Pears, Poetry & Pond Swimming - a private diary

 

A while back, I made poached peers in red wine. I found the recipe on BBC food. I chose it because it was the simplest one, contained the fewest ingredients. And I liked the fact that you boiled the shit out of six naked pears in a whole bottle of red wine! I bought an organic merlot for this purpose because the label was pretty and it was on special for a cool fourteen 99. I also bought cinnamon sticks, which made me think of Michael Ondaatje’s highly-scented love poem “The Cinnamon Peeler’s Wife”. Michael O is a Sri Lankan born Canadian.

 

I really want to go to Sri Lanka one day. It would be a research eat-pray-love trip. I want to set a book in the tropics. Perhaps on a jungle high tea plantation then on the surf-edged pearl-sand south coast. I imagined the air to smell of cinnamon or cloves or wet black pepper – some sort of moist spice. And the trees would be enormous, cream barked with large, shiny leaves and burgeoning boughs heavy with monkeys, no doubt, boa constrictors too. What is the biological name of monkeys … primates … simians … cousins … something. I like this as a technique – dropping in biological connections into prose just for a swerve. Snakes Serpentes, Cow bovine, cat feline, horse equine. Make me look cleverer. It’s so easy to jump on the internet and look stuff up. Where was I? Oh yes, the poached pears. Those lil mofos took so much boiling. At least one hour, when the recipe stated 20-30 minutes. But I wanted them tender to the bite, no crunch in the middle. On and on my cauldron bubbled. When I finally decided enough was enough I took them out. I still had to turn up the heat for the next step - reducing the syrup into a sticky mess to pour over the awaiting plated pears. Well, that was not going to happen in a flash either. My Nana, who was a terrible cook, would have added cornflour. She did this once to scrambled eggs. My grandpa didn’t complain. The pears did look resplendent, in their burgundy glory at 9.45pm. Coronation worthy – regal purple orbs. Weirdly these pears started off red. They’re red-skinned pears. The Queen of Pears. You wouldn’t say King.

 

~~

 

The next day, after my Zoom poetry workshop, I tried to meditate but failed. #CowboyTheKitty was snuggled with me on the bed. I watched him like a newborn and I fell further in love. I decided while I lay there watching mindless yet enjoyable IG reels to go to Lake Hayes for a walk at three. I’d try and get all metaphorical in the late autumn sun walking along the lake track as it rises into scrub and this random, high-fenced deer farm. Only when I got there the sun was on the wrong side of the lake. Never ask me to read a map. I hummed and haa’d and decided I wanted an incline so I set off into the shade anyhoo. I was passed by old farts on e-bikes barely peddling. I told them telepathically that if they want to get their steps up, they should brisk walk. I saw nothing of note except a small dog turd full of corn kernels on a rock, actually it was three terrier-sized turds on a rock, which was schist.

 

Soon I turned round and walked back towards the sun, when I passed my favourite dipping spot of the summer I decided I’d do it. Dunk in the lake. 1st May on the morrow, but hey. I collected my towel and old dressing gown from the car and doubled back. A dude with a number two and an overly pomaded hipster beard was sitting at my picnic table talking loudly on the phone on speaker about an intense domestic dispute he was having with his partner. I moved further down. The surface of the lake rippled. Two black swans, vine necked red beaked, fished metres from shore. I slipped out of my walking clothes. I’d put my bikini pants on just in case. My black sports top would do. I walked in up to my waist then submerged to my neck. A year back I would have screamed or at least panted but I have conditioned myself to the sudden chill of freshwater alpine ponds. I swam a few strokes then tried to stand. I couldn’t touch the bottom. There is always the slight fear I might pass out and drown. I turned to shore. Breast-stroked. My ovaries were ahead of me in outer Mongolia. Other parts had already reached the capital - Ulan Bator (the coldest capital in the world FYI.) However, a certain warmth envelopes a chilled wet body returning to air. An atmospheric crush. Like warm custard on prickled kiwis. Don’t ever serve me quince.

 

I’d tried to do some homework on my walk earlier. Get more imaginative with imagery.

 

The stream - an oasis of moisture for thirsty eels

Seed head on weed - seed dispenser of a future spring

Autumn poplar tree - Tall lady with a packet blonde dye job

Tall tree - Lighthouse beacon for birds of prey

Dog shit - Even a man’s best friend poos. Or. No mammal digests corn. Or for god sake don’t step in it.

 

Alas, I’m still at kindergarten but you never know what you’ll see - if you open your eyes. 

Cleopatra Married Her Brother When He Was Ten

Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra in the 1963 Hollywood budget blowout 'Cleopatra'

Cleopatra Married Her Brother When He Was Ten

 

Central Otago was having the hottest summer in five hundred moons

Its women folk melted into pools of perspiration every afternoon around three

As they lay on their beds panting

dreaming of ceiling fans on high and

Shirtless Jason Mamoas in MC Hammer pants fanning them with

Long-handled ostrich feather fans

Smiling adoringly

while their spa baths of chilled asses’ milk drew

into lactic acid boosting age spot reducing perfection

Cleopatra kept a herd of 700 donkeys to maintain her daily fixation

Did you know

She was also barely five feet tall 

Did you know

The lovechild of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar was named

Caesarion – a son

Alas on rising an evening dip in a lake with ducks and swans was the only option

slimy with various manures the water if perfectly chilled did

nothing to plump fine lines and wrinkles

and rewind the ravages of time on local femme 

 

The heady heat that followed day into night would not leave

The drought ridden land until autumn

It was the endless summer that drove her to it

One hot lady took fate in her sweaty palms

put on a sundress and a wide smile of Charlotte Tilbury Electric Poppy Hot Lips and drove to Queenstown Central – please note there is no 

Queenstown in Queenstown Central - it’s in Frankton

There are a lot of bargain bin barn-sized stores with small electrics departments 

Investing in a supercharged 1000 dollar Dyson Air Cooler was a stretch too far

The hot hottie spent $69.99 on a Goldair Desk Circulator with Blue Tooth to

efficiently blow warm air at herself on high

Why Blue Tooth she asks the very attendant attendant

You can take it outside

Wait a hot picnic – that’s an idea

Lady and her Mac desktop al fresco trying to 

Write the novel she’s been trying to write

Well, resurrect for a long since hot forever

 

They’re at the counter now going through the motions

Credit card, Fly Buys, mobile number

Everyone knows the drill only now

There’s a new one

“Do you have a gold card?”

Poor lady swoons her lipstick matts she may as well be

in the desert astride her bad-tempered camel named Nobby at noon

A blush prickles from the tips of her toes to her scalp freezing her brain

I’m 58 says a limp voice

Mr Attendant attendant keeps going

He goes on and on acting the fool and the goat

he has no idea what the required age is for national super

The lady fidgets and looks around for one of those stands with

How was your experience today

she would have smashed that sad-face

Slapped it so hard with her new slides from La Tribe

Now the guy beside her is staring

Is the joke on her – was she missing something – a store loyalty

What is your gold card? she asks Mr A A

We offer a discount to our senior citizens he smiles with full teeth

Where are all the good one-liners when you need them

At the bottom of an alpine lake turning into a future proofing gut enhancing algae

I’m not that old someone says feebly you need to be 65 for a gold card I need seven years

She also needed her receipt

 

The next day the temperature drops to a cool 16 degrees

Allowing pause for a moment from Googling why ass not cow for bathing

And fun facts about Cleopatra and her baby daddy Mark Antony

They had a secret drinking club à deux – The Inimitable Livers

But the summer continued hot and she ran that fan on high

Sometimes she took to her bed of an afternoon sat it beside her and dreamed

But she never took it outside

Jane Bloomfield

from Collection 2023

Tropical Islands Await - To Travel or Not To Travel?

The dazed author poolside at Pondok Santi, Gili T, day 1

Heading off solo to Bali trailing a pandemic and post an earlier failed family trip to the tropical isles, did seem slightly nutz in several middle of the night awake periods. After having been on our way to the airport in a green taxi when positive PCR tests times four landed I was already scarred with the failed traveller brush. But some of the redic Indonesian pre-departure tests and insurance requirements had been eased so I thought I’d give it a bash. My gf in her Kuta Lombok villa kept WhatsApping with pictures of frangipani edged back yard pools, tanned ankles and colourful dugouts in sweeping turquoise ocean bays. She was having surf lessons, reflexology massages, drinking coconut water fresh out of its chilled nut. Living the life. While I was licking my homebody wounds and enjoying a bout of three weeks post-Covid flu!

I bit the bullet and re-booked, and when I wasn’t worrying about all the things that might go wrong, my flight out of Queenstown being cancelled for instance, and do I have to fill in an Australian traveller declaration if I'm transit-ing? Or is my Peduli Lindungi App loaded correctly? I thought about important, fun, pre going on holiday things – when is the best time to fake tan? Can I wax before I fake tan? Will Yumi-lashes last in tepid sea water? Where are my rubber Berkies? And isn’t it about damn time I bust out my OTT, heavily be-jewelled, silk, leopard-safari-patterned Camilla kaftan (bought from an online recycle store by middle daughter for the pool party launch of my third Lily Max book – Sun! Surf! Action! Back in the summer of 2017.)

My doesn’t time fly. 

I was flying out of Queenstown on a Thursday so naturally, I started packing on Sunday. While I chose a selection of swimwear hurriedly bought at Quicksilver prior to the original trip I had the occasional moment … What if my bag gets left in Melbourne (where I was to swap planes) I should probs put one swim set, one cotton dress, one pair of undies, a toothbrush etc in my carry on. Just in case. Seb-on-Safari had tweeted that Quant-Ass had lost his baggage and done little to rectify the matter. I was flying Qantas into Bali at 10.30pm, making my way to my hotel, overnighting, being up at 7am to be delivered to Pendang Bai for the Fast Boat to Gili T, an hour and half over the oft turbulent Lombok Strait, then three days later, I’d be over another stretch of water on Lombok, with an 1 hour and 45 minutes’ drive from the ferry to my gf’s villa in Kuta. There would be no way in hell my bag would ever catch me up. The short transit times in Melbourne before my connecting flights to Denpasar were already alarming. One hour only, and in a different terminal wtf. I live in the mountains, it's July. We have weather. I started to feel like the 18 year old I once was heading off on my OE to London town. My mum and stepdad drove up from Waipukurau to see me off. All my friends came to the airport to see me off. Even the ones who my unconfident self did not know where my friends. We drank gin with piped tonic in a circle in the airport bar until it was time for me to get on the plane. I cried all the way to Singapore, thinking what the actual af am I doing leaving the land of milk and honey. Who even am I? The elderly couple next to me wolfed down their dinners with complimentary New Zealand whines but they did not offer me a hanky. Nor pat my hand. I was alone and lonely before I’d even arrived and felt the true meaning of those L-words. 

Meanwhile, I signed up for SmartTraveller Aus and frequently checked the travel alerts for Bali. I already knew proof of negative PCR tests on arrival had been lifted, as had full Covid insurance covering hospitalisation and evacuation. A completed online customs declaration for Bali was now required (this turned out to be a time saver whee!) I was expecting to be temperature checked on arrival. I prayed I wouldn’t have a poorly timed middle-aged hot flush and be sent to a quarantine hotel. Then SmartTraveller told me quarantining had been lifted and self-isolation only was required if positive. Good news! However, women travelling alone were cautioned to be extra cautious, and especially to not take taxis. Alone. So I was a little alarmed when my arrival hotel informed me they had no spare drivers to pick me up at 11pm. The night before my departure I had enough required paperwork/printed documents to wallpaper a large water closet. I had a few hundy USD to cover my cash-only Visa purchase on arrival. I had my passport with years before expiry date, tickets, travel insurance, hotel address, ferry transfer, ferry ticket. Five long, floaty (but quite old) evening dresses. Pretty leather sandals bought last time I was in Bali four years ago, once worn. My one-only bottle of liquor. My … You name it I had it. Everything but the expectation of a person holding a placard with my name on it at Denpasar airport ...

By the following day, my personal pickup was sorted, thanks to my gf. I cannot tell you what a relief it was to find her driver Komang, amongst the masses of male drivers in the sweaty arrival hall. JANE written in faint blue biro on a piece of A4 paper. Hours of no leg room (and I’m 5ft 3), being marooned in a dead end corner of Melbourne airport for half an hour, our only contact to our required terminal a phone-on-the-wall, my Indo Covid App producing a red hazard triangle when scanned, the hour long Visa queue etc all floofed off my memory bank when I was on my way to the Artotel Sanur with a friendly face. 

To anyone thinking of venturing out in the big wide world but too afraid …? If you can, I advise you to get amongst it. The real world does await and once the hoops have been jumped the refresh will do you the world of good.* This was my Eat, Pray without the love journey and once I landed on Gili Trewangan, slightly dazed from the sedative effects of 2 x Sea Legs, I squealed to the second friendly driver holding a placard with my name on it. ‘I’m here!’ And from then on, I was as relaxed as a tortoise and made sure I enjoyed every hot minute of it.

My warm welcome had only just begun ...

'Welcome Drink' Pondok Santi Estate, Gili T

*Just check and double check all travel requirements and complete them before you arrive at the airport. Also, screenshot all the barcodes of all the Apps you fill in, there is never any airport WIFI.

All about Pondok Santi Estate

Let's Talk About SLEEP, Baby! & Calm App

 

In a desperate quest to get more zzz’ds every night, I recently downloaded Calm. App. It’s been a total gamechanger for this ol sleepless pillow princess. So while I’m on a sleep-buzzed high I’ve reviewed my favourite sleep stories for you.

Let’s start with Harry Styles’ - Dream With Me. Hazz stepped up to voice a story after a heavy-fan-flex requested it during our first introduction to Lockdowns, 500 years ago now. DWM is the most listened to story and crashed the site when it was first released.

I can almost guarantee that as soon as you get horizontal, shut your eyes, don your noise-canceling headphones, and flick on ‘Dream With Me’ you’ll be seeing Mr. Styles in a Gucci loin cloth flying about the Sistine chapel playing cupid with a heart-bow-and arrow. I was. But honestly, his voice, with a backing track of wet violins and wetter piano is so oozy it can only be described as sexy-whisper!

I’m proudly a late adopter of most of the tech whizzes of our world. Tik Tok wot? I’ve nary listened to a podcast, nor a talking book but if you haven’t tried listening to a sleep story when you’re all alone and wide awake in the middle of the night; let me convince you in one word why you need it. Harry.

I had to google, “why did harry styles narrate a sleep story”. To grab a quote from the sweet boy of rock and good god almighty up popped 471,000 results in .54 seconds! 

Harry said:

“SLEEP AND MEDITATION ARE A HUGE PART OF MY ROUTINE … FINDING A BALANCE HAS BEEN ENDLESSLY BENEFICIAL TO BOTH MY PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH. IT’S CHANGED MY LIFE! I’M SO HAPPY TO BE COLLABORATING WITH CALM AT A TIME WHEN THE WORLD NEEDS ALL THE HEALING IT CAN GET. TREAT PEOPLE WITH KINDNESS.”

Also, every lusty wench and her apartment-bound cavoodle had already written about him. It. 

The co-CEO of Calm states, “Harry’s mellifluous voice is the perfect tonic to calm a racing mind.” 

While Elle magazine reported, “Turns out Styles' sometimes rhyming, always rhythmic delivery is counterproductive to the REM cycle.” Elle also noted, “Harry is terrible at putting me to sleep”. 

No doubt because every single gal or guy searching for a Tinder date is gonna get quite carried away with Harry’s ‘you’ and ‘me’ narrative. It begins. 

“Hello I’m Harry Styles”

And tonight, I’m going to help you drift off to sleep

With some soothing words and calming music

A sleep story just for you!

With all the business of your day I know how hard it can be to get to sleep

So thank you for choosing this story and ME to help you

I wish you a wonderful night’s sleep

So make yourself comfortable take a deep breath in and then out

In and then out … and when you’re ready close your eyes”

Yeah baby they’re closed! I spent 50 bucks on an annual subscription and here I was instantly under the duvet with Harry Styles! He seems to lick his words at the end of every sentence.

“Tonight, we’re going to think about (sexy pause) anything you’d like. 😜

So first let’s visualize some scenes to see us through the night.

Settle back and clear your mind, where heading somewhere special

Beyond the world of consciousness to places more celestial.”

(watery music interlude)

I’d like you to imagine …”

 

Well, let’s not go there. He does hold your hand. And snuggle with you on a raft. There's even a log cabin with an open fire. I’m not going to let on about the bearskin rug. You will never tire of my #1 Harry but if he’s not your jam …

#2 Cillian Murphy’s gentle Irish brogue will lilt you in an imaginary locomotive across the verdant plains of leprechaun country in the aptly named ‘Crossing Ireland by Train’. Not that this travelogue, circumnavigating the Emerald Isles reads clackety clack. Cillian’s dulcet tones are more of a meditation, a literary lullaby. He points out the landscapes that inspired the enchanted world of Narnia in the C S Lewis classic and quotes Wilde, Beckett and Joyce. This is your thinking women’s bedtime story. A mattress masterclass of sorts through an enchanted green, green land. By the end, you won’t give Peaky Blinders a thought nor see that rude Thomas Shelby haircut again. All hale, Kill-ian. I’ve never been to Ireland. But I feel I want to now. This story can only be described as a polite invitation. 

#3 Matthew McConaughey pants his way like a lanky rhinestone cowboy through ‘Wonder’. To claim this is a “story about the mystery of the universe” is a bit of a push. With all these narrations, it’s all about the voice, not the content. While Matthew gets all hippy trippy about the infinite magnitude of the cose-mose, I find my subconscious drifts happily towards come-a-tose. There is probably a smirk on my face as I imagine Matthew chewing a piece of grass in his Wranglers beside the campfire. He’s just polished his cowboy boots, fed me beans with a spoon, and is reading to me as I lie exhausted after a day rustling wild horses on the range.

“Well, hello there I’m Matthew Mac-Con-nay-hay and tonight I’ll be reading a special sleep story called Wun-derrr. Before we begin, as you settle in under the covers with your head eeeeasing into the pillow and your body eeeeasing into the mattress I’d like you to let your mind drift with me…”

I should point out that it is a rare thing to find yourself awake on the conclusion of these readings. Like the child you once were, you will happily listen to them over and over. And never tire of their repetition.

#4 Idris Elba reads ‘Kingdom of the Sky’ a ‘trek across the mountains of Lesotho.’ If you know nothing about this “tiny jewell of a country, nestled in the breathtaking mountains of southern Africa” you might learn a few facts. However, alas, you will also find yourself seeing Idris (Idd-riss) as a middle school geography teacher, not the next James Bond. This is a wholesome Sunday night story of the geographical kind, for all ages.

If you’re not single or middle-aged, or for some strange reason you don’t feel comfortable nestling into your feather topper and deep breathing with a male movie star, there are alternatives.

I have enjoyed ‘Dr Doolittle’ with Stephen Lyons. Stephen’s lively yet calming voice is bound to make you feel like a contented child being read to by a loving grandparent while under a lavender-scented eiderdown.

Former Great British Bake Off judge, Dame Mary Berry reads ‘A Very Proper Tea Party’. This very proper story makes Jane Austen read like a bodice ripper. I’m still alarmed that the host made herself a pot of Darjeeling and enjoyed a cup in the window seat before her guest arrived. WTH? 

‘Sienna the Sleep Sloth’ with David Walliams just gave me creepy Little Britain vibes. For some reason, DW’s voice (which is either on fast-forward x 2, or he’s on diet pills) made me envisage a grown man with five o’clock shadow and a dad-bod snug within a wife beater and nappies. IKR! I shut him down pdq. I have no idea what the sloth got up to.

The library is varied and endless. In conclusion, Calm App is a great way to clear your mind and get more health-giving sleep. I’m a convert. Chucking on my headphones at 3am and listening to “Softly Back To Sleep” is a whole lot better than lying wide awake catastrophizing about my current worries. Even a soundscape like “Bamboo Forest” or “Silk Waves” can do the trick.

Lastly, in the hope of improving focus on my book writing projects, I’m eleven days in to ‘How To Meditate in 30 Days’ with Jeff. Jeff promises that once you master the art of meditation your concentration will be next-level! I’m so glad I found Jeff. My concentration is shot. But I’m learning how to shut out the voices in my head. Be present. Yeeha!

Jane x

ps. I’m not sponsored by Calm App lol. If you fill out a survey on their site you’ll receive a discount voucher within days. Or sign up for a free 7-day trial.

Do leave a comment if you have success, insomniacs.

Sweet future dreams! Nightie night!

How TO Live Now - not really a guidebook

I have no idea what it is either

I’m going to go out on a limb here, a long slippery bamboo pole, and say that life all of a sudden feels like it needs a guidebook. Something simply titled:

“How TO Live Now”

Because one day we're all g, the next we're in some form of lockdown thinking everyone we pass on the street is exhaling Delta-positive vapours. And fucken hell, is white vinegar in a spritz bottle suitable as a hand sanitizer? And is there a way I can manufacture toilet paper out of dock leaves in a flower press because someone with a really big bum has overnight spurned a Purex pandemic at Pak n Save and they’ve no rolls left? None.

Our fragile minds, which could be focussed on important things like what to eat for lunch and how to become a mega-rich Influencer overnight, have become Covid-News-dependent. Uncle Ash has lost his bloom. He’s looking tired on it. He needs a new suit. While Chris is hip and steady at the helm. I like Chris. But sorry travellers the Trans-Tasman bubble was a helium balloon waiting for a drunk kid at 21^st to suck the gas clean out of it. We locked down Auckland city twice when there was a community transmission. I know, I was there, enjoying the home-time immensely at the Michael King Writers Centre. I felt so full of potential back then. I do worry for Mr NSW Deltaman though. Did he have to go undercover, head for the Blue Mountains, get pandemic-spreader-police-protection? He did singlehandedly shut down a city. That could weigh heavy on a bloke. That sort of culpability would eat me up like … like a virus.

I heard of a wonder-woman named Catherine who prepared the entire pudding section of the Edmonds cookbook for her family. She then rated those 24 duffs in all their boarding school rice pudding nightmare-inducing runny custard glory. It’s quite the most brilliant pudding parody you will ever read. It gave me flashbacks of my dear sweet gran packing crustless, cream cheese and crystalised ginger sandwiches in my lunchbox. Back when I tried to complete a 7^th form at Havelock North High but failed. I spent most of my time wagging class, zooming through HN on my 10-speed to smoke cigarettes and bag apples with my friend Julie at her fruit stall. We were both recently freed from four years at Nga Tawa, and filling time until we became old enough for our chosen tertiary pursuits. Both of us doing grown up things we weren’t old enough to be doing. Anxiously waiting to age. Just like we’re all anxiously waiting for Covid to mutate and eat itself.

I was at a come-as-your-favourite-movie-character party on Saturday night. I went as Estella-Cruella. My costume was a bit last minute. I could have been any old silver-haired dame. I really needed to blacken half my hair. There were about 500 Audrey Hepburn – Breakfast At Tiffany(s) in the room. One thirty-year-old Audrey really stood out. She was beautiful! Coolly sophisticated, understated. Dressed in a demure black vintage dress, a provocative slash of ivory skin exposed over delicate collar bones. The string of pearls. Her soft brown hair up in a chignon. A beaded headpiece in delicate silver filigree.

An Audrey in rabbit fur and middle-years rocked over, she was looking for a joint to suck through her long, plastic cigarette holder. The end looked chewed. Her pearls held firm. We couldn’t help her. Young Audrey had men, not marijuana on her mind. She wanted to play “Would – Shouldn’t”. A game I’d not played before; where you pick a movie star you’d go all the way with but really shouldn’t. It took me a while to catch on. I had so many “Woulds”! 

Help me out here, I asked. Who’s yours?

Kevin Spacey, she replied. You know in “American Beauty” … if I’d been a cheerleader, I totally would have.

That’s crazy. We watched that movie last night, I said, guiltily.

Your turn, Audrey insisted. Who’s yours?

I was still struggling because my ‘Shouldn’ts’ were really ‘Wouldn’ts’. Then I thought, who’s a bad boy then? Okay, I’ve got one. Nicolas Cage/Leaving Las Vegas.

A ‘Sandra Bullock’ in a fringed black wig joined in. She was hopeless, she only had ‘Woulds’. Her partner came over. Who are you? Audrey asked. He wore a plaid shirt. He casually pulled a stalk of dried grass from his pocket, placed it in the corner of his mouth and chewed it a bit.

Audrey and I looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders. Plaid shirt guy put us out of our misery. Mathew McConaughey, he beamed.

Would! I said, as I snuck out. You know. The real deal.

Britney Spears. The H piped up on the way home. His voice was a little high.

What? I asked.

Britney’s my Would/Shouldn’t.

I was shocked, conflicted. She’s hot.

However, it made me feel less guilty about my plan. I’ve got noise-cancelling headphones on order. My current insomnia is next level. Not because I’m worried about dying of Covid. Or never travelling internationally again. Or my unfinished book (lying.) Mostly, I just wake up at the slightest sound and cannot get back to sleep for two-hour lags. It must stop. I’m getting Calm App. I’m going to lie beside my intermittently, snoring man while listening to the dulcet tones of others. I’ve already taken the Calm App survey to customise my listening pleasure. Matthew. Idris. Harry. Cillian. I’m coming for ya. Pumped. And wide awake. Feel free to join me on this journey if you need some middle-of-the-night mindfulness. The first seven days are free! And hey, we're not exactly going anywhere else.

But we can travel across Ireland!

If sleepy time tours don’t work, I’ll be up baking my way through the cakes in The Australian Women’s Weekly Cookbook.

Stay well, y’all. Xo