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Moving to planet No Phone

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I did not plan to move, but suddenly I found myself there – stranded on planet No Phone.

The day was always going to be hectic but we hadn’t allowed for the sudden pause in the middle of it. That was what caught us off guard. We were in the innocent process of changing venues when a little Italian restaurant crossed our path. It had photographs of Sofia Loren and Totò, and a menu that said all the right things. So in we crept to share a swift, delicious bruschetta and pere con speck e gorgonzola. Then we left, picking up a takeaway coffee from next door, and some chocolate from a shop on a street corner a little further on.

We began to miss the mobile at the end of the long drive that followed. The omens did not feel good. We searched everywhere. We called it. We pleaded with it. Blood pressures soared. Then sank. Then turned to desperate calm as we tried a few memory games to try and track the phone. Finally we agreed we’d lost it, and started to call the places we’d been. The results were not encouraging. Not everybody answered, and those that did had no clue where the mobile might be. With no tracking switched on, our hopes sank. Then as the dark crept around us we rang it one more time … and it answered.

Discovered on stepping-stone number three. All safe. Hadn’t missed us, and said it was happy to be collected tomorrow. Phew.

A little more time to relax, and watch planet Phone go scrolling by.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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Breathe

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I heard the poem Breathe while in a car, wending my way through traffic. The words were clear and simple, the final image being of the respite found in a forest where the trees pass no judgement, allowing one simply to ‘be’, free from the stresses of expectation.

Here is the final verse of the poem – best read slowly:

” … and she sat there for hours
not wanting to leave
for the forest said nothing …
it just let her breathe”

Becky Hemsley

Later I looked up the poem and its author. It has been written by Becky Hemsley, and is part of a poetry collection of hers called Talking to the Wild. The second poem that I heard her read was called Like a Girl. Both poems were lovely to hear. They sounded like wind chimes of hope above the dark dark news of conflict that flared up later on the news.

(My thanks to Becky for allowing me to use the final verse of her poem in this post)

Here she is reading Like a Girl

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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Thinking about architecture

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Over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about buildings, thanks to a programme I heard discussing the idea that architecture has lost its soul.

The issue made me take a closer look at this sculpture near St Mary’s Axe in the City in London. From a distance it looks like a cartoon reproduction of an old building, planted deliberately amongst the new skyscrapers in the area.

The sight of this coloured version, so different yet so familiar, balancing awkwardly on its pedestals, has cheered me up whenever I’ve seen it. I suppose I might be responding to its soul, and that, according to the plaque beside it, is what the artist wants us to do. The title of the piece is The Granary and its creator, Jesse Pollock, is from Kent, where old granary stores can still be found. With this version Pollock is asking us to recognise that although it looks rosy, its battered profile is to give an idea of how tough its life is, facing one crisis after the next.

“… The Granary speaks as much to a need to overcome these crises as it does to the vexed rhetoric that underpins established visions of the nation, its heritage and our place within it.”

Reading these words has added another layer to my looking. From now on I shall think of it as the battered red heart powering the steely-faced, glassy-eyed buildings that surround it, yet do not notice it.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023