While Seamus Heaney dedicated himself to poetry, and the ethics of the Troubles, I grappled with nappies, and my own troubled heart. I’m not bitter. Not a bit of it. #travelling2025 #30words

Coming down from the wide brown mountain we heard a cuckoo. Cuck-oo. We heard the high-pitched maaaa of a lamb and the combined growl of sheep running down a field. #travelling2025 #30words

The path hugged the edge as it neared the summit and I studied my feet at each step. But I knew it was there, that deep glistening lough, far below. #travelling2025 #30words

‘Just keep the sea on your left,’ she said as she waved us off. Fourteen kilometres of lapping sea-on-our-left later, we arrived at the pick-up point, dazed by glinting waves.  #travelling2025 #30words

Water trickles in hidden channels, feeding the rushing river, tumbling through grey boulders down to the calming valley. Yellow gorse clumps along its edges. Brown hills rise up, encompassing it. #travelling2025 #30words

Over five days we walked 74 kms, total elevation gain of 1925 metres. I’m already missing the rasp of my own breath, lungs filling with forest air, legs pushing forward. #travelling2025 #30words

London. She darts out of nowhere and stops. Face contorted, hands reaching. ‘Help me!’ she whines, eyes widening, watering. I want to run, like the deer on the forest path. #travelling2025 #30words

London. Where a young man walks onto Penge West station holding a nice bunch of cellophaned flowers. He looks at them, surprised, as if they’ve just been presented to him. #travelling2025 #30words

London. The weather has turned, blue skies replaced by grey, light winds now bitter, and the summer clothes in the window displays have resumed their traditional roles. Forlorn. Aspirational. Laughable.  #travelling2025 #30words

London, like Berlin, has canals. Wild places that look forgotten, with littered paths of birdsong and nettles running quietly below bus-jammed roads. A family of white-billed ducks dips for waterweed. #travelling2025 #30words

We change trains at Shadwell, a different London. No Ottolenghi here. Faded signs in dusty shop windows. Narrow doorways, patched doors. A man stares at our intrusion, and looks away. #travelling2025 #30words

Suddenly they fill the station, arms raised, marching to drums, football shirts like solid armour. Old men setting the pace, young men on bouncing feet, boys running, in the pack.  #travelling2025 #30words

We join the canal at The Angel, head east. Gardens grow on the boats. Cats and bikes and solar panels. Cyclists and joggers and walkers jostle for the narrow path. #travelling2025 #30words

For the second time a worried man has pulled me back from the closing doors of a Tube train. Beware their fierce unforgiving jaws. They are trained to savage latecomers. #travelling2025 #30words

And now it’s time to return, into the real world where we don’t spend hours strolling, imagining lives in these quiet streets, these places that don’t match my noisy memories. #travelling2025 #30words

Join me in the "meat space"! If you're in the vicinity of the NSW #CentralCoast on 1 June, I'd love to hang out and chat Flashy things with you! Ticket proceeds support the Words on the Waves Writers Festival. wordsonthewaves.com.au/writing-up-str…

Flying over central Australia, I look down on red waves caught in motion, held there by time. Far away, white patches of salt lakes. Black riverbeds curve, snaking towards them. #travelling2025 #30words

You can not be ‘objective’ about genocide. There is no both sides to this. There is no justification. No excuse. There is absolutely nothing in the universe that justifies the murder, starvation, maiming and psychological terror that Israel is carrying out against Palestinians

First we see the tiny figures on the garden edging. One reading, one sprawling, a child in a meadow. Then we see the whole fairy garden. My granddaughters’ eyes sparkle. #30words30days #spark

It’s back!! Thanks Dani.