Mobile Phones – today’s equivalent of a rotten tomato? And Shakespeare Vs. the modern cult of celebrity. When I started as a volunteer steward at the Globe Theatre last year my motivation was to see more theatre for free, become part of a dynamic, creative hub and bask in the incandescence of an increasing feeling of cultural superiority (there’s nothing like casually mentioning, “I’m just off for a double shift at the Globe, yeah, it’s a turnaround today, Macbeth followed by A Midsummer Night’s Dream, *sigh* so not getting home before midnight” to make you polish your gleaming badge of cultural excellence with a smug grin). Over the season and a half I’ve been there I’ve slowly been infused with the spirit of Shakespeare. A litany of fractured lines flit through my mind from a pool of plays I’ve been privileged to see performed over and over again. Sometimes I can even recall appropriately cryptic quotes at moments that require something profound; a skill I used to believe was reserved only for the likes of Dame Judy Dench, Mark Rylance and Professors of the English language (and my dad). And yet, surrounded as I am with this richness, this splendour... (read more)

This is a short story originally written for The Sketchbook Project. A mother and daughter at great variance with one another find common ground in their preference for having marmalade for breakfast on a Sunday. A Preference for Marmalade on a Sunday She had never seen eye to eye with her mother. At just shy of five foot and four inches she was an entire four and one quatre inches taller then that diminutive matriarchal figure and the elevation had dealt them emphatically different views of life. They argued most days. Not between nine and half past eleven because that was when they ate breakfast and did their correspondence but directly that was disposed of they had full reign till four o’clock when they regularly entertained for tea. There was no topic too trivial to be disagreed upon. On Wednesday last they’d had a blazing row about whether a pink rose in an arrangement of lilies and white roses coloured the whole visual spectacle with a heavy fore-shadowing of the blood of Christ spilled on the cross. A servant was called to rule on the matter and when they “could not really say madam” both women, short and otherwise, had... (read more)

This short article explains how to survive a power cut when working in a busy farm shop. Written for the Plaw Hatch Farm e-news. Lights Out. The answer to the question of what would happen if Plaw Hatch shop was to suffer from a power cut was kindly answered in the timely manner of just such a thing occurring on Saturday the 19th of November just shy of nine o’clock in the morning, not an hour after the shops opening. The first thing that struck me was the profound silence that pressed blissfully against my ears at the sudden axing of the usual whirr and clatter of the fridges, the kind of silence one only really expects to hear when it’s snowing. For customers it was the darkness that lead them to question whether or not we were actually open. Well, at first I assumed it was the dairy tripping the power, which it is occasionally want to do, but that was not the case at all and, standing in the dairy passage, the same sense of quiet prevailed. So, it appeared that a slightly trickier situation had plumped itself in front of us and we might actually be dealing... (read more)

A short piece written for the Plaw hatch Farm e-news. It describes what autumn is like on the farm. Autumn Splendour The supermarkets and shopping centres may be trying to convince us it’s nearly Christmas but in the Plaw Hatch shop we’re most definitely in the midst of a burgeoning harvest. No Christmas trees or puddings for us thank you, we have just had our first supply of Plaw Hatch pumpkins from the garden, glistening and golden, to remind us of another festival which is close to hand. It may have been a poor year for many crops, with rain battering raspberries to mulch and scratching out the much needed sun behind heavy swags of colourless clouds, but that hasn’t stopped our shop being turned into a forest of lush green leaves with tall tender spears of celery and leeks and the bold purple hearts of beetroot. We’ve also had a delivery of burgundy potatoes which, upon cutting through their red skins, yield insides of brilliant magenta. And apples! At the moment we have a different variety every week. The Laxton Fortune has been squandered but Lord Lambourne has now taken up residence along with his lovely Evita whom everyone... (read more)

An Extract from the opening chapter of my novel. A novelist goes home to look after her ailing mother and is forced to confront questions of mortality and her understanding of what is real and what is imaginary. Luck According to Katerina Clarke 1. A beech leaf committed suicide today outside my window. Detached itself from its mother’s apron strings and surrendered itself to the prevailing wind. Its mother did not mourn its passing. But then it wasn’t a violent death. It must have been a mass pact because there were hundreds of beech leaf bodies blown across the garden path, glowing gold and the muted muddied red of absent life. Leaves. Alive no longer. Their yellow spirits fled with the last lingering note of summer, leaving their skeletons to turn brittle. But my little beech leaf, littering the ground amongst the rest, is now enshrined between the pages of the complete works of Shakespeare and what with its being nestled between the words of the immortal bard and the martyr status it has achieved through its sacrificial death and my hurried tumble down the stairs in bedroom slippers that it might be preserved, I see no reason why its... (read more)