“I often hear the same voices, the radio, the news, my boyfriend… Our lives, priorities or the things and people we care about are all different.

I’d like to hear how everyone is doing, managing, winning or attempting. I’m faced with questions about where and how I live? the leaks in the roof, and as my boyfriend and I learn to share better, what is space?

Colin has started running in the mornings and as he turned 50 at the weekend he’s asking what is his purpose? or maybe simpler what can he do to help? We have our 20 year anniversary coming up. 20 years of going out or rather staying in together. We’ve decided to keep staying together, keep walking, having picnics and dancing in the kitchen is part of that. I noticed how my happiness is tied in with another person, his joy is my joy, should I be looking for my own joy? I’ve never used the word devotion before. I realise devotion can be a real live thing, a felt sense, something that reveals itself on the inside of my body, in my breath and health.

I reckon ritual is making a comeback. I don’t pray but I have sometimes been putting my hands together before I eat and I swiftly have a think about people. Is this what praying is? No, I don’t think so.

Many are dealing with loss. I haven’t lost any close colleagues, friends or family members to 2020/21, but I may. I’d like to learn about how to grieve? I’ve never done it well before. Or collectively some non-performative mourning. It’s weird we celebrate our veterans by somehow celebrating war. Or “serving our country”, in service means fighting. There are other kinds of loss too.

I will need to keep a wide lens.

I’m not sure how I’ve done. I was angry with most of last year. Livid that as I come up to my own 50th birthday that racism is still a thing. I had this mad dream when I was very little, maybe 3 years old that by the time I’m this age it just won’t be an issue anymore. So I started to practice saying the truth, questioning everything, saying stuff out loud, saying the same thing again and again, leaving stuff hanging around for people to think about or even simply to see. My street has a lot of languages on it, guess which voices I hear the most?

I’ve gained comfort this winter watching The Great Pottery Throwdown, Rupaul’s Drag Race and the grimmest of programmes The Handmaid’s Tale, How is that comfort?

This picture is of my pear tree in 2020. It’s been there 12 years. It’s 2 metres tall. I do so little, pull away a bit of ivy that’s getting a bit keen, chop back next door’s bush to the amount I’m allowed to without disturbing the neighbours and every year I have too many pears. Beautiful delicious pears.”

– 7th Feb