Tarot reading revelations, served with salt sprinkles of nostalgia.

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‘Oh, these are beautiful,’ Clarissa says as she turns over the cards I’ve selected from the face-down deal. ‘All very positive.’ She thoughtfully places them one by one in what seems to be the classic full-house spread (I don’t know any of the actual names, yet), and begins to talk through each one calmly and confidently. I instantly regret not opening my audio recording app, and make a mental note to film a ‘summary’ towards the end of this intimate half-hour session of enlightenment at the back of the art studio-slash-stationery shop opposite the church on the corner of my old road. I booked it a month ago, as a birthday present to myself. I wish I could afford to do it more often. I also wish I had the time to sign up for their courses in card reading, speaking French and beginners’ sewing — or even attend one of the day classes in embroidery, lampshade-making and screen-printing. I wish for a lot. Maybe someday.

I’m ever in awe of tarot readers for many reasons, the main one being their ability to absorb and retain all the specific information and magical lore that comes from each card, and how it applies differently to each person that pulls it. I always say ‘I’m learning’ when asked, and when readers tell me (as they often do, funnily enough) that I could do it, that I have the knack and the aura… because I don’t think I’ll ever have fully learned, or be confident enough to book 1-to-1 appointments and do tutorials, oh lord no. I keep a deck of cards under the desk in my friend’s jewellery shop and do a quick pull on demand now and again for her customers, but that’s it. And even then, I always refer to the book. If the mood takes me, I’ll do some witchy ‘woo-woo’ in my cosy little living room by myself and with friends — or on my patio at twilight with a glass of something strong slowly diluting in melted ice. I almost always get it right. The ‘almost’ is a modest touch.

According to Clarissa, I’m approaching a big change in my life, and while The Tower card may seem daunting and devastating (well, it’s a tumbling mass of sturdy stonework amidst a storm, so!?) it’s actually a necessary ‘falling away’ of what needs to be removed in order to build new foundations. The Seven of Cups indicates that I have more options available to me than I realise. These two are the core, the beginning of it all. There’s no clear timeline, but apparently some things are still a way off — peer support and mythical tribe-finding, something I’ve never quite been able to achieve in my working life, peace-making in times of stress and collecting the abundance I’m owed, deepening of relationships and carving a new romantic path, finding balance (what’s that?) and looking upwards to the Sun’s warm encouraging glow… it’s all very positive, as she said. I want to seize it with both hands, but I’m still anxiously sprinkling a pinch of salt over one shoulder and forcing myself to remember what came before, before I wonder any more on what has yet to be.

Bus Stop Studios; a pen-lover’s heaven.

I arrived at my appointment bang on time, at 6pm. I parked on one side of my old road — the one I mentioned, with the church on the corner? — and laughed at the dramatic slump of the tarmac which causes me to climb out of my car like I would a trap door in a church ceiling, something that used to irk me inordinately but now it’s got that touch of nostalgia I want to savour. Clarissa came to greet me at the door, and as I went to step in, she apologised and said she thinks there was a double booking — she’s already got someone in the hot seat out back. I frown, show her my email to confirm a time, and she apologises again, asking if I can come back in half an hour? I smile and agree, because fortunately I didn’t have any other plans, and the cat can cope alone for a little while longer.

I could have taken the opportunity to go for a walk along the very familiar seafront, a (hag)stone’s throw away. Maybe Co-op would have been a good shout, grab some bits for the fridge when I return home. But instead I wandered along my old favourite road, sadly observed how boujie it’s become, and stopped in at That Tequila Bar for a long loosener (‘long’ in the sense that it was 75% mixer, I was driving home after all).

‘The bar we only call by its first name.’

I don’t think I’ll ever achieve anything in my life that will make my Grandad as proud as he is of me when I’m at the bar ordering a double scotch.

I haven’t lain any ghosts for a while. Then suddenly, over one weekend, I’d lain and slain a fair few. I went to see the Seagulls thrash the Mancunians at the Amex stadium on Sunday — the last time I’d been there, I think, I was with the latest of many exes who didn’t particularly care for football. The bar where I waited patiently for my delayed deck of revelations appointment was somewhere we’d go; ‘we’ being a lot of past disappointments, the most recent of which being a friend who promised me a birthday drink that same week they bailed on my party, and hasn’t been in touch since. I think what I learned that evening, as I sat on the wonky red metal against the freshly painted gaudy walls and sipped down my safe dose of ginger spice, then later when I was told through 10 beautiful cards on a faded waterproof tablecloth, is that I have everything I need in me. I just need a bit of direction, a touch of faith, and a shift in the earth to make the bricks come tumbling down.

I walked back to my car the long way round, to peer up at my first ‘alone home’. I wonder if the new occupants have fixed the heating — by ‘fixed’, I mean ‘installed’ — if they save their coins for visits to the laundrette down the road, and if they’ve ever climbed through the hallway window onto the downstairs neighbour’s roof out back to enjoy golden hour and perhaps catch sight of the wild fox families, just like I did every day during lockdown. How far we’ve come, I think to myself. And how much more we have yet.

Thank you for reading.

G. x