Message in a Bottle

training mind and body as I orient myself towards a new decade

TS Maybe as we set off out of Dun Laoghaire, passing Lambay Island

Hello friends,

I ended my last newsletter, as I was about to head off on a trip as volunteer mentor with Sail Training Ireland on the TS Maybe, promising a message in a bottle. You might have noticed that it’s taken a while, these kind of messages bob and float with the tide and their arrival time on the shore cannot be accurately predicted. Yet, miraculously they arrive and this one is, if I can mix all my metaphors, somewhat of a bricolage!

As I write this afternoon I hear the first drops of rain in many weeks start to fall. The vegetable beds in our back garden are parched, the soil like dust, the potatoes mostly the size of marbles. Even though the fires on Sliabh na mBan are in the main extinguished I still see occasional plumes of smoke rising. Not far away from me there are also fires on the Comeragh Mountains in County Waterford and farther away again in Spain and France, indeed across every continent. It takes a long time for such fires to fully quench and much longer for the damaged environment and affected populations to recover. There is much work to be done.

Message in a Bottle #1 - a PSA esp for women

Can you bring to mind the tune of Baz Luhrman’s ‘Wear Sunscreen’ monologue, remember that? Let me add two more to BL’s imperative on sunscreen, you all know the importance of that by now. The items below are especially for my women readers, in particular those aged 50, 60, 70+.

1) Lift weights: the benefits are many and major for overall health. I teach and practice The Happy Body, developed by Jerzy and Aniela Gregorek, informed by their expertise in Olympic weightlifting and by Stoic philosophy. I can say with confidence that it continues to make a real difference to my physical well-being. I love it. In January 2025 I began the Elite Happy Body training, with Jerzy as coach, to learn the Olympic Snatch. I can attest to the miracle of how our bodies adapt and improve with the appropriate stimulus¹. The approach is what I term a ‘patient practice’ and what the Gregoreks name, ‘micro-progression’. I love, love that I can do the work to increase in strength, speed and flexibility as I age, and do it in my own home. It goes against all the common assumptions about ageing, the narrative of inevitable decline, inevitable frailty. If you are curious to know more I can talk to you or a group about what The Happy Body does, what it involves. I work with clients in Ireland and around the world on Zoom. You are welcome to contact me directly.

2) Women friends, investigate the benefits of vaginal oestrogen, talk to your medical practitioner and make your decision. This, like #1 above, is a game-changer for women and too few are aware of it. The pessary, Vagifem, is probably the simplest application and is what I use. I strongly suggest you go and do your research and follow through if you decide the benefits are for you.

Message in a Bottle #2 - ‘Shakespeare Surprises’

Over the weekend of August 14th to 16th there is a very special programme taking place in Carrick-on-Suir, “The Bard in the Quarter”. This is a wonderfully re-imagined delivery of excerpts from Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies over three days. I am delivering a session on “Shakespeare Surprises” at the Ormond Castle, with the blurb, ‘We invite you to enter a world of trickery, venal self-serving rulers, jealousy, war, complicated family dynamics and more. Sound familiar?’ (Note, my session is already fully booked.)

This is all the brainchild of Linda Fahy of the Tudor Artisan Hub arts collective. Since the project was first rolled out some weeks ago there have already been many surprises. There is the evident enthusiasm and energy of those taking part, actors and directors from the town’s amateur drama group, Brewery Lane Theatre, and the Carrick-on-Suir Musical Society, and that enthusiasm and energy is contagious. They might be having fun but the time commitment from everyone involved is serious. From what I’ve seen at rehearsals audiences are going to love it. The performances will take place over three venues, the Strand Theatre (comedy excerpts performed at Christy’s Bar), Brewery Lane Theatre (tragedy excerpts) and the Ormond Castle (excerpts from A Midsummer Night’s Dream plus other activities and installations). See the full programme plus booking details here and here.

Director Enda O’Driscoll rehearsing with The Midsummer Night’s Dream ‘fairies’ in the stunning Tudor setting of the Ormond Castle.

Message in a Bottle #3 - Astonishment

In March 2023 I had some fainting spells, not out of the ordinary for me and when they happened I attributed the episodes to a blood pressure drop. They were also, thankfully, not a frequent occurrence. But this time it was different and my husband, against my protestations, called an ambulance. To make a long story short I very soon found myself with the ultimate tech ‘wearable’, a heart pacemaker. When a friend asked me some weeks later how I was feeling the first word out of my mouth was, ‘astonished’. As I write this on the last day of my sixth decade, how do I feel about turning 70 tomorrow?² Astonished! How did I land here? I’m by turns bemused and amused. And, as my mother died at the age of 49 from ovarian cancer, I’m very aware of the privilege.

Message in a Bottle #4 - Small beauties, messages to myself

I have been looking back over a few of my own completed copies of my 90-day journal Weather Report and it is still teaching me. There is something mysterious about developing a book that physically exists between covers, and still more being revealed about what it is that you have done. As some of you know this arose out of a very special Covid project, where we used the creative arts as a healing bridge for those bereaved in our community during the pandemic. See my post Grief and Grace for more background. One of the three daily invitations in Weather Report is to ‘write or draw one thing I found beautiful today’. Below is a random selection from some of my own completed copies:

• the lemonade yellow of the sun to the east at 6.45am, something about the juxtaposition of the street lights over the wall too that caught my imagination.

• two swans gliding on the river as I walked across the Old Bridge, the river high and calm. Not full tide but high.

• a crow, black against white, persisting in flying / gliding as the snow fell

• ribbons of peach cloud across the sky to the west as we had breakfast this morning

• the bright rust of the leaves on a distant tree below me, lit by the afternoon sun

• the sun catching the bell tower on St. Molleran’s Parish Church in the afternoon as I was out for a walk

• the single crow on a wire over the cemetery, not still but pecking at something

• this morning, first thing, I saw gossamer on the hedge at the back wall

These are all noticings that in the moment gave me some frisson of recognition, some jolt of delight. Mostly I leave them as they are, handwritten on the page.³ They have already enriched my life and that is more than enough. Though now and again I might pilfer something from those pages to deepen the specificity of a scene in my writing.

Mary Oliver’s poem, Don’t Hesitate, closes with the line “joy is not meant to be a crumb”. A bit like my Happy Body work, noticing beauty in my day is a practice that I cultivate, I am training my ability to see these small beauties and crucially, to write them down. This is all handwritten work, could not be further from AI. Typing them up here for this post has amplified the pleasure further, reminding me of simple things that are good and beyond measure. I have written before about the work of Marion Milner. In one of her books she writes about recognising contentment, avoiding the inclination to dismiss it as not worth our attention. Instead it can be an opportunity to pause, to re-orient ourselves, to gather our energies instead of scattering them. But also, the noticing does something else, something that is not for ourselves alone. That would be to my mind an impoverished version. Instead deliberately training ourselves to notice beauty makes us want to find ways to make the world better, to push back against the forces of destruction, the extractive patterns that dominate and are normalised in our modern lives. We want to be part of the collective that appreciates and grows a diverse world of beauty, of interrelationships, not be part of its wanton destruction. To identify and take actions in the direction of flourishing, not desolation. Such actions can take many forms, the community Shakespeare project detailed above is one such example.

You would like to re-enchant your life? Simply get and use a copy of Weather Report. If you live in Ireland you can purchase a signed copy directly from my website. It makes for a very special gift, to yourself or another. Overseas orders are also available - just click below.

Message in a Bottle #5 - A Birthday Story

On the day I was five I was going with my dad to the farm across the road to get some milk. Of course I was proudly wearing my new ‘I am 5’ badge, and I am sure feeling that I had grown inches overnight, between being merely four and waking up to now being all of 5!

Before we left the house my dad made me cover the badge, not announce to the world that it was my birthday. I know now that his intention was that any adult I met shouldn’t be pressured into giving me some coins to mark the day. All I remember feeling then is confusion. I had been so proud to be five, now I must not display it, must not flaunt it. I’m not sure what he would make of me now, but it’s even still quite a thing for me to share. Tomorrow, entering a new decade, I will celebrate with family, three generations of us, with all my siblings too. It is wonderful to celebrate, I have so much to be thankful for.

1. Watch this wonderful documentary, Prisoner No More, on Jerzy’s transformative work with a young man with Cerebral Palsy.

2. I count myself very lucky that the cardiologist who did the procedure told me as he discharged me to ‘not be afraid to push myself’. Yes sir!

3. The Tokyo Hermit writes very eloquently on this kind of practice - you can read his post on The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, a book I have loved for the past decade.