(Nimue) Some books are easy to review. This is the other sort because it is brilliant and at the same time it definitely won’t be to everyone’s taste. We all know Sherwood as a place of camp, swashbuckling adventure. Sherewode, on the other hand, is a mysterious, dangerous forest where old Gods walk, and many ..read more

(Nimue) One of the wonderful things about going to Pagan events is how expressively people dress. It’s true of a lot of spaces, especially geeky, nerdy spaces. Most of the time we all dress for the roles we are supposed to be playing. A lot of those roles call upon us to be subdued, unremarkable ..read more

(Nimue) There are several large jackdaw roosts around Stroud that have been in use as sites for many years. Recently, a significant crew of jackdaws started turning up in the evenings to roost somewhere near my home. There are a lot of trees round here, so there are plenty of suitable places for them. Initially the magpies were grumpy about it, but they seem to have got to grips with the change. Most normally I hear them as they come in for the evening. There are sometimes small bursts of noise from them in the day. On the day of writing this post, at a point where I was really struggling, it ..read more

I’ve worked in the publishing industry more of the time than not since my twenties. There are a lot of different roles out there that call for writing skills but don’t result in your name being on the cover. I enjoy supporting other people in developing their work, and I’ve done that in various ways, including as an editor, and as a ghost writer. This year I worked on a book written by a Japanese monster maker. The story is Kazumitsu Akamatsu’s creation and is illustrated with photos of the fantastic models he makes. It’s like nothing else. I came into this as a co-writer/technician to polish ..read more

(Nimue) Usually the first piece of advice for meditating is to find a quiet space on your own where you won’t be disturbed. Of course it works differently if you go to a class. What do you do if you can’t get that private, solitary space? What if you have no quiet space, no private space, what if saying ‘I need half an hour of undisturbed time’ doesn’t work?  Does that mean you can’t meditate? It will certainly impact on what you do, but meditating remains possible even in less than ideal situations. Pick shorter meditations and things you can fall into quickly. It’s better to spend ten m ..read more

(Nimue) Finding your most authentic self is a process. Most of us have to spend time unpicking things around who we’ve been told we are and what we’ve been told we should be, in order to find ourselves. On top of that, the authentic self isn’t a state pf permanence. To be authentic is to be responsive. The true self responds to experience in order to change and grow. Experience allows us to be more than we were, and to go deeper into ourselves. The most authentic version of you today may not look much like the you of a year ago, and be little like the you of ten years ago. Some creatures shed ..read more

(Nimue) Outside the window I heard the weird whispering Of gravel gathered, bathed in blue white house light. We were river rocks, they murmured, stream sonorous Offering stories as I lay wakeful and waiting for sleep. We were submerged stones, our wild water knew the tread Of mammoths, of massive creatures lost to this landscape. We were Doggerland, but did not define ourselves, did not call Anything very much, we were stone in stream, sifted and scoured. Their memories moved me, the wash of waterways unnamed A lingering of land long shifted beyond all recounting, remembered In smooth stories ..read more

(Nimue) These are fledgling long tailed tits, on the birdfeeder outside my bedroom window. There are often more of them, and on the morning I took this picture there had also been baby blue tits alongside them. They’re an everyday blessing at the moment, showing up to take advantage of suet blocks in the feeders. They were around last summer, but did not come so close. They like the plant pots as places to land, and they very much like the suet, and do not seem too worried about us, so long as we don’t make any sudden moves. I’m not quite sure how many fledglings there are, but certainly thre ..read more

(Nimue) Over on Blue Sky, I follow a chap called Dr Glen Patrick Doyle, who posts steadily about healing a recovery from trauma https://bsky.app/profile/drdoylesays.bsky.social I’ve found his insights tremendously useful, so thought I should mention him. One of the things he’s been posting about recently is the importance of finding and becoming your true and authentic self as part of the recovery process. I think this is especially relevant for people dealing with complex PTSD. When trauma comes from a single event – like a car crash – it damages your relationship with the world. You may end ..read more

(Nimue) The association between Druids and Stonehenge is complicated to say the least. If you want to get into this in detail then Ronald Hutton’s Blood And Mistletoe is an excellent read. The short version goes that early historians were working with the Bible as their frame of reference for what the past looked like. Bible history doesn’t give us anything like the length of time actual history involves. Early historians could not imagine just how big the past is. What they did have was writing from Romans, and Romans mentioned the Druids. Therefore, in that relatively small window of time be ..read more