Tumbleweed
A belated Happy World Poetry Day.
While contemplating my LinkedIn posts and how some perform well while others vanish without a trace, I came up with this.
Tumbleweed
Picture if you will
A dusty high street
The centre of a midwestern town
At high noon, the place is deserted
Not a soul in sight
Yet the Chinook wind picks up a single ball
Tumbles it effortlessly along a dirt track
Forever doomed to whip along
With
No views
No likes
No comments.
Off The Page
This is how I spent last Sunday, enjoying our third Open Mic for 2026 @Afrori Books, Brighton, and I want to thank the seven other writers who took to the stage and shared their stories, poetry, and prose.
We’re always on the lookout for underrepresented and marginalised voices who have something to say. So if this is you and you’d like to join us on Sunday, 19th April, for our next Open Mic, then please email us at authorsopenmic@gmail.com.
And all other dates are available here.
We’d love to welcome you to our growing community of writers.
Sometimes you just have to say yes.
Sometimes, just sometimes, an opportunity appears out of seemingly nowhere, and you have to say yes. So, on Wednesday morning, I had to change my plans to start practising for a reading I’d been asked to do as part of International Women’s Day on Sunday. I find that I need several quick runs through to prime myself and help manage any nerves.
Thank you, @IzzyTaylor, for capturing this moment. Not sure how you managed it without my noticing, and feeling awkward. I do not, on the whole, enjoy having my picture taken.
In any case, I was thrilled to share a platform with Araminta Hall, author of seven novels, including her latest, Unreliable Narrator. We were there as part of the Brighton Girl Takeover of Churchill Square to celebrate International Women’s Day on Sunday, 8th March.
I was delighted to be invited by @brightbookfest and @afroribooks to read two extracts from Thin Sandwich: the first, Knife on a Bus, and the second, Executive Briefcases, while Araminta Hall read from the first chapter of Unreliable Narrator.
>We were also able to interview each other about writing and what inspires us. In all honesty, I was more nervous about doing this, but all was well in the end.
Unscripted and present
I have been scratching around for my 2026 word of the year and struggling to come up with anything.
Yet somehow this year, to my surprise, a phrase emerged instead while I was attending @Jackee Holder and @Fiona Parashar’s weekly Women’s Journalling & Writing Circle:
Unscripted and Present.
No doubt influenced by my continuing attendance at Brighton Theatre Royal’s Age is a Stage. A weekly session for over fifties, filled with memory games, singing, acting, improvisation, and general goofiness. I was even complimented on my interpretation of a bag of kibble last week 😉.
And I’m loving it, but as with so many things, what you start in one corner of your life very often spills over into others. And I find that going with the flow, showing up as you are, is emerging more and more on my Substack, too.
Where I find I am comfortable enough to fill my profile with random, improvised notes. I’m letting go of the need to have everything carefully and perfectly crafted. Like the example below:
What can you do with a moment?
Hold yourself within it.
Breathe, follow your breath, see where it takes you.
Step forward and allow the spotlight to find you.
Unscripted and present, let’s see where this takes me in 2026.
Until next time