Category Archives: Postcards 2023

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The money tree – our new housemate

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Today was my first meeting with a money tree. It arrived as a gift, exotic and strange with its braided trunk and five-fingered leaves.

Fascinated with our new housemate I’ve been doing a little research.

According to the Royal Horticultural Society the official name of the plant is Pachira Aquatica – other names include French Peanut, Guiana chestnut and Malabar Chestnut. It’s a tropical plant and if grown outdoors in the right conditions, it can reach up to 20m high. The RHS also reports that when wild and happy and fully grown it sometimes produces “spectacular flowers with five 30cm-long, cream petals and 200 or more gold and crimson stamens”.

The thought of that height and those flowers makes me look at our friend with new respect, and a touch of guilty sadness. I know that with us it won’t have a hope of reaching its full height or flowery potential. Instead (unless climate change happens far faster than we can imagine) it will be doomed to an indoor, potted future, and at best, is likely to reach a height of no more than 1.5m. I wonder if plants mind that kind of thing. I hope it won’t, because I’m looking forward to its company.

The other information I’ve found out about the plant, although not on the RHS website, is that a money tree is often seen as a gift of encouragement, especially for those involved in business endeavours. If writing qualifies as the right kind of endeavour then I look forward to working closely with this young Pachira Aquatica.

I’ll start by giving it a drink, and hope we can build our relationship from there.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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The Wellcome Collection in London

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We visited the Wellcome Collection cafe and shop on the recommendation of a friend, who knew we would be in the St Pancras area of London on a Thursday evening. It was a calming, wonderful surprise.

The cafe sits in the large, open ground floor of the building. It’s airy and bright, with fresh, delicious food and hot drinks being served from a counter along one side. We made our choices and then sat and ate in the peaceful space. It was full, but not crowded and the mood relaxed.

After our meal we walked around the shop, lingering in the large book section with its strong medical, environmental, health and well-being feel. The mix was interesting, and felt different to anywhere I had been before.

It was only on the way out that I noticed the gentleman above hanging suspended over the entrance hall. I have no idea what he was doing there.

(If you are in the St Pancras area I highly recommend a visit to the Wellcome Collection. It feels like the sort of space where there would always be something to explore. It is a short walk from Euston Square underground station)

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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Carols with the Anthony Nolan Trust

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“Anthony Nolan is the the charity that makes lifesaving connections between patients in need and incredible strangers ready to donate their stem cells.”

This was a such a wonderful, uplifting service despite the desperate urgency to so much of the work this charity does to save lives. We cried, we laughed we sang.

The service was in St Pancras Church in Euston Road, and the choir leading us through the evening was the B Positive Choir, whose singers, all connected with sickle cell disease, sing to raise awareness of the disease and the importance of blood donation. Their song, Rise Up, was so energising.

And it was not the only great pleasure of the evening. The service was rich with performers, all brilliantly entertaining, but most moving of all was the account of everything Fin and his family had had to go through. His mother described the race to find the donors and cures they needed to help the suddenly, desperately ill four-year old survive. It sounded such an exhausting, stressful time but there at the end of all those years was Fin, taking his mother’s place at the podium to read a story about snowmen, his voice as strong as a young oak … and all of us speechless with emotion and applause.

We left with our hearts singing.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023