His is blue. Mine is pink. Natch. His loiters in his trousers, silently brooding. Ready for action whenever the moment might present — at which point, activity is energetic and generally sweaty. Whereas mine hums quietly away — no rush, after all — clipped to a bra strap or tucked into a waistband. For we…
Category: Grumpy Corner
They think it’s all over…
It WAS over, apparently, Covid. Trampled under the weight of the Russian war machine, as if each new threat to human existence neatly and conveniently cancels out the one before. As if we can’t possibly have compassion for a country being systematically reduced to rubble, its people zapped into oblivion like so many video avatars,…
Stage fright and the yoga teacher? Surely not?
It’s been two years since I took my first trembling steps towards teaching yoga (initially the ‘restorative’ variety), eight months since I qualified as a yin teacher, four months since that hard-earned 200-hour certificate landed in the inbox and eight or nine weeks since I started teaching actual people rather than their mic-muted rectangles, and…
Ah yes, I remember it well…
It’s been two years since we last holidayed in Vass, a place that has been our spiritual summer ‘home from home’ on the island of Levkas for some eight years now. Nestling in a very windy corner of the Ionian sea to the west of the Greek mainland, it’s a haven for windsurfers and sailors…
Buttering toast and learning to fly: Yoga Teacher Training in the time of Covid
Yoga teacher training in the time of Covid. Two hundred hours — stretched over eighteen tortuous months — of sometimes not quite knowing what I was still doing there, why I was hanging on in when family, friends, my own yoga teachers, trusted therapists and usually-reliable guts were telling me to walk away. Two hundred…
Introducing the lesser known Flamingo (yoga pose extraordinaire)
So what do YOU do every night before climbing into bed? And bear in mind this is a family show. Me, I stand on one leg at the end of the bed, the other knee bent up at right angles, shin and foot dangling, hands crossed shoulder to shoulder, and I close my eyes and…
Getting my head round Hatha
‘Slowly swallow a wet cloth which is four fingers wide and fifteen hands long in the manner instructed by one’s guru’, then ‘draw it out again’. Thus writes Brain Dana Akers in his English translation of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. (Chapter two, Verse 24, if you really don’t want to take my word for it.)…
Packing it in for another stay in Vassiliki
Did you pack your capsule holiday wardrobe this year? You know the one: classic white tee, perfect day-to-night dress, floaty boho blouse, flattering swimsuit (whatever that is) and insouciantly-drapable wear-everywhere scarf… No, me neither. For hard-won experience tells me that classic white tees tend not to stay thus over the course of a two-week trip…
When you gotta go… you gotta go
Three small bottles of water (two of them half empty and very well-travelled, far beyond any sensible drink-by date), one pair of nail scissors, the previous Saturday’s Times Review (with me in case I had a moment spare in my day to complete the crossword), one large hankie, one window cleaning cloth. And a jacket…
Scattering ashes, falling in Filey and finding little comfort in Doctor Alexa
The family would probably tell you I’ve always been ‘a bit accident-prone’. Ski injuries mostly, on and off the snow. Any number of bruises on account of entirely unscheduled cartwheels across the piste. The ripped tendon in a right-hand finger thanks to a collision with a speeding Frenchman. A brace of stitches on one wrist…
Mapping out our exit with mint tea and purple ink
You know what’s starting to bug me most about this whole Brexit thing? It’s being lectured on social media about what life was like in the 1970s, by people who clearly weren’t there. Being told how good we all had it, how the ‘old folk’ are selfishly depriving young people of their futures. That all…
Canadian adventure: chalky snow and warming huts
Long haul economy. Gotta love it. For the last few years now, no longer prepared to knowingly contort myself into a pretzel for even a two-hour flight, I either book extra leg room myself or harangue the Gremlin till he does it for me (the rule of thumb being: he/she who books the trip also…
Hackette on the How 