Sage and Siren: Wayback When

Tomorrow I'm speaking at an event. Chris spoke for the same group a few weeks ago and they thought it would be interesting to hear from the Blind Woodturner's Wife. I'll be taking the audience on a whistle stop tour through my life. 

I started looking through my Digital Garden. A repository of notes, journal entries and different references that I've been collating for several years, it was a great starting point reminding me of moments that I might otherwise have forgotten. (A story for another day: I've been paring back on tools, apps and websites. I migrated all of my Digital Garden to a tool called Second.Me, which has been connecting the dots for me in the background. A daily tool is my living journal, Lightpage, which I'm using to create a timeline for my talk). I've been diving into Wayback Machine to find old blog posts and rediscovered a younger me with a quirky, irreverent writing style, and some snippets of information that add more texture to my talk.

I sorted through boxes of papers I'd kept. I found letters from Patch Adams, the ribbon that Oliver Tobias wore in The Pirates of Penzance, a write up of my first meeting with Bill Murray in Paris. It's going to be very much show and tell. I dug out my boxing gloves, signed by Chris Eubank, and the photos from the first time I met him.

Life is swings and roundabouts. Back in my 30s and 40s there was always an adventure or other to be had. A memory to create, events to photograph (Tony Benn, Bianca Jagger, George Galloway at the big anti-war march in Manchester when I ran through town, unhindered, with the press, and Lee Rigby's funeral when, somehow, surrounded by police and secret service, I remained unchallenged). I was always busy, with some scheme or other in play. I lived happily alone but occasionally I was lonely. Now married, life is different and often quite full on. Searching through my personal archive, I've felt a renewed yen to carve out more adventures for myself and to remember something of the young woman I used to be.

Being a part time farm hand is one of my biggest adventures. Today, I've been assisting with TB testing, and last weekend went, with Phil the Farmer, to collect his new herd of Lincoln Reds. I'm enamoured with them all but completely in love with Zippy, the 5 year old bull, who is incredible. Weighing in at around one tonne, his head is huge. He loves being groomed so each morning I've been giving him a back rub and spending time with him. I'm a big believer in nurturing the animals, giving the ones who want them, cuddles, because it pays dividends when you need to move or handle them. My theory was backed up when I came across Temple Grandin and her work around humane livestock handling. There's a film about her too.

I'm now in fewer places online but if you want to see what I'm up to or what I'm writing, this is the best starting point.