Gillian Monks's Blog, page 10

Thread Bear

Do you have a beloved toy from when you were a child? When I was just six months old I was give a teddy bear by my parents. He was officially named Edward Bear but as I grew and learned to talk I couldn’t pronounce that properly – I could only say Ted-Wow and Ted-Wow […]

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Living In A Dickens Scenario

When I was very young, my mother got very excited one evening when she discovered a cricket, sitting on our living room hearth in our ancient cottage home, ‘singing’ its little heart out. It is an old belief that such an occurrence will bring great good luck. Magical! It stayed with us for several evenings […]

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Just Ambling Along

Yesterday I went for a walk, out into the autumn sunshine among the browning bracken and the gold and copper-coloured trees. We left home in low cloud and drizzle, but on leaving our slate valley (which attracts moisture like a sponge!) we drove out onto sunshine. The path we took follows the River Glaslyn from […]

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Sunlight or Shadow?

How often in our busy lives do we take time out to truly reflect? To think seriously and deeply about our lives from a position of security, calmness and balance? A liberating position of space, time and free-will? In the ruthless pressure to simply survive in life, from our earliest days, humanity has needed to […]

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Falling Leaves

The kindness and support I have received from friends, family, acquaintances and medical staff alike over the past few weeks has been a constant source of delight, wonder and amazement to me. For those of you following me on this journey, I did indeed manage to lower my blood pressure sufficiently and my operation at […]

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Perspective

At the end of July I found a lump. As the advert says, just a very little thing. This coming Monday, I am having a cancerous tumour removed from my breast. The prognosis is excellent and full recovery expected. Yet there are always those unpretentious yet niggling and unsettling little words, ‘what if?’ Throughout my […]

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Census For The Future

I have just completed our household census for 2021 and added my signature. All the time I have been working on it, I have kept wondering if one day, one of my distant descendants in a 100 years time might be eagerly reading the same digitised document and wondering about the names of the people […]

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Happy Saint Non’s day!

The 1st March was Saint David’s Day, but today, the 3rd of the month, it is the turn of his mother, Saint Non, to be celebrated. Born in the 5th Century in Pembrokeshire, Non was the daughter of Lord Cynyr Ceinfarf of Dyfed. She grew up to be a devout holy woman but was violated […]

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Inspiration With A Spring In Your Step

Comforting and inspiring – seasonal poems, recipes, craft and gardening projects, celebrations, festivals and bits of history dotted among tales of modern life in Wales and an unusual childhood in 1960’s Lancashire. Read from cover to cover or dip into as the fancy takes you. An uplifting new approach to spring with timeless humour, poignancy […]

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Just A Normal Day

Just a normal day. What is a ‘normal day’? Especially in this time of the pandemic when even our most mundane days have suddenly been rendered topsy-turvy and inside-out until we wonder if anything will ever be ‘normal’ again. I began to recognise and appreciate normal days some years ago. One sunny October day I […]

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