Confessions of a Prickly Plant

History graduate and general lover of 'old things.' The pieces that make up my life: smiley people, rainy walks on the beach, laughing, chocolate, surfing, being outside, listening to great musicians, reading, writing, languages, singing loudly, giraffes, old pretty things, the sound owls make, Gaeilge, broccoli, gramophones, the smell of hoof oil, travelling, whickery horse noises, sleeping outside, BSL, saddle soap, family, summer evening smell, photographs, funny people, Pink Lady apples, flying lanterns, melty tarmac, pebbly beaches, Suffolk, the colour green, horseshoes on concrete, grand pianos, bunting, winding staircases, Coca-Cola, rainstorms, the word 'gawp', sloe gin, cross country jumps, midnight walks, Ireland, ribbons, homeade lemonade, bumble bees, snowy silences, analogue cameras, the smell of new books, nonsense poems, bourbon biscuits, pine trees, beach huts, cinnamon, derelict buildings, art galleries, old fashioned street lamps, my friends, weak orange squash, new pyjamas, gypsy caravans, Innocent smoothies, cloudy mountains, swimming, Aldeburgh chips, ducks, pesto, not being on a boat and not being near a pig.

[learninglinguist]

Link to the original tweet 

[delta-breezes]

[nevver]

[themotivationjournals]

And now go, make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes.

Neil Gaiman (via themotivationjournals)

[hollythetree]

Absence

I have not posted from this particular blog for some time.

It’s hard to find inspiration when you’re seeing the world in shades of grey and beige. I have had no desire or motivation to write, or take photographs, or even trawl the internet for beautiful, beautiful things created by others with wider palettes. Every door I’ve turned to for escape has been locked fast.

I am determined to return my colours. Stroke by stroke, pigment by pigment. It’s going to be a slow process, but I need to take back control now, or I may never be able to.

Mental illness is a bitch.

[hollythetree]

Questioning why I have only just stumbled across Richard Burton’s recitals of Dylan Thomas’s poetry. 

This gave me goose pimples.

[earth]

[oldfarmhousefallfeatures]

[sparkygoogle2000]

From the Charles M. Schulz Museum Facebook page…

[hollythetree]

In his book ‘Adventures in Human Being’, Gavin Francis writes about the death of a teenage girl, and her parents’ subsequent decision to donate her organs.

“She didn’t recover in the intensive care unit, and after twenty-four hours or so, she was ‘transplanted’. Her kidneys went to two different adults, at opposite ends of the country. Her corneas gave sight to someone who’d been blinded. Her liver went to a reformed alcoholic. Her pancreas and small intestine went to a teenage boy who suffered a rare genetic condition that meant he couldn’t absorb food. Of her major organs, only her heart and lungs - which had brought her to the gateway of death - and her brain - which had travelled too far into the darkness to make it back to the light - were buried with her.”

A beautiful paragraph in a rather astonishing book, which is well worth a read to anybody interested in medicine, or medical history. Or, indeed, anybody at all. I read it twice in two days, and both times I was spell-bound.

[hollythetree]

Damp walks with Arthur. When the tide is out so you squelch along together for miles, seagulls wheeling and squealing overhead whilst the mud sucks at the soles of your boots. The air tastes of salt and sea, and you feel absolutely and unconditionally free.

[hollythetree]

Olly Alexander: Growing up Gay

Olly Alexander explores the mental health issues faced by members of the LGBT+ community.

An important conversation.

[itslatingirl]

[hollythetree]

Sabrina Benaim - ‘Explaining Depression to My Mother’

“Mum still doesn’t understand;

Mum! Can’t you see!? That neither can I!”

Trying to explain mental illness to a parent who has never suffered mental illness is so, so difficult - no matter how caring they are, how sympathetic, and how much they want to help. We butt heads now over the smallest of thing, and I know now that she’ll never, ever ‘get it’. 

Never has a poem matched my own feelings so perfectly.

[hollythetree]

Cold, sunlit days.

[minus-the-negative]

A little bit of forward motion now creates a huge amount of momentum later.

minusthenegative.com

[grace--upon--grace]

Ian Andrew Nelson