM), the group that Terry co-founded in the 1980s. It combines wisdom and learnings about the high moors around Sheffield and Kinder Scout – their history, enclosure, and the ancient standing stones – with poetry and walking guides.

This new edition adds further reflections, and some stunning drawings by Paul Evans. Reading the book, it’s astonishing to realise how much of our countryside could, so recently, only be enjoyed illegally.

Find out more about the book here, and check out this beautiful documentary about Terry, made three years ago by Charlie Thorne:

Up here in the North Pennines, numerous small changes herald midsummer’s coming.

The fells are blanketed in tiny white flowers of heath bedstraw, invisible until you look; when you do, they are everywhere. Yellow templar crosses of tormentil peer out from beneath.

Purple marsh orchids congregate along the roadside. The meadows glow with buttercup and rattle. The grass along the verges, reaching chest height, puts out seed-heads: a mauve-green-gold parade of fans, spears, pyramids, a dozen other forms, interspersed with clover and with bolting sorrel.

High beauty. A turning point.

My maudlin side regrets the passing of Spring, the bleaching of the green. Shoots overextend, dessicate, fall back to Earth. Holly faces oak. Our nights will grow longer.

When I open the van door a crack, a carpet of dozy flies crawl buzzing from the frame void. Have they arrived to escape wind and heat? Or were they born here? I suspect the latter.

I'm reminded of a favourite passage from M, John Harrison's short story A Young Man's Journey to Viriconium:

"I suppose you've got the same problem," I said to Mr Ambrayses. “I poison them,” I said, “but they don't seem to take much notice.” I held up the Vapona, with its picture of a huge fly. “Might as well try again.”

Mr Ambrayses nodded. “Two explanations are commonly offered for this,” he said:

“In the first we are asked to imagine certain sites in the world – a crack in the concrete in Chicago or New Delhi, a twist in the air in an empty suburb of Prague, a clotted milk bottle on a Bradford tip – from which all flies issue in a constant stream, a smoke exhaled from some appalling fundamental level of things. This is what people are asking – though they do not usually know it – when they say exasperatedly, ‘Where are all these flies coming from?’ Such locations are like the holes in the side of a new house where insulation has been pumped in: something left over from the constructional phase of the world.

“This is an adequate, even an appealing model of the process. But it is not modern; and I prefer the alternative, in which it is assumed that as Viriconium grinds past us, dragging its enormous bulk against the bulk of the world, the energy generated is expressed in the form of these insects, which are like the sparks shooting out from between two huge flywheels that have momentarily brushed each other.”1

This week in Whitby & Todmorden

This week we will be bringing the Crab & Bee folklore booktour to Yorkshire.

Whitby

On Monday 23rd June we’re in Whitby. A host of events are going off during the day to celebrate St. John's Eve / Ivan Kupala.

• midday–2pm we’ll be at Whitby bookshop signing copies of the book. Just turn up.

• 4–9pm the folks from Whitby Krampus Run will be putting on a host of activities at Whitby Brewery, including making cyanotypes, flower crowns, music, dancing and drumming, and the moon on a stick.

• 6-8pm Crab & Bee will be staging a performance of their Matter of Britain, alongside storytelling, local history, and a performance by fabulous ethereal folk choir The Midsommars. Buy tickets here, only £3.

• 9pm onwards we'll be at the Abbey headland, partying as the sun sets 🌅

Todmorden

On Saturday 28rd June Crab & Bee will be guests of The Folklore Centre in Todmorden, from 4–6pm. Tickets here.

The Night

Alison Carr’s novella The Night is a fabulous archetypal story of a woman’s journey. I was blown away when I read it. We will soon be running a kickstarter campaign to publish it, sign up here for more info.

Elsewhere

Ted Gioa’s insights often stop me in my tracks. This post on what’s happening now is well worth reading:

The Honest Broker

The Ten Warning Signs

Would you believe me if I told you that the biggest news story of our century is happening right now—but is never mentioned in the press…

Read more

a year ago · 2359 likes · 455 comments · Ted Gioia

I’ve got a lot of personal news to share, but first…

I Ching

I don't know much about the I Ching.

I know that if you toss
six coins
and draw
six lines
some bro ken
some un–bro–ken
you can imagine
a future

I know that,
to do it properly,
you should use
six yarrow sticks

But I don't know much about the I Ching.

Robert KG Temple has a theory about the I Ching.

Robert KG Temple is best known for his Sirius Mysteries:
the theory that aliens, from the three stars of
Sirius
Catalysed Human Civilisation, 5,000 years ago.

Batshit insane!
A great story!

RKGT has a theory about the I Ching…

To do the I Ching properly you should use yarrow stalks.
But the I Ching did not start with yarrow stalks.

It started with the
Shoulder Blades of Oxen
and with
Turtle Shells

You take a
strong straight stick
Heat it
white hot in the fire,
then,
six times
press your stick into the bone or shell.

Then, you flip it over.

At the site of each burn
is the start of a crack

If a crack emerges at
90 degrees
things are proceeding straightforward.

But the crack does not always emerge at 90 degrees.

Sometimes it chooses
60 degrees
then things change.

If you turn six times 60 degrees,
you make a circle
more accurately, a
HEXAGON.

Nature loves a hexagon.
Honeycombs and skin cells.
The basalt rocks of Fingal’s cave & The Giant's Causeway.

RKGT says that event are like hexagons.

Event form into crystals.
Like skin cells, they stack up,
and from the top of alternate columns, they
pop off.

RKGT says that the I Ching taps into
the crystalline structure of events,
The Crystalline Structure of Change.

Batshit insane.
A fabulous story.
A lot like Life.

My source for this article is the book Netherworld by Robert kg temples. However, I read it over a year ago, and have not revisited it to write this article. Apologies if I’ve misinterpreted any of its ideas.

Crab & Bee

I have begun touring the UK with Helen Billinghurst & Phil Smith, authors of Crab & Bee’s Matter of Britain, sharing stories from the book and collaborating with local artists and folklorists.

It’s impossible to explain how bonkers and exciting this tour is, but here’s a couple of short clips which paint a tiny picture of what it’s like being at a Crab & Bee event:

Crab & Bee in Manchester:

The Midsommars in Sheffield:

The tour’s running throughout May & June. Dates, venues and tickets are all listed here.

A Moorland Notebook

The Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to publish Terry Howard’s Moorland Notebook ends in just a day. And we’ve still not hit the target.

I am very disappointed about this. I’m confident that we will get there, but I’d hoped to do it a lot earlier than this.

If you’ve any interest in the British countryside and how it has been stolen from the people, please find out more here, and tell your friends!

The Night

Our next crowdfunding campaign will be for the publication of the Night by Alison. J Carr.

Allie self-published this book in 2022 and it found great resonance with readers. It's one of those books that simply feels like it needed to exist.

Peakrill press are proud to be working on a hardback second edition, with new paintings and an afterword. Here is what Alison says about the book:

The Night emerged from my anger at Sarah Everard's murder by an off-duty policeman, who capitalised on institutional power to dupe, abuse, and murder. It made me feel sick.

Ensuing public discussions precipitated a preoccupation with my own relation to the night: my early experiences of sex gone wrong; nights out; the city at night. But also my dreams, desires; how I want to live; what I want to refuse. The Night is a synthesis of the difficult aspects of being a person: wanting to be seen, wanting to be desired, owning ambition, taking up space, refusing negation.

If that sounds heavy, then I assure you, I worked hard to transmute the heaviness into hopeful lightness. I invite my viewer/reader to be entertained and to think.

You can find out more here. Please do click the Notify Me button on that page, to be informed when the campaign launches, in about a month’s time.

What is this Substack

This series of posts started due to an accident in a Time Machine with a copy of Ian McGilchrist's book The Matter With Things and a quantity of psychoactive mushrooms.

My original intention was to explain life, the universe, and everything, in a series of posts which could be read in under one minute. Of course, I failed. But here are some highlights from the journey…

Primarily, I wanted to explain the problems of trying to explain the universe using words. Of course, explaining this using words was always going to be impossible, which is why I said that I said it best when I said nothing at all. However, I did manage to say a fair bit…

My prime beef is that all words are metaphors. Our belief that it is possible to write a “literal truth” is misplaced. I never managed to write a post that adequately articulated that, although I have about a dozen abandoned drafts. Along the way I explained how words are always changing their meaning, how the verb “to be” is incredibly dangerous, and how nouns are equally deadly.

I’ve not written much about numbers, but I do know that three is magic.

I’ve offered some little mind-expanding exercises along the way. Here’s a game I used to play with my kids which I believe is one of the best ways of cultivating creativity. Here’s how to see the heaven in a wild flower, to speak with fairies, how to cultivate luck and radical gratitude, to exercise courage, to improve your future, to manifest money, why meditating badly is good, and why you should draw, even if (especially if) you are bad at it. Then perhaps learn to teach it.

Oh, and here is a machine for generating synchronicities.

Here’s why you should ignore the news. Here’s why you should avoid being “practical”. And here’s why we are going to Hell in a (self-driving) handcart.

Oh and this is what happens to you when you die.

I wanted to eliminate all traces of my personality from the post – partly because I’m on a doomed mission to destroy my ego (and I believe that listening is more important than talking) and partly because anecdotes are overrated. Hence these posts were written not by Dan Sumption, but by The Mycoleum (mycelium + mausoleum: a story for another time).

Despite that, Dan has popped up here from time-to-time, whether explaining the fool’s leaps which led to his portfolio career or talking about how he came back from depression, with a little help from my Friends .

I will soon be introducing a new “section” to this Substack, for paid subscribers only, where I’ll post short monthly videos on what I’ve been up to. Expect the first one soon.

Subscribe now

People say I seem to get a lot done. From inside of me, that’s not how it feels. But I have an explanation for that.

Now, pause, and say thank you to someone.

Then tell me, what about you, what do you enjoy to do? Let’s all embiggen the makers!

PS. I ❤️ T.S. Eliot. Also W.S. Graham’s Beast. And Tim Holmes’ Soup.

I want to tell you about the night I became a grown-up.

I was in my mid-30s. My spouse and I had been foster careers for several years. One evening we received a phone call:

“We have a 15 year old young man, in police custody for committing ABH (Actual Bodily Harm) on his father. He has volunteered to be taken into care. Could we bring him to you?”

We said yes. 10 minutes later there was a knock at the door. I opened it.

A head shot through the door like a missile, aiming to headbutt me between the eyes. It stopped a couple of millimetres short. And laughed.

That encounter set the tone. For a month, he swaggered round our house owning it, improvising violent, misanthropic, misogynistic rap lyrics, something like this:

I was intimidated, trauma from my own teens laid bare. I avoided him, leaving most of the hard work to my spouse.

One month in, I was home alone. My spouse had gone out for the night; the young man had gone to a friend’s house. Then, around 8pm, the door burst open...

He’d come home early, and was literally frothing at the mouth, raging, shouting “I'm going to get a gun. I’m going to get a gun and kill every white fucker in the world”, while punching holes in our plasterboard walls.

I had no idea what to do. And so, I did nothing. From the “fight, flight, freeze or fawn” trauma responses, my instinct was to freeze.

I stayed with this young man, because it was my responsibility to keep him safe. But I didn’t know what else to do. So I just… stayed with him.

Not interrupting, I listened – for 30, 45 minutes – to this torrent of anger and hatred and violence. He mostly just repeated that one phrase “I'm going to get a gun and kill every white fucker in the world”.

Then suddenly his eyes cleared, he saw me as though for the first time, and he said “oh. Sorry. I don’t mean you.”

Then he sort of folded, and cried, and curled up. And I helped him to his bedroom, tucked him into bed, got him a drink, and wished him goodnight.

A bond was formed that night. Afterwards, he treated me with respect. I had seen the broken baby inside him, which he shielded with armour of violence and swagger.

I think of that night often. Whenever I encounter violence, abusiveness, confrontation, I think of the broken baby behind the armour.

Too many people believe in fighting violence with violence, hatred with hatred; as a foster-carer, that was never an option. It was my job to counter those behaviours with love. With attention. With some attempt at empathy.

And I have seen that approach work. Maybe not always, at least not within the span of a single lifetime. But it does work.

Broken babies. Us adults are just broken babies, with bigger, bolder armour.

Dear subscribers…

Dear subscribers, it has been a while. I’ve been trying to write this article since December 31st, but my ability to write has once more gone awry.

I am immensely grateful to my 3 (three!) paid subscribers, who have stuck with me despite this. Paying to subscribe to this Substack gets you no extra content (although it does get you a hefty discount in the Peakrill bookshop). But it helps me enormously.

I would love to be able to support more writers on here myself. If anyone else takes out a paid subscription, I will pass it on, spending your subs backing writers I admire like Eleanor Robbins, Dougald Hine1, Thomas Sharp, James Burt, Ted Gioia, and Church of Burn.

I also have a new online bookshop for Peakrill Press. It’s much nicer than the old one, and has more stuff in it - please check it out, and don’t forget to use your subscriber discount (which you’ll find at the end of this email).

Nice Weather for Fish

Just a couple of days to go on my latest Kickstarter, Nice Weather for Fish.

Nice Weather for Fish is, perhaps, a whimsical fantasy roleplaying adventure. But apparently it can also be read as Borgesian fiction. It is illustrated by the late, much missed Sheffield legend (and co-founder of the Leadmill venue) Martin F Bedford.

Set at the Hope Springs Spring Fair in 999AD, it’s an upriver trek into the Heart of the Peak District, through a weird landscape of boggy woods, bickering bandits, tiny suspicious miners, haunted cromlechs hiding cryptic secrets, and a hermit who may be the wisest person alive, but also refuses to acknowledge anyone’s existence unless they’re polite. There are fairies, a mysterious rock that can turn back time, and a tribe of cave-dwelling fisher-folk who have many admirable qualities but fluent English is not one of them. Fish fall from the sky, the rivers run backwards, and absolutely no one will explain why there’s a 21st-century wristwatch buried in the woods.

Check it out on Kickstarter now!

Podcasts

I’ve been on a surprising number of podcasts lately, and I’ve even started my own (or rather, my second one – this Substack can also be subscribed and listened to as a podcast).

• The first episode of the Peakrill Podcast features James Burt interviewing me about Nice Weather for Fish, and Peakrill Press’s plans for 2025.

• On This Book I Read I discuss a book which changed my life, Viriconium Nights by M John Harrison.

• In Andrew O’Neill’s Occult Interview (requires a Patreon subscription, which I think only costs a quid) you can hear me talk about my life, and about magic.

• Not exactly a podcast, but I’ve always loved reading aloud, and have rebooted my “Yakanory” YouTube channel, where you can listen to me reading short stories and extracts from books I like.

I’ve recorded at least two more podcasts recently (it’s hard to keep track), so if you’re not already sick of my voice, you soon will be.

On a teaser episode for the Adventures in Nutopia podcast, Tim Smit (founder of the Eden Project) gives away a piece of advice for which he normally charges £10,000:

Accept every third invitation you receive1.

He goes on to say that this puts you into “a milieu which is self-selecting for the curious” and that, for him, almost every single life-changing event (including the Eden Project) came from accepting that third invitation.

Your natural tendency is to only choose those things which fit in with the prejudice or the preference of your existing mindset.

Magic is not created by meeting the people you think you need to meet, it is created by meeting the people you didn't know you needed to meet.

This is, essentially, how I live my life. It works. Exciting things happen.

If you’re close to London, and you’re looking for something to say “yes” to, why not come join us on Hackney Marshes at 8:04am this Saturday, to celebrate sunrise on the shortest day of the year.

New books

I have recently published a couple of new books under my Peakrill Press imprint. If you order them right now, you should still get them in time for Christmas (I’ll be posting first class). And remember: subscribers to this newsletter can get 10% off by using the code MYC10 at checkout in the Peakrill Etsy shop.

How to be Bozz by alexander de pfefel jonson (assisted by Chris Barker) is ideal for people who love Nigel Molesworth, and for people who hate Boris Johnson. Set at St. Cnut’s School, the book introduces you to characters such as jakub rees mogg, rishmal richbanks, keer fotherington-stamer, mad lissy lettis and wobbli therese, as well as explaining how jonson got Tuxxit don, and giving you access to the patented de-pfefel jonson excuse-o-matik.

In the words of the author:

If you reed this buk you will find out how YOU can one da become as grate and powerful as me, The mitey alexander de-pfefel jonson, curse of st. cnut’s the goriller of SW1a and once and futur werld king. (You will not acheev this if you do not attend st. cnut’s skool for bois I am afrade tho so giv up now and do not bother trying).

Get How to be Bozz here.

True Clown Stories, by James Burt and others, is a collection of short stories about clowns and the awful things they do. James writes:

My clown stories are about people who want to be entertaining. They want to bring people some innocent joy, but reality has thwarted them. These are stories about people who've devoted themselves to red noses and giant shoes but struggle to survive.

These pieces are strange and intense. They might be about grubby, angry performers, but they are also about the world we all live in. Get True Clown Stories here.

My book King Arthur vs Devil Kitty by Daniel Sumption, with illustrations by Maximillian Hartley is also still available. A poetic adaptation of a 13th-century French tale, in which Merlin and Arthur travel to the Alps to battle a giant kitten, this story is suitable for children, adults and immortals alike. The beautiful illustrated book is inspired by kids’ picture stories of the 1970s, Monty Python, Jabberwocky, Gawain & the Green Knight, and The Goodies vs Kitten Kong. Get it here.

Love!

A big, big thank you to everyone who got in touch to express concern and offer help after my rather raw update last week. Things are still going well for me. So much love in the universe! Which reminds me… here’s a recent track from my all-time favourite composer William D Drake:

William (Bill to his friends) also recently released the long-awaited EP from his 1990s band Lake of Puppies. Listen to it. Buy it. It’s gorgeous! So much so that I got married to the track Largelife:

This has been, I think, the worst year of my life. But things are improving. More on that below, but first, a quick shout about my current publishing project…

There is just 1 day left to back Crab & Bee’s Matter of Britain on Kickstarter. It is a book of short, wyrd, anarchic retellings of Albion’s folk tales. Here are what our advance readers said about it:

This is an inspired retelling of some of the finest tales and tale tropes of England, at once very old and very modern, firmly rooted in enduring landscapes and mindscapes
Professor Ronald Hutton author of The Witch, Blood and Mistletoe, Pagan Britain and one of Philomena Cunk's most game interviewees

In the Matter of Britain, Crab and Bee appear to have casually gathered up the folk consciousness of Britain, laughed at it, stamped on it, and lovingly restored it to our modern landscape. But that might not be the truth of it. You will know many of these characters, and yet meet them for the first time. This is a folk masterpiece.
Lisa Schneidau - oral storyteller and author of the Folk Tales of Britain & Ireland series

For those who do not recognise themselves in the narratives they have been told here is a new set of myths, ancient but future-orientated too. A hallucinatory journey through a re-imagined Albion and its landscapes. Origin stories for a people to come who are also already here.
Professor Simon O’Sullivan - author of From Magic and Myth-Work to Care and Repair

Hallucinatory and hypnotic, grounded and earthy, this is a re-enchantment of the land, its past, present and future, with dirt beneath its nails.
Dr Katy Soar - Senior Lecturer in Classical Archaeology, University of Winchester

Crab and Bee have this knack of coming at things out of left field, back to front, bottom up or inside out. On their psychic and physical peregrinations, the familiar becomes fantastic, grotesque, eldritch or wondrous, the fantastic and mythic revealed in the everyday. In the process they reveal the flecks of gold in the post-industrial muck.
John Constable aka John Crow, author of The Southwark Mysteries

The book is already funded, but all extra money we raise by the end of the Kickstarter tomorrow is being put into organising a book tour so that Crab & Bee can take their tales back around the land that inspired them. Find out more here.

Back to my life.

I don’t normally write about myself here. I try to keep these posts short, and ego-free.

But I’m not sure I can do it any more. So I’m offloading.

Trigger warning for suicidal ideation. Please pause now and sign up for the Zero Suicide Alliance’s suicide awareness course. You could save lives. I have.

I’ve hated this year. Everyone I know has hated this year.

We’re living through the collapse of everything we knew as normal, with a topping of ambient genocide, while living costs are twice what they were when David Bowie died.

Personally, I’ve had relationship, financial, and health woes, but what’s pushed me too far is something so ridiculous, I’m almost embarrassed to mention it.

We’ve moved to the countryside by mistake.

I now live an Instagram-perfect life, off-grid, with few real responsibilities, and fewer financial worries than most, in one of the most beautiful places in England.

But it’s so fucking lonely.

So lonely, that for the first time in 35 years I’ve considered killing myself.

I actually started; decided to starve myself to death, because I knew it would give me ample time to change my mind; which, thank fuck, I did.

Everything’s fine right now!

Thanks to The Blindboy Podcast I’ve figured out so much more about my particular flavour of neuroherbs-and-spiciness.

I always thought I was an introvert. Turns out I’m just an extrovert who’s shy around new people.

Turns out I need people, loads and loads and loads of creative, inventive, crazy people, to feed my mind, to fuel my battery.

Much as I love the handful of farmers and retirees who live around me, I need more.

And the last few weeks have given me so much more.

I’ve travelled to Liverpool, Sheffield, and London, participated and performed in The People’s Day of Death and Abyssmass, and been reminded that I have scores and scores of wonderful friends who love me, respect me, admire me, are rooting for me.

(In truth, I never forgot this, even when I was seeking death; I know that I am loved, but I need to experience that love in flesh, and blood, and breath, and bone, in order to be kept alive).

And I also need to sing, and I need to dance. And I have!

At last year’s People’s Day of Death, I met undertaker Andy Jones, who taught me the song Crossing the Bar (based on a Tennyson poem). We spent most of the night, around a campfire, inviting people to sing it with us, improvising ever richer harmonies.

At this year’s Day of Death, we recruited folk singer Rebecca Hearne, and Tocky Tommy, the pure embodiment of Scouse heart and world’s number one bus tour guide. They helped us lead 400 people in the song as they boarded the Mersey Ferry, and then again after we’d crossed the River Styx to Birkenhead.

Somebody captured this magical brief footage of us (wearing shaman costumes by Sans Jim Sanders)

At Abyssmass two weeks later, stripped of my three companions, I again led a crowd of people singing the same song.

Several said it was their highlight of the night, which, given that I was up against the Marina Abramovićesque hopscotch-and-sex-fuelled Enochian invitation to worship witch-goddess Will of Margaret, as well as Sarah Kershaw appearing as the void, singing and dancing itself out of its own womb, and Francesca Way as backdoor-mage drag king Doctor Dirty Dee, I consider to be… brazen lies.

And then I got to dance to the entirety of the Beatles’ White Album (yes, including Revolution #9) performed live by the incredible 30-piece Sheffield Beatles Project. I am full of music and love.

So. Turns out I need people and music in my life. I will keep that in mind.

On my way back from London, I saw this message scratched into the painted-over window of a closed down bank:

And, really, that sums it up.

We all live in the moment between the click and the bang.

Death is coming for you soon, no need to offer any assistance.

There are always unexpected surprises waiting just around the corner:

Don’t be afraid. It's only love.

Don’t be afraid. You’re already dead.

Love is simple.

🖤

I’ve been thick with autumnal depression lately, struggling to write.

Cogs are starting to turn, and I will return soon with the usual hot takes, but, in the meantime, here’s a poem which the muse planted in me last Spring:

The Closing Bloom

In the final year the flowers bloomed
Cowslips came to herald something other than before

In the final year the flowers bloomed
A field of tiny sycamores refused on conscientious grounds

In the final year the flowers bloomed
Umbellifers in flexing constellations hypnotised us all

In the final year the flowers bloomed
The stars and planets withdrew and, unjudging, they observed the fall

In the final year the flowers bloomed
The hawthorn held off until June and then exploded finally

In the final year the flowers bloomed
Tiny vetch reached higher than a human aping poplar trees

In the final year the flowers bloomed
Self-heal, woundwort, eye-bright stole their Latin names and buried them

In the final year the flowers bloomed
Daisies held us prisoner, distracting us from everything

In the final year the flowers bloomed
The hedgehog hid her apples in the London counties far from home

In the final year the flowers bloomed
The heather moors refused to burn but kept their own enchanted flame

In the final year the flowers bloomed
Hydrangea and hellebore endured, elusive, evermore

Peakrill Press News

Chris Barker has designed some wonderful Christmas cards, inspired by well-known artworks, which we’re now selling on the Peakrill shop. Get your Cezanne’s Greetings Cards here.

Embiggening Others

If you haven’t yet discovered David Bramwell’s Adventures in Nutopia podcast then you have a real treat in store. Hugely informative, lovingly produced, frequently funny, and with an impressive range of guests.

In the latest episode “Where is My Mind” you’ll find out about strange interactions between mind and matter, meet a variety of individuals doing pioneering work in consciousness studies, and discover a surprising amount of scientific evidence supporting the theory that our thoughts really can alter physical reality.

As David himself says, what other podcast gives you Noel Edmonds, parapsychology, Tarkovsky, and Dusty Bin, all in the same episode?

This practice usual happens at the beginning or end of every day, and involves recalling perhaps three things (or five, 10, or more) for which you are grateful.

How much more powerful could this be if we could be grateful throughout the day? Perhaps pausing every hour to identify something now present for which you’re thankful.

To radicalise this practice further, try finding gratitude for things you are not grateful for.

Neutral or even negative objects, events, or feelings could bask in the glow of your attention1, and be offered perhaps a brief “thank you” or a Buddhist gasshō.

The goal of this practice, towards which we can all move closer, although none of us will ever reach it, is a state of constant gratitude for all that is. You could perhaps even call this state “perpetual prayer”.

Might the world become a better place, if we could all aspire to that?

Embiggening Others

Signal boosts for the good that’s out there ⥥ ⥥ ⥥

I listen to a lot of podcasts. They teach me so much, by listening to a diversity of voices discuss a plethora of topics.

The really good ones I listen to over and over again, finding more to love and learn as my mind marinades.

Recently, I’ve been binge-listening to Manda Scott’s Accidental Gods2, the podcast that believes that “another world is still possible, and that together, we can create a future we’d be proud to leave to the generations that come after us.”

We’re all aware that we live in “interesting”, often terrifying times, when these godlike technologies, along with the climate emergency, global conflict, and more, all combine to create what’s been called a “polycrisis” or “metacrisis” threatening all human life, perhaps even all life on Earth.

Some episodes of Accidental Gods dive deep into these existential threats, and are not for the faint-hearted. But Manda’s recent interview with Michael Haupt, on the tools we need to transition to a post-capitalist future, gave me an incredible sense of hope. I think it’s worth 78 minutes of your time.

Another recent episode featured Douglas Rushkoff (whose own podcast Team Human also frequently blows my mind and grows my soul). Doug and Manda talked about the “ocean of tears” which I know so many of my friends feel they are drowning in (particularly due to the intensifying conflict in Gaza). I found this episode deeply cathartic. Perhaps it may help you too?

Just how inspirational is this short film? SOOOO fucking inspirational. Watch!

That’s all for now. Sorry it’s been a while since I last posted - I’ve been drowning in an ocean of tears. But perhaps I just found a life raft. Please come join me on it!

Rule 0: treat yourself nicely.

Rule 1: treat people nicely.

Rule 2: treat animals nicely.

Rule 3: treat plants nicely.

Rule 4: treat “inanimate” “objects” nicely.

Rule 5: treat monsters nicely.

Macjiek 🙏❤️‍🔥🌬️👐

Elsewhere…

Did you read or listen to this yet?

Or this?

A little over five years ago, I was involved in some strange activity at the centre of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It went a little like this…

The moment we stepped off the bus, and out of time, you could have been in the English countryside.

I left the tarmac, where someone had sprayed a smiley face, and moved on to the track. We observed the vow of silence. I looked at my feet. Dust the colour of moon, and snail shells dotted the landscape: large loose spirals, thick, bleached, uncrushable. We walked, silent, along the track, beside cool water flowing over moon-bed rocks, and crystals. I took one with me.

Either side were lines of trees, protecting us from burning in the sun-dried wheatfields. Flowers dotted verges: white, yellow, pink; and forget-me-not-blue. May blooms in April. Some were familiar—wild garlic in the mud, here’s Jack, by the hedge. Others, changed subtly: European subspecies. Everything larger than life.

Ritual focus on each step, keep on looking down. The grey path. The white rays, segments of the epic dress. We twenty-three held one strip each of off-white train. Suddenly, a van appears. It’s beautiful! Burnt black to purple, rust and everything between. A few half-molten tubes and pipes poke out from somewhere where was once an engine. Lingering here is smoke, some dying bonfire.

Ahead the irrigation ditch led us down to a river. A more-than-green lawn raised within the crook of flow, our fellows resting gently there beside a bridge. Timeless. Five have gone ahead though. “It’s too far”, we hear. It is not too far.

Four horsewomen approached us from the distant side. We fear Conquest, War, Famine, even Death; but we were here for the Eschaton. The four approached the bridge, but turned away down some more hidden track. Again our way was clear. So then we crossed.

What we did beyond the bridge: it may never be told. Save this much: when we got there, the field was entirely green. Someone said three tarot cards were found right at its centre: The Fool; The Tower; The Sun. Behind, we left magnolia from Liverpool; almost like the one in Carl Jung’s dream. The ur-tree which illuminated Jung, illumined its own inner being too.

We re-crossed the bridge, we were done with time and so I loosed my watch; I flung it in the water, right beneath the bridge, not far from where three naked bodies played. That Swiss timepiece buried 'neath the flow of time: present and past, and future, contained in space we passed. The hour eternal present in the crystal riverbed.

One of our number was laid low, by heat, beside the water. By water's flow we tended softly to his brow. We carried him back to the coach.

We had returned.

The Large Hadron Collider at Geneva is 27 kilometres long. A torus in the Earth beneath the Alps. Filling its vacuum, the largest concentration of pure nothing* in the known universe.

*We call it Gnothing, Gnowing, though it's Empty Space. It’s full to bursting with untapped potential.

At its centre is a field.

This all happened. This will happen. All this happens now.

In a field. At the centre of time and of space.

Dan Sumption, 2019

What we did beyond the bridge? It may be shown. 23 fragments of the epic dress:

Happy Bealtaine.

I’m not quite sure what Tim Arnold’s Super Connected is, but I’m very much looking forward to seeing it in London on 4th June. Perhaps I’ll see you there? Doesn’t this look fascinating:

Super Connected is currently touring the UK. Find out more on Tim’s website.

I have created this post as a podcast, which means that either you can read it yourself, or you can listen to me reading it. I will be posting future episodes in the same way. If you want to automatically listen to these in your usual podcasting app, there are instructions here.

Please let me know how you get on.

Nature Stories

Two years ago, in an interview with Apiary Studios, Daisy Campbell made a statement which resounded with me:

Nature stories.

She goes on to explain that

Nature has a story force that powerfully takes us to the next stage of whatever this human project is all about. And we meddle with the story at our peril. Because once we impose a mythology of capitalism or a mythology of Christianity or any great overarching theory of everything; rationalism or scientism or materialism, we actually start to kill the mycelium that is building stories that need to be told, the stories that the deepest, deepest forces need to tell.

David Judah Temple, in their book Forty-two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, says something similar:

Story is a core structure of Cosmos itself.

Younger, skeptical me would deride this idea. But with every passing day, it seems more plausible.

Marc Gaffni, speaking for Temple in an interview for the Metagame podcast, explains further. He says that there is always some dimension of freedom in the story. He says that:

Love is real

Love is eternal

Love is evolving

and that

Hope is a memory of the future.

Religious narratives usually put humanity at the centre of nature’s story, as its hero, or as God’s chosen sidekick. But this seems unlikely.

In nature’s story, who do we get to be? Are we supporting actors? Or are we the bad guys? Or that obvious no-hoper who gets wiped out early in the second act?

To play our part, we must evolve, consciously: from Home Sapiens into Homo Amor.

Nature stories. Find your role. Grow love.

🙏🤲😘

🔥🌬️🌊🪨

Clowns

🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 🤡🤡

Our crowdfunding campaign, for a book of True Clown Stories by James Burt, ends in one day. Please support it on Kickstarter if you are able to.

🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 🤡🤡

Please help us get True Clown Stories published.

Try this: embiggen someone.

Try this: big someone up.

Who has touched your life recently?

Who has made, written, performed something that enlivened you.

Please write about them in the comments below.

Write about someone you admire, someone who deserves an audience, someone lovely.

• Who are they

• What do you do?

• Why is it special?

• What quirks make you love them more?

Now try this: embiggen them elsewhere: online, in print, or in person:

• If you’ve a Substack, a blog, a newsletter: use it for singing praises.

• Find the person on social media, follow them, converse with them, share one of their posts. And when you do, say why you like it and why they’re ace!

• Review, buoy up, and support them wherever you can:

  • They’re a writer - are they on Goodreads? Bookshop? Amazon?

  • They’re a maker - are they on Folksy or Etsy?

  • They’re a performer - where can I find dates and venues?

  • You’re a reviewer? So review them!

• Tell your friends about them! In chatty WhatsApp messages and phone calls. In the pub.

Facebook, Twitter/X, and other social networks have started downgrading posts which link to external sites - like YouTube, Etsy, Kickstarter, Substack - so that your followers are less likely to see them.

This means that creators, small businesses, community groups… all find it much harder to show their work to people, and to get them to buy products, services, and tickets.

The Mycelium must root around them.

We, the people, must fill our social space with praise for the people we admire.

Because they deserve that.

Here’s some people I want to embiggen. The first three begin with A.

Allie Carr

I’m loving reading ’s new Substack about cultivating joy, art, and community. Here is a brave video post from Allie which inspires me to want to do the same:

Showing up; being vulnerable; seeing what emerges: this, for me, is everything.

Andrew O’Neill

I’ve seen Andrew perform half-a-dozen times already this year. Every one is different, mad, hilarious.

Andrew MCs the Troy Comedy Club on the first Friday of every month, at the Black Heart in Camden, London. And every Monday, Andrew is at Dead Leg Comedy at Tap Social Movement in Oxford, for free. And gigs in loads of other places. If you’re going to Edinburgh this Autumn, you won’t want to miss their History of Heavy Metal at The Stand.

Andrew’s podcast, The Inadvisable Trapdoor is surreal occult ambient beautiful genius.

Here’s Andrew with Stewart Lee, 13 years ago:

And something more recent:

Andy Cropper

Andy Cropper is a wonderful Sheffield-based artist who paints hyperrealistic urban night scenes which are full of soul. Andy is also a lovely lovely person.

And he provided maps and drawings for Terry Howard’s Inner City Round Walk of Sheffield, published by Peakrill Press in 2023.

Check out this new video from Sheffield Museums, see what inspires Andy:

Dave Zackin

Dave Zackin is a potter who makes wonderful ceramics with faces and wry messages. He also makes Ceramizine:

Dave has been quite ill recently. Please support his work.

Robert Lugo

Speaking of ceramics, check this out…

Bookmarks

I have now posted out or given away 1,000 Peakrill Press bookmarks. Which means that we have a new bookmark design:

If you want to find out what’s on the back, you must buy a book. Use the code BOOKMARK10 for 10% off.

Finally, please help us get True Clown Stories published. Finally.

Until next time, seekers!

“Practical” can often mean “shorn of magic”.

When I do a thing, I rarely want to do it practically.

I do it messily. Magic emerges from imperfection.

I’ve been raised, of late, by the wisdom of Sophie Strand.

Sophie has alchemised her 30 years of suffering, study, connection, and joy into a remarkable wisdom that is deep, broad, and articulated with a rare clarity.

Sophie familiarises us with death, the death which we all must face, and with what comes after death: compost.

This interview with Sophie- Death is the Problem Solver - is fantastic. I found the interviewer a little irritating, but Sophie’s answers are manna.

Peakrill Press is fundraising for the publication of its next book: True Clown Stories by James Burt and others. This is a collection of short stories about people who've devoted themselves to red noses and giant shoes, to the attempt to bring joy to the lives of others, but who themselves struggle to survive.

Please support True Clown Stories on Kickstarter.

“Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise.”
George Whitman, adapted from Hebrews 13:2

Ancient Greeks had one simple way of telling whether a person was civilised.

If they welcomed a stranger into their home, they were civilised.

If they didn’t, they weren’t.

We could learn a lot from the ancient Greeks. Starting with their code of hospitality.1

All too often, we fear that strangers are not to be trusted.2 But most people are trustworthy.3

Hospitality is the bedrock of society. Distrust destroys it.

I share my birthday this week with cunning man Ian Cat Vincent. Cat has been desperately unwell ever since he caught COVID, early in 2020, and has not left his house (other than for medical appointments) in almost 4 years.

Please will you join me in holding Cat in your thoughts? And head over to his website to send birthday wishes.

At the nadir of earth's heat
Imbolc
Root your right foot to the ground
And leave it there

Until the world's spin walks you forward
With the weight that's left.

When Laurie performed in Sheffield, in 2012, she told us that whenever a loved one dies, their life-force does not disappear. Instead it resounds among those who loved them, inspiring them to be better beings, live larger lives, and to offer help to others.

I try to make Mycoleum Mind about ideas, not about myself, but last time it was all about my troubles. I was moved by all of the replies I got. Thank you!

Since then, things have been improving. Until yesterday, when they got much worse…

After a short illness, our beloved Old English Sheepdog Molly died, aged 10. Molly had been with us for 2 years, after being rehomed by the Dog’s Trust. Needless to say, we are gutted. But Molly’s life-force is still with us.

If you are able, please help us honour Molly’s memory by saving a human life 🙏

Mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living – Epigraph to Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden

Every morning, when I rise, I sing this song, by lovely Tim Dalling. It helps.

Some memories of Molly:

Bye-bye for now, Molly!

I am struggling to write at the moment. Struggling to do anything. Because life up here, in the middle of the North Pennines, is hard at this time of year.

Here is a description of our house, from the 1935 novel Fell Top by Winifred Watson:

Lonely and drear was Little Todden: a grey pile of naked stone standing gaunt and solitary, with the sweep of the fells on either side. Clustering round the back of the farm, as though even they feared the solitude, were the ragged groups of the outbuildings: the cow-byres and the stables and the hay-loft and dairy: built at hazard through the years as the farm grew in wealth.

In winter, when the ice was on the hills, and snow piled high in drifts, or the rain was like a living wall of water driving over the fells, days on end we'd be bound fast to Little Todden with sight of each other's faces our only joy, or maybe curse. It was no wonder our dread of our father was a sick and dreadful fear, driven in and growing with us as the years went by. For down there, in our dependence, he could have slain and no one be the Wiser. It is a wicked, wicked thing to build these farms, and take a woman there for good or ill and none be near to know the mark of her man's hands are often blue on her arms.

I’m happy to say that we have not resorted to violence. Our arms are not blue. But my mood is.

We’ve been snowed in for most of the week. It’s melting now, but our pipes are still iced solid. We drink from large water containers, filled during the summer and stored under the stairs. We flush the toilet with buckets carried up from the stream.

On the plus side, the days are now long enough that we now have sufficient solar power to switch the lights on, most evenings. I sometimes even put the Internet on, briefly.

But it’s bleak, and my motivation is at an all-time low.

Normal service will be resumed.

Please support me, if you can, by buying books/zines/comics from Peakrill Press - January sale now on!