travelling again
the Avanti Sunday service, writing residencies, a goat on a school bus
This morning, you find me on the 10:34 from Glasgow to Preston where I’ll change trains for Hebden Bridge before embarking on the last leg of the journey to Ted Hughes’s old gaff, Lumb Bank where I’ll spend the week.
This is the last residency of the Arvon writing programme I’ve been on for the past two years. I’ll sleep, walk, stretch and eat three square meals a day, plus cake. It goes without saying there will be endless cups of coffee. Red wine. Laughter, tears, words.
For reasons not entirely unrelated to the heat and my hormones, it’s been a punishing week. But, as it goes, unbidden joy shoulders in regardless and in the unlikeliest of places.
Next Sunday, I’ll share reflections on this week, during which we’ll also be prepping for an industry reception at Somerset House in mid-July. Sharing your work is hard. Maybe I’ll have some words of encouragement.
In the meantime, for more from the archive on writing residencies IRL and online, start here with the first Arvon week back in October 2024, which is about my cat dying as much as it is about writing:
Losses and Gains
The problem with me is that no one can entirely trust I’m being sincere. Those I’m closest to will understand when I say this. The way a comment, expression of love or genuine praise can, by the time it makes its way from my heart to my mouth, sound disingenuous. Sarcastic, even.
And this on imposter syndrome / being a writing mother from January 2025:
press a fresh candle into the spent one’s quivering flame
I was still mum. Still cook, cleaner and chauffeur. Still chief form-filler-outer; piano-practise-pusher. I was still teaching and mentoring. Still ironing out tricky bits of my manuscript. Still trying to exercise though this, I’ll admit, was daft since I’ve not quite shucked off January’s customary virus.
On Rick Rubin and how the work must, at least some of the time, be play from May 2025:
Work, rest and play
·
“We’re not playing to win; we’re playing to play… Engaging in active play and experimentation until we’re happily surprised is how the best work reveals itself.”
Why walking = writing from September 2025:
Or when walking is no help at all in finding the right words from February 2026:
the light
I wake with daylight coming through the gap in the curtains and ask what time it is, fearing the answer. I’m given three guesses. Thankfully none of them is right and it’s just the start of the first clear-skied day in a long time.
Ahr my neck of the woods…..glad you got to be here and experience Lumb Bank
I loved my time at Lumb Bank for a memoir writers course. How wonderful to go again and again as part of your course. Enjoy!