Ghosts

This morning started with a ghost.

A spectral flickering, caught beneath pooling reflections of the kitchen lights in the window above my desk. Outside, a blue morning crept across the sky, nothing more than a stealthy exchange, a swapping of shades of blue.

The ghost in question caught me off guard.

A breath-stealer, throat-squeezer, spine-shiver of a presence beyond. A hint at something otherworldly, whose figure pulled me out from the pages of my email inbox; overgrown like an abandoned garden. I had finally felt up to dealing with the weeds, but they would have to wait for a moment longer, whilst the spectre quartered back and forth. Although, I could no longer see it, I knew it was still there. Lingering in the lightening of the morning. Caught in the moment between darkness and dawn.

I have felt like a ghost recently. Of all the things I’ve been before, and all the things I could be. Half a self; scratching at the floorboards and tapping at the windowpane. Sounds a tad dramatic doesn’t it, but then find me a haunting that isn’t.

Since October last year, when a chest infection settled itself in my airways and wormed its way through my body, I have felt like I’ve barely been here. Tired. Worn out. Unable to focus on words on the page, actually, there haven’t been any words to focus on because putting words on a page has been too much of a task. There were moments I tried to convince myself I was mended, I walked, carried on working, but come the week before Christmas I burnt out completely and retreated inwards. No more work, no more walking. I disappeared, for a moment, into winter in the name of healing.

But I am no longer a ghost.

And neither is the thing I saw through the window this morning.

The thing trapped beyond the glass, sparking in my peripheral, was not a spectre or a phantom, or an otherworldly apparition. Despite its stark white appearance and its ability to be there one minute and vanish the next, this creature was entirely real and entirely present. Confirmed, in the way it floated over the sparsely leaved beech hedge and flew directly towards me as I peered out from the dimly lit room.

It's eyes, elderberry black, set deep in the disc of its face were focused, not on me, but on its next movements. As it past the window, whipped up on a stirring breeze, I could make out the small round shape of a field vole hung limply from its beak: a body bound for sustenance, an apparition left to haunt the hedgerows.

The barn owl was making the most of the half-light. Stocking up on small mammals in the spaces between the squalls that, over the past few days, have raged through the fields like scowling toddlers. I only caught her by chance. A flicker of a passing shadow, gentle as a guttering candle flame. Patience did the rest.

Both of us ghosts for the briefest of breathes, before returning back to the living.

Bath Spa MA Writing Award 2021

Writing is so often over-wrought with worry. Words are woven with the threads of anxieties trailing through them: deadlines, briefs, wordcounts, is it dreamed or dreamt, was that colon the right choice? Behind each sentence, each carefully chosen adjective and metaphor is a writer asking is that right, is it good enough? Am I good enough? Inescapable quandaries that follow us each time we sit down to corral ideas into articles, blogs, books, and screenplays. And there are other worries as well. More practical ones that hover around finding the time to write, getting commissions, getting work out into the world.

Last year, as well as the worries mentioned above, my main concern came in the form of my laptop. It was temperamental to say the least. Choosing to freeze in the middle of an essay, deciding to only charge in certain positions (usually not conducive for writing), it had a habit of crashing at random and refusing to save whatever I had been working on at the time. My hopes to write regular blogs, articles, and begin research for my own book idea became like a buffering screen; unclear, uncertain, and frustrating.

I was not in a position to be able to go out and buy a new one, instead my little laptop was coerced into working through offerings of duct tape and tears. As a freelancer that piece of silver machinery was my office; as a low-residency student it was my only access to education; as a writer, it was my biggest worry.

After the first year on the Nature and Travel Writing MA at Bath Spa University, something had clicked with my writing. I knew that this is what I wanted to do full time, spending my days surrounded by words and using my own to create connections with other people. I also discovered that I am at my happiest when I am learning, which made me worry about the state of my laptop even more.

I had applied for the Bath Spa MA Writing Award, generously sponsored by Jack and Audrey Ladeveze with no expectations, so when the email came in late November to say I had been successful in my application, I was shocked to say the least. Here was an opportunity to move forward with one less worry. The academic year ahead suddenly became less daunting, my own personal projects were refreshed and now accessible.

With a new laptop in my life, one that runs smoothly and doesn’t require begging, pleading or duct tape to do its job, I can spend my days immersed in words. In my application for the award, I explained I had wanted to create connections with my work, not in a business-sense, but in a real human sense, which I hope to achieve in the following ways:

·       Honing my existing writing skills, whilst developing new ones on the Nature and Travel Writing MA, as well as expanding on my understanding of the nature writing genre.

·       Restarting my Seeking Wild Sights blog with regular posts in the hope that readers will be inspired to find their own ways to connect with the wild world.

·       Starting to research and develop my idea for a book – a memoir that explores how it feels to be unsettled in a settled home.

These things, of course, require more than just a laptop. There is time and commitment to be considered, but the release of one pressure has made a dramatic difference to me and I am so thankful to have been the recipient of the 2021 Bath Spa MA writing award. I am not just grateful for the ability to buy a new laptop, but that people believed enough in my work and words. That is armour against anxiety.

As a writer I will always be followed by worries, whether it is writing a tweet, a 3000-word essay, an application or a blog post. And I hope they do stay, I hope I always worry about my choice of words, about the way my syntax sounds, or whether that metaphor fits. I am only glad I don’t have to worry about whether or not I’ve got enough duct tape and tears to meet the demands of the technology gods.