Cyclist & runner, lover of words, music and wild places. Coach & mentor. Associate with @Oasis_HR and @UK_ILN. Co-chair @CHWAlliance. Singer with @huddschoral
Joined October 2012
- Tweets4.6K
- Following661
- Followers451
- Likes5.1K
Pinned Tweet
I'm wondering if there might be a different way to ask this question.
How would it be if I asked the question 'what matters to you as you contemplate the prospect of retirement? What would be helpful to you in thinking through the choices that you might have?'
@Oasis_HR
Doing some work and thinking on meaning and purpose in later life; the third phase.
What feelings does the phrase 'coming home to myself' conjure up for you?
I would love to hear from anyone else who is thinking about this important and neglected stage of our lives 1/2
@Oasis_HR
Matthew Walsh retweeted
Just read it.
Spot On -
An Aussie reply to Trump’s rant about ‘NATO not being there for us’:
“Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage.
You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail.
Your life expectancy is going backwards. You're the only developed nation where that's happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker's stock to your mates.
Your minimum wage hasn't moved in 15 years. You've got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack you.
And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again.
And you're calling Greenland poorly run?
Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no.
"NATO wasn't there when we needed them." When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn't even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years.
And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess.
So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. The only thing poorly run in this picture is your fucking mouth.”
I joined counter.social and now I am insta-verifying my account. ONE-TIME CODE: 128786386
Silver birches sing
At the foot of the hill
In the deep blue
Of a springlike day
The trees of St Mungo
Are dressed in mistletoe
And the soft whisperings
Of sparkling goldfinches
Echo from the walls
1/2
#poetry
And it feels to me
That I am inside the music
Singing to spring
With the clarity
Of a cloudless sky
Stretching over me
Like a banner of love.
2/2
#poetry
A cold fire in the sky
Rose gold and white
Blows a cold wind
From the chilly east
The first few notes
Of a skylarks song
Shivering,
Almost unfurling
Something telling him
It's not quite time
The sun is not yet warm enough
To fill his heart with music
#poetry
1/2
Leave that to the winter geese
Grazing in the frost
And the Raven's low whisper
As he glides shining
Into the silver morning.
#poetry
2/2
Where is my joy
In this misty day
There's a soft wind blowing
And the crows play
On the very edge
Stalling and falling
Rescuing themselves
From peril.
I have the ocean on my mind
And love, as ever.
1/
What glory
On this winter morning
Rising with a ruby light
Out into the golden hills
I go.
Geese are calling from the lake
And silver gulls squabble
In the new dressed meadow.
1/2
Out into the teeth
Of a winter gale
I'm blizzard-blinded
A wild night chased away
By golden storm light
From the rising east.
1/2
Something is shifting
Deep down,
in the very heart of things
I feel a movement
Towards the light
Upon the rising of this sun
That knows no east or west
I feel the weight
of things changing.
1/2
A perfect winter dawn
A scattering of snow
On the tops
Frost crackles like little fires
Under humming tyres
A glacier of snow white cloud
Sits gentle in the valley
Holding its curves
In silken softness
1/2
A study in green and grey
Wild wind, wild water
Puddles, pools and torrents
Sodden fields lie drowned
In rippling floods
Gale blown rain
Blinding,
howling down
All from a leaden sky
Crows and gulls
Hang from the edges
Of wildness
Calling with joy
1/2