"I simply fell in love with studio living when I was in New York, so convenient! No, there's not an awful lot of room between the sink and the pillow, but I think you'll find that if both of you face each other and sort of shuffle in opposite directions, you'll manoeuvre nicely around the space."
In 2900BCE, an old people were here. They cut the rock from its bed, they shaped it, they transported it, they placed it in careful alignment to whatever dream or compulsion drove them to carry out this work.
Will book one ever be published? That may be a question that never gets answered but why stop creating and living in something I love? Maybe ask me again when I am a complete recluse with a towering pile of copies of the Mabinogion threatening to crush me...
Flash fiction makes you ditch the socks, refold the clothes, be sparing with the accessories. It makes you focus on the essentials, pare down to the basics, select only the most important.
Given that I have been rude enough to see the 'OPEN' sign and the door left ajar as reason to walk in and interrupt her quiet inventory time, the very least I could do would be to damn well buy enough to make it worth her while.
"You've moved everything around!" This will be today's cri de coeur from everyone who walks through the door (who's been here before, obviously) as I have boldly, nay, recklessly, indeed moved everything around.
And Inspector Alleyn and Hamnet and William Morris and John Donne and Olive Kitteridge and Deborah Levy and Lucy Mangan and...and...hopefully, you've realised this will be a post about what I've read this wild and woolly March. If, however, you are labouring under the
...the fort opens out in front of you, this wide grassland expanse on the top of the hill and this lovely weathered lump of oolitic limestone (satisfying to hold and say) really can't be mistaken for anything other than the creature it's named for.
We go left. This is the path I walked so many times, so long ago, with my dog, his tail a plumed marker. Each step is familiar, each tree and hedge. I can anticipate where the path will dip, fall away, regain itself.
Welcome to the first of my dispatches from behind the scenes at the museum. Any museum, frankly. One of those universal truths is just how many biscuits volunteers can get through in a week.
What I am doing. For some time, certain friends have suggested I write a Substack. "Do it! You love writing! People will pay you!" they'd shout in varying stages of inebriation. And for ages, I, in my own varying stages of inebriation, have declined. Resisted. Rolled
This is Old Stones, a brand new site by me, Tonia, that's just getting started. Things will be up and running here shortly, but you can subscribe in the meantime if you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is published.