Good morning my dear friends!
Something beautiful is falling into place for me. Such an amazing thing to have happen and I can feel the healing of it already.

But I had to do something pretty drastic to make space for it.

So I’m passing this little prayer/meme down the line to you.

​Here’s to beautiful things! We cannot change the state of the world, but maybe adding our own little touch of beauty can make a difference, even if it’s just smiling at someone in the street.
​Have a wonderful week my lovelies. Kxx

Phew! What an amazing week and weekend that was!
The twin joys of Choir Of Man on Wednesday and Candide on Thursday. A weekend of splendid company, food and wine and music, music, music with Poulenc and Frank Bridge my personal favourites. 
And of course my own students bringing in everything from In LA (Fame) to Grieg.
Loving life so full of such joys.
......Lazing on a bean-bag out on the front lawn of Peppers…..

Play on, play on, for the food of love you are,
Play on, Thus the Muse may kiss the star
And take us all to realms, far
From the muddling, maddling crowd.
(Well, I’m sure Tom Hardy won’t mind!!🤣)

Play on, play on, for you our souls beguile,
Play on, With you our hearts will smile,
And care begone awhile,
Smoothed and soothed the furrowed brow.
Play on, play on, for you are all delight,
Play on, Though long our journey’s night,
Clear-eyed and clear of sight,
These moments; this moment, here and now.
KS February 2024

Out you go lovelies and "play on" with whatsoever and whomsoever crosses your path, musically or otherwise.
Love to all and have a fabulous week.
Drink lots (water!!!)
​Kxx

Drum roll……..today I give you the glorious Helen BC, first spotted trotting around with Dame Maggie in A Room With A View way back and still splendid in every way as Nicky’s Mum in One Life. The way she nails the dour little bureaucrat to his desk is withering and her one liner about the Number 28 bus from Hamstead, is pure gold.

(And then of course there’s Sir Anthony….!)

Love Helen’s take on life, though I beg to differ on the matter of hand writing! Mine would have to be the equivalent of the banana gaffered to the wall at the NGV.
Call that art? Although maybe the banana is not dissimilar to the aforementioned bureaucrat!
But yes, let each little moment be a work of art; sweat the small stuff, but in a good way. Not wishing to trivialise the tricky bits of course, but smile and Be Like Pamela through it all.
Have a lovely week.
Love to all,
Kxx
​HBC - copied here for easier reading.
“I think everything in life is art. What you do. How you dress. The way you love someone, and how you talk. Your smile and your personality. What you believe in, and all your dreams. The way you drink your tea. How you decorate your home. Or party. Your grocery list. The food you make. How your writing looks. And the way you feel. Life is art.”

Are we ever ready?
​For anything?
Today most of us in the teaching game start back.

I know I’m not ready.
Have butterflies, full of doubt, imposter syndrome…..

My personal history reminds me that I feel like this every year and every year as soon as my first student rocks in and I say take a “Surprised, Silent, Smiley” breath, I’m there, in the zone.
So that’s old news.

Today, I’m contemplating a new leap into the unknown, yet somehow fully known. Scared to death. If I had any sense I would have kept it a secret instead of mouthing off about it. Give myself a chance undercover.

But, I think saying I must write, makes it a reality.

Many years ago, just before I headed off to Toronto, still aching, still deeply grieving, some dear soul popped a beautiful book into my letterbox. “BEING, A Reminder From The Gods,” compiled by Susan Hayward.
Bless that person, whoever they are, wherever they are.

Today my mate Billy Blake speaks to me again from its pages.
“But if we fear to do the dictates of our Angels, and tremble at the tasks set before us, if we refuse to do Spiritual Acts because of Natural Fears and Desires!
Who can describe the dismal torment of such a state!”

​Sending you all love today as you embark on your journey, whether it be this day only, one day at a time, or something stretching into the future.
Kxx

I don’t usually remember my dreams. Only twice in my life have I had recurring dreams; the one I had in the 60s in which I was trying to deny that I was Jewish, having watched a documentary about the Holocaust. The interrogating officer said, “of course you’re Jewish, look at your father!”
(Irony of ironies to latterly discover from my DNA that my unknown Grandfather was indeed Jewish!)

And I had a recurring dream about frantically diving into the depths of the sea in search of Stace. Surely he was there somewhere, on the other side, standing in the light……

With that backdrop of exceptional cases of recurring dreams emanating from deep distress, it is interesting that I do remember two singular dreams that ultimately were inextricably linked.

The first, I’d had a baby and buried it in the back yard. I was quite matter of fact about it and called a friend and calmly told her what I’d done. She came round straight away and I pointed to the ground and the loose soil under which I’d buried my baby. “There, the baby’s under there,” I told her.
She took me to the police station and again I calmly told the Constable on duty what I’d done.
Then the dream skips to the court.
The thing is it was Stacey’s baby. Absolutely it was his and I had buried his baby in the back yard.

The defence lawyer claimed that I was somehow mentally deranged. But I said, “no, the baby was Stace’s, I’m completely in my right mind and this is what I have done.”

I had this dream before Stace died and at the time I assumed that I was burying the possibility of having a baby. Even though my bio-clock was ticking I honestly had no desire to have a child and Stace had his gorgeous girls already, so there was no way it was going to happen.
So I thought the dream was saying, “well that’s that then!”

Skip to the part where Stace had “shuffled off this mortal coil,” and the depths of my grief. (At some point I will enlarge upon all that….)

I had some beautiful counselling from several different people one of whom was a psychiatrist who specialised in dreams.
That wasn’t the reason I went to him. It was just that he was recommended by the counsellor assigned me by the Traffic Accident Commission once I’d used up my quota with her.

Peter O’Connor didn’t delve into the dream thing straight away and his question “do you remember your dreams?” was almost an aside really.
The searching for Stace dream was all I could come up with immediately, but then I said, “there is this weird one I had about burying Stace’s baby in the back yard.”
And so I told him about that dream and my assumption about what it might mean, if dreams HAVE to mean something. I was a bit cynical about it all if I’m honest.
Anyway, Peter told me that when women have dreams about babies, they’re actually dreaming about their creativity. He asserted that my belief that the baby was Stace’s was no word of a lie; that there was something I could do that was absolutely born from being with Stace, but that it wasn’t able to grow at that time and that I had indeed, quite consciously popped it away somewhere.
He also said that I would likely have an antidotal dream at some point.

Jump a couple of years to my early days in Toronto and the purchase of a book of Blake’s verse; my delight in rediscovering that extraordinary, visionary, artist, poet, mystic, philosopher and social commentator. And the thrill to also discover that I happen to share his birthday. (28th November, which was also the date of our Sossie Final Chorus as it happens…)
At about this time in 1999 I had the antidotal dream…..

I was at home in Somerset, riding a motorcycle towards Glastonbury. (For those who don’t know, Stace was killed while riding his motorcycle).
It was twilight when I passed a school playing field where there was a sort of farmer’s fair happening and I saw a little cub cowering in fear being trampled by a clod-hopping herd of cows. I dismounted and ran into the field and rescued the poor little thing and took it to a woman who seemed to be some kind of official. She was very busy and brusquely told me not to bother her.
Somehow I did divest myself of the cub and continued on my way. Once in Glastonbury I met up with my lovely Mac.Rob Chamber Voices and began warming them up for a performance. The woman from the fair had followed me, caught up with me and angrily shaking the cub by the scruff of its neck thrust it at me. I grabbed it, now realising it was a little tiger cub and I held it, warm and wriggling, under my jacket until it was soothed and snuggly and I knew I could never let it go again.

A while later, returning the way I’d come I dropped in on some very dear friends and told them what had happened. To my astonishment there were now several tiger cubs and I set them down in my friends’ garden. They advised that I should stick with the one I’d rescued and let the rest go into the wild. I can remember thinking, “well those others are probably still out there somewhere…..”

I had composed LAWA by this time. What followed was reams and reams of poetry and cascading KateSongs as I travelled further into my post Stacey life, taking with me my Muse that I named Blake. Tyger, tyger burning bright and all that!

I haven’t thought about this for years.
It is no small thing then, that the very first thing I did on this epic trip was to go to the New Getty with my new found cousin Kevin where we enjoyed a wonderful exhibition about William Blake….

And, whilst I have huge emotional swings about leaving ChoirKate and my beloved Sossies behind, I have never wavered that the time was right to turn the page and obey this pull towards my next chapter. Trust me there’s disbelief, fear and self-doubt a-plenty about it. I mean it seems to me an act of sheer audacity that I dare to suspect it possible that I may just, perhaps be, a writer?

​On the way to the Getty I told Kevin that my favourite William Blake quote goes like this - “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s. I will not reason or compare; my business is to create.”
Who would’ve thought we’d find it emblazoned on the wall. In red!!

Some will have noticed I have been noticeably unnoticeable for a few weeks now!🥴
Been fully occupied on this trip of trips. Four countries, four currencies, three time zones and ultimately 12 different beds in four and a half weeks!

​More of that I guess.....



Meantime, my trusty little red friend of countless air miles over ten years, has spat the dummy with three of its four wheels succumbing to the ravages of time over New Year.
With it I went backwards and forwards pretty much twice a year for a decade; crossing the globe to be with my little old lovelies as they struggled into their 90s, Dad caring for our ailing Mum for about five of those and then struggling with the reality of needing care for her and ultimately himself. That’s what did him in in the end. He literally worried himself to death!
Baby boomers will of course recognise the story of the pointy end.

And so, my little red friend, which was a cheapie BTW, has served me more than well. Someone with a mathematical brain might be able to come up with a number from all those above.
Where’s Phil DeLosa when I need him? 🤣
I hope the grand total correlates to the love in my heart. I suspect it will be found wanting.
Meanwhile, my smart new grey one sporting a red trim (score!!) I hope will see me through to my remaining globe trotting days.
Amazing adventures have heralded this new and unprecedented chapter. Gratitude and humility in spades to be seeing the possibilities of what may come.
Love to all for 2024 and whatever comes your way. Kxx

“Now I walk in beauty,
Beauty is before me,
Beauty is behind me,
​Above and below me.”
https://youtu.be/BtyYkmEQ1Jo?si=xNd5Dgz4ugtBPGiG
I have been beset by a foment of blessings, wonder, sadness, humility, gratitude, amazement, joy, uncertainty and my toes have suddenly decided to be arthritic! 🤣
So I might be hobbling in beauty sooner than I would like!

But all in all, confusing though that seething mélange may seem, life remains a thing of wonder and beauty to me.
I pinch myself.
I have too many words and too few that are in any way adequate.
Nonetheless to those who love this funny, often off-beat old gal, I thank you.
Let’s see what happens next……
Love to all and have a glorious week enjoying this and that; all things of beauty, little and large.
Kxx

Well I don’t know about you, but there have been times in my life when fear has gripped me.
This is such a time.
A big scary thing tomorrow, in the coming weeks and the unknown quantity of 2024.
Fear can be foisted upon us of course, but in this case I’m just making a change; it’s a conscious decision. But really it had its roots a couple of years ago when "something" came upon me.
I was napping on the couch (rare) when suddenly, “bang” - this thing made itself known loud and clear.
It’s happened a few times in my life and each time my reaction was “oh no, no,no, please go away.”
But that certainty was there to make a change and once felt, there was no getting away from it.
So there you have it lovelies.
Susan Jeffers’ book said it in the title. That’s one of those books that’s a quick read, you know, glancing at the cover is all you need to do.
Not sure how I will go swapping something I’ve done all my life for something which is completely unknown territory. And yet, it seems, I am compelled to move forward with it.

You can wish me luck. I might need it!
Love to all and have a brilliant week.
Kxx
​PS - I will still be teaching from the Vestry at Wesley and running my beloved Performance Skills Classes

Ah simplicity!
I confess I am far from simple according to that list, although I am reading a simple book at the moment. ✅

Is it possible to embrace simplicity when there’s creativity knocking around a person?
Certainly these days the tech involved with creativity ramps up complication at every turn like a kitten with a ball of wool.

With SOS finishing up next week I am turning a corner I guess, so we’ll see how that goes in the simplicity stakes. (Friends rolling their eyes and having a laugh at my expense!🤣)
Have a lovely week my lovelies. Apply the KISS rule of thumb. I will if you will!
​Love to all. Kxx