Silver drops and fountains of strength…

I was disappointed to wake on the Sunday in Milan to discover I was wearing only one of my earrings. I had bought them specifically for my trip and I only wear silver. “What a shame.” Said my travelling companion supportively as we shuffled around the apartment nursing sore heads and making cups of restorative tea. Ah well, I concluded, if I had lost only an earring the previous night – while managing to sleep in the other without puncturing the side of my skull – I had managed to maintain some dignity. A trip to M&S on my return to the UK would necessitate a replacement.

This being-away-from-home-lark has definitely resulted in creative writing juices. Words are clambering to get out, grappling and fighting to arrive first. Saturday night’s ‘research’ has spawned a short story and today’s Milanese snaps a dark poem. I purchased a pretty pink notebook and the ideas are going down left, right and centre of every page. I hope you will see them here soon.

My Italian novel, the re-worked NaNo piece, has crawled out from under its rock and is gaining momentum. Lucy is already ahead of me and presently lent against the passenger door of her hire car, coffee in one hand and cigarette in the other. She is staring at the stripes of vines on the distant hills – the old vineyard her destination.

The blue skies of Saturday’s Milan had been replaced by freezing fog and as we waited to catch a train I thought about inspirational people I have met in my life. There are a couple. Sunday I met a third. An author, a survivor of domestic abuse, and a woman I can now call a friend. Her name is HELEN PRYKE. Take a look at her books here.

Her writing, she admits, started as a necessary part of the healing and dealing with the situation she ultimately found herself in. Listening to a fellow human explain their route through and out of the bramble snarls of wicked psychological manipulation, amongst other forms, is harrowing but enlightening. Empowering.

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

(Did you know that some men suffer from domestic abuse also? The ratio is around 70/30 women/men and thankfully the world is starting to listen and take sufferer’s experiences more seriously these days and support systems are in place (perhaps not all over the world, but certainly in the UK).

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

Helen’s more recent writing works are now taking a more mysterious, magical line and are selling well as we speak…. I am just about to start reading The Healers Secret and while we chatted over risotto milanese which her amazingly supportive husband of the last five years had made us, Helen shared the basis of her present writing project. (I feel this was an honour so I am keeping those details to myself for now 😊 and you will have to wait for publication day!)

Check out a kindle offer for this book Now! 🥂⭐️🥂⭐️🥂⭐️🥂⭐️🥂⭐️🥂⭐️🥂

As I sat on the metro, marvelling at how much wider their underground trains are to London’s I pulled my hair into a pony tail in an attempt to tidy myself up a bit, the Italian beauties’ refined and preened demeanours teasing me as we rattled and roared our way back to the city. I felt something hard amongst the not so silky locks of Worzel hair; I fished behind my head a little more and produced one silver dangly earring and held it aloft in front of my friend’s face, my own grinning like a 5 year old who has discovered another chocolate eclair at the bottom of her school bag. Ta-dah 💃🏼