Last night I got a really clear sense of why I have been going to Psychic school. Overall I have found it to be quite an challenging process; I know I am learning a lot, but I have continued to battle with my conscious mind which still insists on telling me it is all in my imagination, and that I should be more realistic. My unconscious mind however is in its element, is having fun, and is hanging on to every word.

I had one of those Psychic artist drawing's done of my "Guide" a few months ago and at the time I really railed against it as it showed a very kind-faced Buddhist monk. What's wrong with a Buddhist monk? Absolutely nothing, but why are they always Tibetan monks, or mysterious figures from China, or Ancient Egypt? Why aren't there more painter and decorator's from Norf London - aren't their lives as important?! I haven't worked out yet if the drawing is accurate, and if he really is a Buddhist Monk, but I like to refer to my own guide as "Bob" now. It seems suitably plain and humble and ordinary)

The other thing I have gained which I first hated but now love, is Psychometry. But anyway, I digress... Last night we had a class on Automatic or Inspired Writing, and it really answered a lot of questions for me. It seems there are two main ways of doing Automatic writing. There is the one where you sit there, pen in hand and wait for spirit energies to move the pen and write something (which after a lot of straining usually gives you a series of illegible squiggles, since the effort involved for a spiritual energy to move a physical object is quite intense) or there is the other way, which my teacher refers to as "Inspired Writing". This is the one where you take something like a picture of something beautiful or interesting to keep your conscious mind happy and occupied, and then you start to write. Eventually what happens is that inspiration starts to take over and give you a helping hand.

So I sat there in class with my pen in hand and my little notebook, and what do you think came out? Was it some jargon-filled nonsense?  Was it something out of nowhere? Nope! It was three more chapters of my book. Long after everyone else had finished, I was still sitting there scribbling away quite happily, whilst still listening to the class and interacting fully with what was going on in the room. And the other great thing? I have been suffering from writer's block for the last few months, having reached a natural pause in the narrative, I had no idea where to go next, but the picture I was letting my conscious mind be occupied by gave me a new direction.

And when I asked my teacher if I was "normal" as I have been writing like this since Christmas, convinced I am not doing it all alone, and wondering why wherever I am, whether it is standing on the tube, or sitting on the bus, or walking back home I sometimes have to be standing notebook and pen in hand scribbling away furiously, she looked at me and smiled and said, "yes, that is normal. I have written a lot of things like that".

In Psychic school terminology, when this happens you are in touch with your Higher Self, or Divine energy. In the other side of my life, it is the literal "Breath of God(s)". It is the reason I keep Inspiration books and journals. It is the reason I love my creative life. It gets me in touch with my own traditions. It gets me in touch with my own creative energy and gives me an outlet for it. It is not that I am not doing the writing myself, it is just that I have been given a helping hand. It is just what happens when you get in touch with those feelings of deep inner peace and give space for your creative energy, it is when you are in the zone. It is doing what I do naturally when I am at my most peaceful, when I am at my happiest. In NLP terms it is what happens when I am "in purpose" and literally expressing my Life's Purpose.

At last my three worlds have joined and merged, and they fit beautifully together.

Not the kind of subject line one would normally expect (or I wouldn't anyway...)

I think if I had to pick my favourite thing about Psychic school, it would be that my lovely teacher has taught me how to do Psychometry (where you get stuff psychically by holding an object while you are reading for someone (a ring, a watch, a necklace etc).

In the beginning I thought this was a colossal waste of time. We started with "bum psychometry" where you sit on a chair for a few minutes and then swap with your neighbour. Then both of you has to see if you can literally pick anything up from the chair. In the early days I didn't get much at all, other than a sense of how warm the other person's bottom was... But more recently, I have managed to pick things up that you couldn't possibly explain in any other way.

The convincer for me came when my dear friend rebeccawood met me for dinner and brought along a wooden object, to see if I could get anything from it. It was a strange looking thing, about seven centimetres long, and obviously very old. As we sat in the Real Greek in Covent Garden, she asked me to see what I could get from it. Knowing her interests, I knew it was something crafty (no surprises there). She told me that it dated back to World War One, and from there on I was on my own.

Over the course of the next few minutes, I got a sense that it had belonged to a woman, but that it had been passed down to her from someone else (possibly her Father). I got a sense of it having had a connection to France, and that at one held of the object where some wooden guides were, thread had once been wound round. I got a sense of wheat fields blowing in the wind, and a connection to a farm. Woody confirmed these details, some of which she had obtained from the person she bought it from. It was really affirming for me as I had a particularly difficult class that week, in which I fell very firmly on my face as a result of not listening to the quiet voice inside me was telling me, as it was not logical.

Then last weekend, on a weekend away, I was able to touch the walls of a very old building, and get a sense of the people who had used the building in the past, and what they may have used it for.

The thing is, none of this is logical, none of it can be proved or disproved scientifically because the frameworks with which you could test it are not there. Sceptics would scoff and dismiss it as a load of bunkum, but actually I don't think I really care. For me, it comes down to the fact that in this "rich tapestry of life", it is something which adds colour to my world, it makes what I am experiencing more vivid. I have always believed that knowing the history of an area brings it to life, and history is really a form of story telling. When I hold an object or touch the rough surface of an old wall or a wooden beam, what is really coming through is a story about who may or may not have lived there, what they felt, what they experienced.

It may be true, or it may not be true, who is to say. But what harm does that do?

I am having a bit of a ditsy week, which is probably a good thing. As if I had thought too hard about what was going to happen last night, I might have disappeared into the night never to be seen again.

When I was growing up on Dartmoor, I used to spend a lot of time reading ghost stories. The moors are full of it, Conan Doyle knew what he was doing when he set the Hound of the Baskervilles there; it can be grey, misty, dark and a bit scary at night if you are not used to it being dark as a cow's guts (a wonderful Dartmoor expression) and hearing strange noises through the night. Most people freak out the first time they hear a vixen scream, as it sounds so eerily human. There are tales of the hairy hands that drive unsuspecting motorists off the road (usually on their way home from the pub), ghostly groups of monks seen walking the Lychway, and the mysterious Jay's grave where fresh flowers appear daily on the grave of a young woman who was murdered by her nobleman lover who had got her pregnant outside of wedlock

 As a child I went to school in Princetown in the shadow of the prison, which as the highest point on the moors is usually shrouded in thick fog. My friends and I used to love going ghost-hunting (as well as UFO hunting and generally running amock on the moors.) It was built by French and American prisoners of war, so it has quite a strange atmosphere. We used to scare ourselves silly by walking around the churchyard telling tales of a person who could be seen haunting the top of the church tower, having thrown himself off to an untimely death,  and footsteps heard behind us on the gravel in the church yard. This would then be followed by lots of screams as we raced to the gate, hoping not to be the last one out, before holding on the the bars of the gate and looking back  to see if you could see him on top of the tower, standing silhouetted against the grey sky.

I used to be very impressionable, but in later years I have put this down to my imagination, and tend to steer clear of the whole "Most Haunted" stuff, as it scares me silly. But then last night I turned up at Psychic school as usual, and suspecting I was in the wrong place for some reason but without my diary, I decided to sit it out and look out for my teacher. When I found her, I was greeted with "What are you doing here? We are in Baker street tonight! Come on..." so we set off to Baker Street to a pub called the Volunteer, which is just down the road from the Sherlock Holmes museum. The exercise for the evening was for all of my Teacher's students to collectively see if they could pick anything up from the pub, as apparently it has quite a colourful history. This is the kind of thing I would normally avoid like the plague. I haven't even nailed my colours to the mast to say if I believe in ghosts (or my own psychic ability for that matter!), but keeping a fairly open mind seems to be working for me at the moment, so I thought I would just try and see what happened. I have to say it was really quite good fun!

We duly filed down the rickety stairs to the basement in groups of five to see what we could pick up. The atmosphere down there was quite amazing. It was hot and damp, and you could tell it was very old, as parts of the floor were actually pavement stones. It was winding and a bit like a catacomb, as it wound around on itself and was full of things - storage space for the pub, bits of machinery and dark corners that didn't look like anyone had touched them for years. The atmosphere was definitely spooky, and every noise made us all jump, every sudden movement made us squeal. We had to touch the old walls and see if we could pick anything up. I immediately got several things, one was a small boy playing down there, another was a sense that people had lived down here in the past and that it was not just a storage, and thirdly the idea that someone had fallen down the stairs. My colleagues picked up a range of things, from also getting children sleeping down there and the figure of a man. Once we had done a bit of glass divination (contacting the "spirit" and then asking some questions; the glass told us he was a man who had lived and died there), and a bit of table-tipping, which was quite startling, we all filed back upstairs and waited until everyone had taken their turn, and then we were told the history of the building.

It was once owned by the Neville family, who were a local mob. Richard Neville was very feared by everyone around, as he was the local godfather of the day, but in 1654 it was mysteriously burned to the ground, and the whole family died. Richard Neville is said to haunt the basement to this day, dressed in a surcoat, breaches and an outlandish pair of stockings. It makes me feel quite sad really. Surely he must be lonely down there after all this time? I am not quite sure that is what I am supposed to be thinking, but then I always did feel sorry for the baddies and think they were just misunderstood. Later on the cellar  was used as an air-raid shelter during the Blitz, which accounts for the sense of people living down there.

I don't think I would ever make it onto Most Haunted.... but it was certainly a novel way of spending a Tuesday evening.

Well, this week saw the start of my fourth term of Psychic school, and I found myself joining the advanced class. Who would have predicted that?! Certainly not me that is for sure....

I still feel a bit of a fraud, despite having psychic things happening far more frequently than they used to. In the last few weeks I found myself receiving some information from "out there" and as a result knowing that an old character was about to come back into my life whilst not understanding how. the next day at work, after my boss had been to a meeting with a rival organisation, he came back and said to me "You will never guess who their Manager is?!" and sure enough, she is back. Then there is the thing where I can tell as I leave my building where my bus home is... that one is quite useful actually. The cards seem to flow more easily though my mind, and the meanings come easily to my voice, even the dreaded court cards that always used to leave me speechless. But somehow the sceptic in me never quite believes it is happening, so often it gets dismissed as being a fluke, or a chance guess, or just a coincidence.

But in the break this time, I found I was actually missing the classes. I was enjoying having some time back, sure, but the writing has stalled and it felt as if it would not pick up again until the class continued.
So on Tuesday evening, I found myself standing in the hallway outside the class waiting to go in, and my stomach was doing back flips. But once we got in the room, and people started to file in, there were a few familiar faces amongst the unfamiliar ones. And dotted throughout are the really advanced people, the ones who have been doing this stuff for a lot longer and sit with a steady self assurance that I just do not feel yet. But I think I will learn lots from them. It gives me a bench mark to aim for, a sense of where I need to be heading.

I think this one might just be the most exciting one yet...

As usual I have had a pretty action packed weekend... When I am at work I find a lot of the time that all my creative energy gets pent up, so by the weekend I am about ready to explode in a frenzy of making things... this weekend has brought sewing lots of things, candle making, soap making. And on top of all that I had a party to go to with my beloved's oldest friends, and a day trip out yesterday to go on a bit of a light-hearted Duck Tour  and then go to visit an exhibition entitled Life Before Death at the wellcome trust.

Any of you that have read any of my past blog entries will know that Death and I have had a pretty close relationship over the last few years. Since I have been writing the new book, this relationship has mellowed rather; I no longer have the raw red scars of his fingers across my face, but the traces are still there nevertheless. We share a companionable silence these days, and I find it easier to go about my daily life without wailing all the time. But the exhibition took me to a different level and made me see a new perspective.

The nice thing about being at home is that you can get out into the wilds and just walk. There is something so cleansing and so fulfilling about being so out in nature. A friend of mine refers to it as plugging into the mains, but sometimes here, the feeling is so intense it is more like sticking your finger in a socket.

Yesterday we walked out to Wistman's Wood, because Mary (Everyone, meet Dad's lovely new wife, Mary) thought she would like to see it, having been so enchanted by Satish Kumar's wonderful recent programme, "Earth Pilgrim - A Year on Dartmoor". (He is wonderful and it was stunning - but why wont they release it on DVD?!) Wistman's Wood is somewhere your imagination can really take flight and come up with some wonderful stories (in fact, I can say it was single handedly responsible for me starting to write the Lychway when I read a description of the wood in a book about Folklore, and it took me back to my childhood of family walks and picnics amongst the rocks there)



It is Devon's oldest woodland, but it is not quite what you would expect. The trees are Oak, but they are stunted, so even now after so many hundreds of years they are only about 6 or 7 feet in height. They are all covered in a thick layer of moss, and have an amazing abundance of plants growing in amongst the branches, like ferns and mistletoe and ivy.



And amongst their gnarled and mis-shaped trunks, the granite rocks are so wildly strewn about you can barely find a path through. In 1620, some well intentioned person tried to survey the wood, but gave up very quickly as he could not find a way through.

 

But when you sit amongst the tree trunks and touch the thick carpet of moss that grows on the tree trunks, you really get a sense of something very ancient and very powerful just sleeping, and biding its time until Spring makes its merry way onto the open moor and wakes all the trees up again.




And if you are wondering why, several weeks after the Equinox I am talking about Spring not having reached here yet, it always seems to arrive several weeks later here. This is what I have woken up to this morning (It is now 2 degrees and snowing quite hard):

A few months ago I started some Psychic Development classes at the College in South Kensington. Part of me went out of curiosity to see what it was about, and part of me wanted to go as I was desperate to get some sense of what was happening to Mum now. Originally I went with two friends, but gradually they both dropped out as they found it wasn't for them, but I kept going. If nothing else it has been really useful background research for the book. As I don't prescribe to the organised religions but instead follow my own tradition, I don't have those pictures of the god with a beard sitting on a cloud looking over heaven to fall back on. My path doesn't have a prescribed vision of the afterlife, so I was curious to see what other people do.

Well, I am now three weeks into my third (and possibly final) term of Psychic development classes. The thing is I really don’t know why I am there, other than that during divination with an upturned glass, someone asked “who should sign up for intermediate level?” and the glass shot straight over to me. That was just after I seemed to have a silent conversation with my "guide" as they would not allow me to ask any questions out loud. It seems they felt they did not wish to discuss anything with anyone else in the room but me, so I had to ask the questions silently and then they would give me an answer… And several other people keep telling me I should be doing it.

But every week I go and sit in the class, hope no one talks about my Mum and makes me cry and wonder why I am there. It is literally like having constipation, as nothing gets through. I strain and strain and nothing comes out except a feeling of panic every time we have to do any practical work. I love the talking, I have infinite respect for my teacher and I am learning loads from her in terms of life stuff, I just don’t get on with the bit where you have to try and be psychic.

This week, I finally decided I had had enough.

“Right then, you lot,” I instructed as I took my seat. “I can think of a million and one other things I would rather be doing than going through the excruciating mortification of psychic constipation. Either something happens tonight, or next week I will be at home watching America’s Next Top Model.”

The strangest thing happened… As soon as we opened up, I could feel someone standing with their hand on my left shoulder. This week the exercise was to start with some psychometry. As I sat with my class partner, she made me burst into tears by immediately telling me that my Mum hadn’t wanted to leave me either, and then after I had mopped myself up and sat holding her watch, I had a sense of someone lifting up my chin and giving me a big hug, so I told her,

“I get a sense that someone is saying keep your chin up and giving you a hug,” and it worked. She nodded and replied that it made sense to her.

The second part was then to stand up in front of the class and do a platform reading. In the end I just got up and told myself I was just going to see what it looked like from up there. It was weird, but all the faces went misty except one, and I ended up blurting this message to him. And he took it.

I have been building a new website to give myself somewhere to put my Non-soaping stuff. I haven't felt like writing fiction in ages but I thought I should keep my book up somewhere on the ether. I have also had some "notes" of a story I have been meaning to write up for ages, and I thought I should really sit down and type them into Word. So I did. No time like the present.

Now I find I am on chapter sixteen.

Should I be suspicious?

Strange how the universe works...

Well, thanks to my very talented friend Anthony Robins aka Tomas, aka Phoenix (yes, he is a man of many names) I now have a new up to date set of head shots, and I am really pleased with them.

But it is a funny one. I have spent the last five years ignoring anything acting related. Not just ignoring it but rather burying it in cement and erecting a six foot electrified fence with armed guards and dog patrols around it. But now, all of a sudden, it is seeping back in. I think the dam has cracked. I wonder where it is going to lead me next?

Having had a morbid fear of the camera lens, I think this is the first time I have seen a photo I have liked in about five years... most significant events in my life have been recorded with me taking the photo, and the few I have seen with me in it I have not liked. But these ones have grown on me. At first I felt a bit nekkid,a bit exposed, as I think Tomas has done what a great photographer can do with a headshot - he has managed to capture me on film. It doesn't look like someone else, it is not a character; it looks like me. Eek!

Ok. Now i am beginning to feel really paranoid. Ever since I lost my Mum, virtually everytime I lay out the cards, Death pops up. Sometimes in the past, sometimes at the root, but always there, waving at me with his toothy grin. As my tarot teacher and my friends can attest, all I have to do is be told to pull out one card at random, and he pops up.

Now we are living in the dark half of the year, I have discovered I have a very love-hate relationship with Osiris. I feel somehow protected knowing that life must live and die, and a simple glance up at the stars will show me Orion standing strong and true attesting that this is so. The Nile floods and brings fertility, just as death and rotting gives us fertiliser. But nevertheless, he took from me that which I loved the most, and will continue to do so as the years pass. It is as it must be.

So this morning I spotted something on a friends blog - "Which of the Major Arcana are you? Take the quiz and find out!" So I did.... Lovely!

Result of Quiz :: Which Major Arcana Tarot Card Are You?

created by Cirrus

You scored as XIII: Death.

Death is probably the most well known Tarot card - and also the most misunderstood. Most Tarot novices would consider Death to be a bad card, especially given its connection with the number thirteen. In fact this card rarely indicates literal death.Without "death" there can be no change, only eventual stagnation. The "death" of the child allows for the "birth" of the adult. This change is not always easy. The appearance of Death in a Tarot reading can indicate pain and short term loss, however it also represents hope for a new future.

Twenty months ago, death let off a nuclear bomb in my soul. My Mum was taken from me by cancer of the pancreas, the same cancer that also took my grandmother in the same decade of her life. My gandma's name was Violet.

I have lived with death for some time now. I dont mean that death lurks in the shadows and jumps out in the middle of the night when I am not expecting it, I mean that he follows me around every minute of every day, and breathes his hot breath down my neck. Every tarot reading he is there, scythe in hand, waving at me from the spread. I see his features imprinted on the faces of people I walk past. He pisses me off, big time. Not just because I cant quite get rid of him, but because he stands between me and my Mum. I cant quite make her out though the thick cloud he leaves behind him. I want to picture her face, but some days all I see is his. I tried to paint my grief, and all I had was a deep dark midnight blue canvas. i tried to write my grief and all I spat was anger onto the page. So now I brew like a demon and hope that one day I will have brewed enough soap to wash all this away.

I want to write about my mum, but somehow I can't quite manage it yet. I want to remember her as she was when she was well, the fun we shared together, the things she taught me, the compassion she had for people, the talks we had, but somehow I can't quite do her justice. All I can do is occassionally pluck up the courage to see the pictures of how she was, and hope that somewhere she is still dancing on the beach on Violet's island...