Daren't try and be inspiring.

I'm sitting here, scared to write. It's been too long, the voice inside my head that skulks in corners, drinks hot bone broth and pays below the average garage rent whispers. You're out of practice and doomed to fail. 

It's right, in a way. I don't make enough time for writing, currently. That's why I have two unfinished novel drafts locked away in my 'TO WRITE' tab group (I never close Chrome) along with the big juicy prompts I've started to use again, and the Blogger 'back of house' page with the stats that tick along slowly but surely, growing in their dozens each day. I sometimes reflect on when my blog used to amass 10,000+ 'unique views' per month, and shudder. How did I not stress out about that? And isn't everyone's view unique? 

Photo by Vedat Kandemir.

So, let's get back into it. Here are the things that have inspired me recently;

A deep and yet bright blue painted canvas on the wooden slatted wall of a cafe, with tiny white scribbled words on, you have to move in closely to read - they say, 'you are right where you're supposed to be'. 

An iced oat flat white from the aforementioned cafe, served with the cheery red-cheeked smile of a newbie who's being trained in this place's very particular way of making coffee. The silly jingle sound the ice cubes make inside the keep cup. 

A video of me, three days after I was left, in an artist's studio awaiting some body casting fun. I'm in my most PG pink pants and crop top set, smiling in the mirror despite my heart coming away in shocked, singed flakes. I look less healthy than I do now. I was visibly heavier, softer around the edges and wobblier on my feet, which was strange, because I lived with a gym-goer who would surely have inspired me to...? No? He actually made me feel more inadequate and insecure in my own skin? Who'd have thought! (me, and everyone else)

A white cat with a dark smudge over one side of its face, like an eyepatch under a jaunty hat, sitting in a warm puddle of sunshine at the bottom of my freshly strimmed and raked garden. I daren't make a sound, not yet, but I'll sit on my back step with a coffee so this future friend of mine can see me and know I exist. That's enough for now. Also, 'daren't' is a great word.

An old pebbledash house, yellowing from the inside out, with its windows closed and the air inside thick with the stench of many generations of smokers. The family have owned the place since 1925, and they've no use for it currently. They're reluctant to let it go, and are trying to find the few pieces of furniture within it new leases of life - in other peoples' lives. They say grandma and grandad kept this place 'immaculate', really neat and tidy and so clean. Then after they passed, dad moved in, and 'just lived', for twenty years. Those are the words used, no elaborating. He just lived. His funeral is tomorrow. I tell them I'm sorry, and they shrug. The sideboard I've come for is grubby and stinky; the edges are coated with a thick black grime that comes off under my nails when I scratch it. The door catches don't work, so they tie them together with an old NHS standard Covid mask, so it can be loaded into my car. I hear its four feet roll around in one of the drawers as I drive, and wonder how many murdered insects are stuck between the pages of dry faded wallpaper that line its insides. One of my kind neighbours helps me carry it through my flat into the garden so it can air out, and the dead smoke can disperse. 

'You can be strong and still be tender', my unreliable over-dramatic horoscope app tells me. 

The upstairs neighbour to the writing workshop space leaves his phone alarm to buzz on the floor, and rushes out of the building half an hour later. 

The old school wine and spirits shop on Old Compton Street, Soho, with its faded awning and collection of dusty bottles crammed in every available nook and cranny. Awning, dusty, nook, mmm such tasty and obvious scene-setting words. Each bottle has a paper label stuck on, with the price, the volume and the % scribbled in thick black felt tip. I've always wanted to come in here, every time I've walked by on my way to the office or queued outside the bagel shop next door on my lunch dash. I feel pride swell inside me when I'm given a secret shot of the Father's Day gift I'm buying. 

Walnut miso with mushrooms at a walk-in Japanese everyone seems to know but me. Chats with a childhood bestie as the food cools, then joking when we leave 'looks like we came at the right time!' because there's a queue down the street. 

The menu in the Brighton cafe half-heartedly separates brunch from 'lunchy bits', which I appreciate. 

I travel to and from the company's head office in one day, an eight-hour round trip in and out of different cities and in varying train carriage colour schemes, and remember why I usually request to stay overnight. The quiet victory of a meeting gone well sustains me, as does the M&S picnic I get from Waterloo for the last train home. I see Pitbull cosplayers buying snacks. 

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Book in to work from Hastings Writers Workshop! You can get a month's £20 pass that entitles you to 25 slots, which is outrageously affordable (works out as less than £1 per hour - quick maths) and a beautifully peaceful little space. Early morning & lunchtime writing slots are available also. Even if you have a working space at home, it's nice to go somewhere else and also have some other creative 'accountability bodies' nearby. 

- not an ad, I just want local pals to be aware of this excellent opportunity.

Thanks for reading, 

G. x