Owls, Hawks, and My Time in a Tree

The Isle of Wight has a lot to offer visitors and locals. Miles of beaches and dozens of water sports; public footpaths across, and all around, the island; multiple amusement centers and parks; wildlife excursions, shopping towns, bus tours, golfing, etc. I opt for a visit to the renowned Owl and Falconry Center in the afternoon and the chance to climb a tree at sunset with the island's best-kept-secret-outdoor-opportunity, the Goodleaf Tree Climbing Company.

I bus to the Owl and Falconry Center (passing a miniscule but loudly-signed "Church Of The Roundabout" that's, you guessed it, right beside a roundabout looping through Newport) and arrive at 12:30, in time to sit for a while near the birds on their tethers and catch the 1:00p and 3:00p flight shows.

The inventory at the center includes harris hawks, European and bengal eagle owls, saker falcons, kestrals, peregrines, buzzards, bald eagles--many of which I'd never heard of or seen before.

The shows provided up-close opportunities to see the birds fly and stoop after lures, feel them skim inches by the audience--sometimes closer--and land in perches in front of us. Having seen the first show, I knew where to stake out an even better spot for the second show, smack in front of the left-end flight post. This put the birds barely a foot from me. Lovely.

Here are a few I enjoyed from the collection, in order of appearance below:
On ground perch--Charlie, Saker falcon, 5 yrs old
On post perch, side vw--Will, Harris hawk, 7 yrs old
On handler's hand--Chester, European Eagle Owl
On stump--Joey, Bengal Eagle Owl, 5 yrs old
On handler's knee--Cherokee, Bald eagle, 5 yrs old
On post--Phoebe, African spotted eagle owl, 3 yrs old








Walking down the lane to catch the bus back, I felt completely happy to be traveling alone, on my own schedule, following my own whims. I've found I can live through times of boredom and that I don't need to try to distract myself from them. Like all other emotions, ennui passes and yields to something else.

The weather has stayed warm and comfortable and after another maddening trip through Wight's cell phone vortex, I finally managed to hook up with Paul, the husband half of the couple who runs the Goodleaf Tree Climbing Company.

He picks me up outside Whippingham, a rural village with a post office and not much else for amenities, and we drive to a field that is part of acreage that belonged to Queen Victoria. Oaks more than 250 years old grow here, and I wonder what they've seen of royalty and romps over their years.

Paul has already set up the area for climbing. Ropes and harnesses drape from branches 30 and 40 feet up, a hammock sways high in the boughs, and a post-climb snack and hot tea in a thermos wait on a blanket on the grass. Llamas and sheep are nearby, the belching sheep kept at bay by a light wire fence. I am the second climb of the day--three gals from Spain came earlier for a bachelorette party; the bride-to-be stayed on the ground to take pictures.

Paul is a professional arborist and has brought his love of tree climbing from New Zealand to Wight. His favorite hours are spent sitting among tree branches and giving others the chance to enjoy the experience.

He hooks me into the step-in harness, a system that offers three-way support at thighs and back so the wearer can swing safely free anywhere the ropes and branches will allow. It is the same kind of gear he uses for his arborist work, and is different from rock climbing equipment, which primarily supports the legs and hips.

He teaches me the ropes, literally: explaining how to step into a loop, pull one side of the rope down, stand in the loop, and thereby lift myself up half a meter at a time under my own power. Raise the loop, step again. Occasionally set a knot in the rope below me, as a safety catch.

It's an easy, rhythmic process once I get the hang of it. Step into the loop, bring the outside rope down, stand in the loop, and go up. Look down. Wow. The leaf-littered ground seems far below.

I recall the sensation of being in a hot air balloon, standing still, in silence, 3000 feet above the ground. There, I could feel little but stillness and the rough wicker basket beneath my hands. Here, I can feel the wind swing the branch from which I'm suspended. I bounce a little with its sway. It's like riding a gentle swell, the wind lapping at the branches, me bobbing like an apple.

I experiment with swinging. It's scary, at first, to trust the harness to hold and the ropes to bring me back to center. To trust that I won't swung so far as to whack myself into a branch behind me or spin a foot into something at the side. And fun, too, once I relax into it.

I move the foot loop up another half a meter, step, slide, rise higher. Concentrating only on the ropes that I'm manipulating, I have no sensation of going anywhere. It is only when I pause, rest, look around, that I can see how far I've come and that I'm almost high enough to clamber onto the first big branch.

By its thickness, this branch is maybe 100 years old. Sturdy. Pliable in the wind. Its rough bark is easy to get a grip on with hand and boot. I pull my ropes higher and climb on to find a handhold and a standing spot.

The wind is picking up, and I prop against the trunk to feel a surprising amount of sway. I never knew how much a tree's entire body responds to its environment.

Paul wants me to lean back into the harness, away from the tree, propping my legs like an easel on the branch. He makes it look easy. I'm thinking the ropes are too short to enable me to do this, I need more slack. I give myself more. It doesn't work. I only feel more precariously balanced.

I shorten the line and squat tentatively on the branch, feeling the pull of the harness against my waist. No way I can lean back...nowhere to go on this short tether. This isn't going to work. Slowly, hesitantly, I stand...and understand.

By using the support, I am able to brace against the tree, to stand and turn, and, if I like, to release the tension and balance on the trunk. That last bit I'm not quite ready for, and I get to another part of the tree by clinging more than I suspect is necessary, while Paul skips around me like a monkey on a loose leash.

I learn a lot by watching him, and I put it to use hauling myself out of the hammock later, using the ropes and my feet as well as the harness. The hammock is about 25' up, a cradle hanging in the breeze. "When the bough breaks--" No, don't go there.

Paul has brought up a book for me to read. I decide to just lay back and look up into the late-day sky through the branches. Paul leaves me there for as long as I want to stay.

When I call out that I'm ready to come down, Paul rappels up with enviable speed. He reminds me how to release the rope in gentle slides, undoing my emergency stop-knots as I go, and I glide down with more grace and speed than I expected.

As I drink cooling tea and finish off the sweet, robust energy bars his wife has made, Paul collects and folds the equipment and sends a retrieval rope up the tree for the next climb. We haul the picnic basket, bags of gear, and helmets over the fence and back to his car, and he takes me on a scenic tour to the bus station, where a bus to Sandown is right there waiting.

On the ride back, I am able to assess what I've just accomplished. I'm feeling proud of myself and happy. And a twinge of disappointment: I could have been more daring than I was, could have practiced more stands on the branches, could have tried the climb between two trees that Paul had set up.

I catch myself in this moment of self-judgment. Yes, I am usually cautious the first time I try things out. A spiritual reader, Joan, observed that the first time she met me. I need information to know what to expect might happen, to know that I'm safe before giving it my all.

I see now that it's OK for me to be that way in the world. I'm not missing out on anything by being cautious. I only miss out by not showing up, not being present, not participating at all.

This is what finding my center is all about. Feeling for the edges, living through their expansion, through the fear that they will never end, that this extreme will never end, that I'll never reclaim my center. Swinging to the edge of the rope and then trusting that I will come back.

The inescapably physical nature of the tree climb has taught my body what my head and heart are still learning--what it's like to go out on a literal limb and lean into support, to release and swing, free and fearless, knowing that I will return to center naturally, easily, and at the proper time.

This climb, simple as it was, granted me a new sense of my own balance. The next time you see a big old oak tree, look up: you might spot me skipping around like a monkey on a loose leash.

Walk the Beach, Play the Deal

I was to meet with Kim, the friend I met a few weeks ago in London, at 10:30a and drive to a shire farm and then around the island a bit, but we missed each other thanks to a communication vortex and Wight's flaky cellular system. We never got each other's verification calls and text messages, and we were each in different spots at the same meeting time.

Have therefore spent the past three hours walking and sitting at the beach. Walked the two miles from Sandown to Shanklin and had a bit of a cry at the steps at Hope Beach. Sat on some wooden steps and heard only the wind and waves and the bamboo wind chimes hanging from the hut rental place behind me.

So why the cry? Some lonely. Some scare to lean into the moments of just being OK to be here, to be alive, doing nothing. A great grief and awareness of my bitty particle on the planet whirling through space, held here by gravity alone.

I kept remembering the sense of belonging, being cared for, in group, in friends' arms; I can hear their voices telling me I'm enough, there's enough for me, this is all I need to be doing right now.

Resting into the wooden steps, hearing the chimes, feeling the wind, tears came to wash away the fear of leaning in. There's nowhere I need to go, nothing I need to do, no one I need to be except exactly where and who I am in this moment.


Rather than keep walking miles along the beach or finding a bazillion steps to climb, I took a lift straight up the cliffside to reach the Old Village of Shanklin, whose thatched buildings look straight out of Shakespeare's time. Sat outdoors to lunch at The Pencil Cottage. (I don't recommend this restaurant. Lousy soup, doughy scones, not enough jam provided.)

The umbrella-ed tables had sewing machine treadles as their base. Singer and Jones. Decorative wrought iron painted black with weathered planks as the tabletop. A small robin redbreast went after my bread. Timid, though, and didn't want to stay.

Stopped into the Chapter 1 pub (an old church) on the way back to Sandown and met a worker setting up for a local game of "Deal or No Deal," a game show I'd seen on TV last night. He told me it started at 8:30, and invited me to come along. Don't know about that one yet.

Rode a bus back to the hotel and had my flaky TV replaced, and then napped. Decided to go to the pub for the game; "Say yes" has been my motto on this trip. Better than staying in my room all night. I'm a little anxious about this idea though...evening visits at pubs aren't my thing, and this could be a disaster if I don't meet up with folks.

I am heartily welcomed at the pub by Stuart, the same fellow I'd talked to earlier. He introduces me to a group at a nearby table, and they all take me in as "Audrey The American." Most of them are imports from the London area. All of them are the salt of the earth.

At my table are Joe, Sue, Angie (Joe's wife), Steve (Sue's boyfriend), and Andy, all friends of Stuart (alas, not pictured). We joined the rest of the patrons playing video Bingo, Keys in the Safe, and three rounds of "Deal or No Deal" nearly all night.

The game show is simple: 22 sealed boxes, each containing a card with a dollar value. There are 11 low-dollar values in blue, ranging from 0 to £5; and 11 high-dollar values in red, ranging from £10-£90 plus an unknown jackpot amount--in the past this has been as high as £274. The TV version uses much higher stakes, of course, and they play for up to £100,000.

A player is drawn by raffle, selects a sealed box, and keeps it at his table in the center of play. He then chooses other boxes one at a time and selects people from the audience to open them. Getting blue (low) values is better than getting red (higher) values.

As more boxes are opened, the banker (Stuart, hidden away upstairs) calls in an offer to the emcee on the cell phone. The offer is always less than the highest amount still left to be found, which may, of course, be in the box the player has chosen. The contestant can accept the offer or keep playing--hence the name "Deal or No Deal?"

I bought £3 of raffle tickets for a chance to be a contestant and was just as glad that I didn't get called. But late in the third game, the players selected me to open one of the boxes, and it was blue (low number--very good), and one of them was so jazzed that he jumped off his chair and ran up to hug me in thanks.

Great fun and lots of laughter, and I was glad I stayed until 11:30 to see the last game through. Having outlasted the bus system, I took a taxi back to the hotel--a gift in itself, for the driver was a friend of Sue's, and my friends at the table spontaneously contributed to the tab.

Wight On

Today's train has only two cars! A mother and her toddler sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" ahead of me in the carriage. I wonder if they're the same mother and child I heard singing on the bus to St Michael's.


I'm aiming for Portsmouth, where I'll take a ferry to Wight. They run regularly, the ferries do, and the land and water transit groups do a good job of coordinating times. Portsmouth has some interesting buildings as well as beach front.

The ferry from Portsmouth is like a DC-10 interior but without the drop-down tables--two aisles with a row of five or six seats in the middle. The water is fast and smooth, but the chop at the landing pier had many of us grasping rails, walls and seats for balance while disembarking. A dalmation puppy onboard was all flailing feet at one point.

My hotel on Wight is a 5-minute walk from Sandown, which is about 20 minutes from the pier by a very bumpy train that's more like an obsolete subway brought above ground, or an aging coaster stretched out flat. Rickety-rackitta, rickety-rackitta all along the rails. The conductor slams doors with gusto as he moves from car to car to collect fares, and then mashes a set of three buttons at each station to bring us to a halt and open doors.

My hotel is The Malvern on Leed St. I am greeted in the lobby by a large bronze statue on a sideboard--an elephant-headed, multi-armed Indian god standing on a row of rearing cobras. It is surrounded by other gleaming bronze statues of India persuasion. The proprietors are gracious and kind and in the middle of renovating a six-bedroom house next door for a B&B.

I had a choice of a twin, en suite room in the hotel, knowing that 26 children and 4 teachers are coming for the next two nights, or of staying in the under-reconstruction house in a room that contains three twin beds, a bathroom down the hall that's so big it dwarfs the clawfoot tub that sits in the middle, a shower upstairs, and piles of dismantled dressers and wooden planks in the rest of the place. I would have had the whole house to myself.

I declined the larger space. No fun living alone in a construction zone. Besides, the kid time will be nutty and fun to experience.

I walked town a bit after getting myself settled into my room and making calls to arrange my Scotland time. Got a B&B in Dumfries and hope to schedule a hostel in Inveraray and Glasgow. Also checking into the WWOOFer service opportunity in Torlundy at Fort William.

The beach today was packed. Sandown is a destination spot for Brits on holiday, and it has over a mile of beach that's only a few blocks from my hotel. Coaches were dropping people--mostly families and elderly--at the beachfront hotels.

The sand here is the same color as Bath stone--dark creamy yellow, like a light curry, or ground-up Bath buildings. Lots of orange and gray flintstone in the whole south of England, too. The flintstone has a smooth white outer layer; break it open and the color of carnelian or transluscent slate shows up. People use big chunks of it to build their garden walls. Their smooth slices invite fingers to touch, and I half expect them to be sticky like chunks of rock candy or toffee.

There's an arcade on the pier--video games, casino, gambling machines that push coins off a ledge as you drop them in. Maddening, that one. People stood at it for half an hour at a time, feeding tuppence or fifty pence coins, watching a tray move back to front while the coins pushed each other forward and over the edge a molecule at a time.

The place also has an arcade shoot-'em-up that you play with your feet, dancing a mad jig on a grid of four pads to shoot guns at the enemy. You hang on to a bar behind you to keep your balance. By the looks of it, its grander purpose is to give teenage boys the chance to watch pony-tailed teenage girls jiggle up and down on the platform.




Played a game of indoor "adventure golf"--a themed miniature golf game that, in this very crowded venue, consists of 11 holes ingeniously contrived in 3-D space. I traveled up and down stairs following a different set of wild animal tracks for each hole--wolf, deer, cougar, raccoon, etc.

The set is designed like something you'd get if you turned a Rainforest Café into a miniature golf course. Lifesize stuffed animals, flashing lightning, forest foliage, yowling jungle monkeys, grotesque stone masks leering down from aztec-like ruins. I half expected to see Indiana Jones swinging from a vine, archeological prize in hand. Pretty engaging as these things go, although the greens themselves were tame.

Am eating supper at Simply Scrumptious on High St, one block from the beach. A very cheesy macaroni and cheese, made with white cheddar and gorgonzola, it tastes like. Salad has sprouts (uncommon here) and "rocket" (arugula), which is as ubiquitous as cole slaw here.

While going home walking, I went to the Spar and got Lotto based on a lotto card that someone threw away in Salisbury on Friday's draw. I picked it up for fun and did Mega and regular Lotto for £11 over the next few weeks.

If you don't ever hear from me again, I won.

Salisbury Stakeout

This is Raymond. He's a waste management worker in Salisbury and is so proud of his job that when I asked for his photo after talking with him a few minutes in the car park (a public parking lot), he headed straight for his cart to pose.

We met because I needed directions to Sarum Mound, a walk that takes about an hour and a half from the center of Salisbury. It goes along the Avon River out of town, turns through a nature sanctuary (a grassy park on the other side of the river), and then heads along a public footpath to the Mound.

"You're American," he announces with the certainty of Sherlock Holmes. "Where are you from?"

"Seattle."

"Oh, I've seen that movie."

He is grinning toothily. It takes me a moment to cotton on. "Right," I say. "Sleepless in Seattle."

"I know all about America from the movies," says Raymond. "I've collected hundreds of American movies on DVD for when I retire." He is 65 and being forced to retire in a month because his contract isn't being renewed. He wants to get a part-time job, maybe at a store, for "something to do."

"I like animal movies. They make me cry," he says as he mock-weeps and wrings out an imaginary hankie. "I'm proud of Lassie as an English film. I love dogs. I'm daft about dogs."

We spend a few minutes comparing movie notes, then I need to move on. After warning me of the trip's extensive length, Raymond tells me to watch for lots of Flintstone and Barney Rubble. He has a twinkle in his eye, and although I'm not sure I heard him correctly and whether to take this as a warning or another American joke, I play along, wave goodbye, and head out.


Along the Avon, I meet a 95 year-old lady who feeds the swans leftover bread once or twice a week. She doesn't look a day over 70. Her two daughters run a B&B in Salisbury.

Next I meet a lovely dark, short-haired golden retriever named Dempsey at the nature sanctuary. He had charged over the hill with a branch in his mouth and plunged into the river. He swam around after duck feathers and fluff.

His owner soon came over the hill. He told me about the Checkers, the part of Salisbury that was built on a grid, unlike the usual Middle Ages towns that grew up willy-nilly. That would explain the more open feeling of this city over Bath.

New (as in current) Salisbury was actually planned. It had been moved from the old Sarum Mound spot by a bishop who wanted a cathedral separate from the castle. Sarum Mound has foundation remnants of both.

The nature sanctuary is mostly along the river, and I paused to pick up feathers from wood pigeons and watch a little waterbird gather grasses and reeds for her nest. She swam so fast that she was often out of view of the camera by the time I had gathered enough wits to click the shutter each time she reappeared. A bicycle had been dumped into the river at that location, and I liked its contrast to her natural task at hand.

Once I got out from the park, the walking route to the Mound was tedious and hot. Just a very narrow, gravelly footpath running between overgrown nettles and shrubbery. Warm, still air and no view because of the tunnel of overgrowth.



The Mound itself is like walking over a manicured archeological site. The wall remnants are interesting, because it is mostly the core flint rock (rubble and flint stone--now I get it, Raymond) several feet thick. The smooth facing-stones are almost all gone, taken away ages ago for other building projects. The remaining flint stone has sharp edges and faces, and the whole thing sparkles in the sun like wads of crumpled aluminum foil.

The earthworks are impressive--deep motte and broad bailey that once housed a courtyard, well, tower, king's quarters, etc. The place has history dating from the Stone Age through Celts, Saxons, Vikings, and on forward.

The site itself, though, baffles my level of interest. There's not much here, and archeology of the 1910s has uncovered, say, one portion of a foundation wall and declared, "Oh, this was once a great hall where the Norman king would have judged his subjects," or some such. I feel like I'm viewing a dinosaur conjectured from a tooth fragment.

I wonder if someday we won't be able to tour these kinds of sites as giant walk-through holograms. I'm having a hard time putting height and clarity into this site. The interpretive signs don't include a 3-D model, and the whole place doesn't look like much more than a grassy park with a few partial, unfaced walls and spectacular views.

Frankly, I feel bored by all this, and I wonder why. My energy and curiosity and enthusiasm for life today seem drained. How could I have become so inured? Travel is supposed to be exciting, adventurous. Every moment is new. I want to see it up close. I want to take it all in from afar. I'd like to be in the middle of it, interacting.

Yet so much of what others seem to enjoy bores me at this moment. Shopping. Archeological history. Walking around this site. Being without a traveling companion.

Yeah, that's tedious sometimes. Always being alone. Sure, I talk to people. Good moments. Good reminders of my connectedness to the world. And, foolishly, I keep looking outside of myself for the partner, the companion. Are you the one? You? Or you? Travel seems to be an inefficient way to make long-term relationships. Rarely in one place very long. No time to grow anything. Except my Self from the inside out, which is the most important reason to travel alone.

Relaxed eyes. I can't seem to relax my eyes today. I’m frowning a lot. Concentration. Focus. Sunlight. Intensity.

Maybe it's the heat. I prop myself against a knee-high wall and nap in its meager 1 o'clock shade, then wander into town for a bit of shopping. I need an extra T-shirt to wear when the rest of my stuff is in the laundry. I find a bright pink one in Marks & Spencer. Got hot just standing in stores, and I couldn't take much of that this afternoon.



I hadn't really intended to, but I went to Salisbury Cathedral and wander around. This is the first cathedral I've been to that allows cameras. Took photos of stained glass and got to listen to the choir practice before they went in to get dressed for the 5:30pm evensong service.

Sign in the gift shop: "Those who look outward dream; those who look inward awaken." --Jung.

Hmmm.




The atmosphere at Salisbury Cathedral is different from Bath Abbey. I like the cloisters here. The abbey doesn't have them. Westminster in London has them. I had modeled the House of Solitaries after them in the book. The cool stone seats of the cloister felt good in the heat today. I smiled at the carving of a cat in a low wall in the cloister. Did some animal-loving monk leave this mark hundreds of years ago?

Yay--they have a 3D model of Old Sarum out here in the cloisters. Now I can see how the whole mound had acted as a village site, with a cathedral and castle surrounded by homes, workshops, etc. A right village it was.

Decided to stay for the evensong service, especially since visitors were allowed to sit in the quire (choir) area of the church, which put me right next to the singers and right across from the amazing pipe organ, which I also tape recorded. The organist played a freeform contemporary tune until the service started, and the music swelled everywhere around us.


Each person sat in a tall, elaborately carved oak seat that’s named and has a coat of arms on it. We even had needlepoint cushions to sit on. Was feeling slightly headachy from the heat, but the need to pay attention to the cues of the service--stand up, sit down, stand up, follow along from one of three music and reading books, listen to the beautiful singers and soloists--kept my attention off of it.

Ate dinner at the Red Lion hotel, which has been around since 1220, when it used to house workers while they built the cathedral. Followed instinct to go there, and ended up dining with Ken and Jeanette from Iowa. Their son is at Oxford and marrying a Brit soon. Ken golfs at St Andrews every year in an international team tournament, and they had just returned from that event in Scotland.

The last vestiges of my solitary mood lifted in their company, and my headache eased with a good dinner of salmon, capers, and fresh cream on a baguette and a refreshing Pimms (a summer drink of fruit, brandy or gin, and lemonade--think British sangria).

Well fed and fully walked-out for the day, I returned to the hostel feeling a lot better about the world and my place in it. The second fruity Pimms may have helped some, too (grin).

On to Salisbury

Am on a train now from Plymouth to Salisbury, via Exeter St David. Just left the coastal region. The stone here is brick-red cliffs, so buildings have changed to reds from the Cornwall granite gray and Bath's sandstone cream.

I'm working my way to the Isle of Wight and right now am feeling prickly and grumpy, thinking that I've wasted my two days in Devon. My original intent had been to get into to the heart of Dartmoor National Park, to walk among standing stones and take a trail or two over the moors. Landing in Lydford was the easiest path for rail and bus and put me at the northwest edge of the Dartmoor region. I don't want to rent a car on this trip, and found that getting to the interior without one is time-consuming--it takes buses, walking, excessive scheduling, etc.

I feel disappointed that I didn't get there as planned, yet I enjoyed the journeys I did take in Devon. I was in the right place at the right time, even though I'm not sure why. I suppose it's enough that I met lovely people on my walks--the Lydford neighborlady painting her window sashes, Janet and Trisha inviting me in for tea, and Elenor and Alex from Scotland. Plus I got a big dose of clarity on what's right for me to do next--set aside six months to finish Sigil and be done with it.

So here I am, I'm heading to Salisbury for two nights before the Wight tree climbing. My gray mood tells me I'm only going there to kill time before my prebooked Wight stay. My bones tell me it's the place I'm supposed to go next.

I could have chosen a different path toward Wight, but Salisbury crossed my radar from a BBC show about Britain's building history. Salisbury has the UK's tallest church tower, an add-on that weighs so much that it's buckling parts of the rest of the cathedral.

I'm to do some Internet there. And something else I don't know about yet. Some appointment or two I need to keep.

"Take the weather with you" sang a rock band over the radio while I was in Cornwall. I have indeed been doing that, with lovely sunshine following me since I left Bath. I've got a right decent farmer's tan now.

The Salisbury YHA is a 20-minute walk from the train station, and almost across the street from the B&B where I stay tomorrow night.

I like Salisbury as a walking town. It's energetic, with plenty of new to go along with the old. It reminds me of Bath, only a little more open-plan. The buildings don't feel as tall or the roads as winding or closed in.

It's definitely better than Okehamption. What was with Okehampton? Aside from the footballers, it was a ho-hum place.

Found the one Internet café in town and spent two and a half hours this evening getting half of my Bath blogs up and checking e-mail.

I'm enjoying this kind of writing--the intent to share myself and my experiences with my friends--and am trying out a new way of working with it...jotting throughout the day, and giving myself time in the morning or evening to process it all.

I've enjoyed not having to write for the past month, now that I'm without clients for a while...I've only done it when I felt like it, really. Now I'm doing it because I want to, instead of because I'm supposed to. I like that.

Went to a play this evening--a Salisbury College production called "Playhouse Creatures." Very finely done with a cast of five. It's about women being in the theatre in the days just after Shakespeare--the trials and tribulations of being female and in that environment, with its realities of prostitution and starving artists, and is loosely centered around a true story of Nell Gwynne, a young actress who became the king's mistress while the leading lady aged out of her job.

Not sure what I'll do tomorrow--I want to stay out of the touristy things, but the heart of the city is easy to cover in a day by foot, and I'm feeling the need to keep myself occupied and "out there" rather than holed up in the hostel or a coffee shop all day.

Once thing's sure--I won't be singing for my supper, since busking--public performance for money--is frowned on here.