Three Glimmers | 04.25

Snapshots of joy from a puddle of blossom.

Welcome to The Autumn Chronicles, a place to shine a light on all the wonder around us as we navigate the seasons. I hope these writings allow you to sit quietly with a cup of something warm and comforting and take a few moments for yourself away from the rush and hurry. If you would like to make sure you get all newsletters directly to your inbox, please subscribe below. Thank you for being here. All photos © The Autumn Chronicles.

April has been a delight. The weather here in the UK has been warm and we’ve had many days with gorgeous, clear blue skies. It finally feels like we have turned a corner after the dull, colourless days of winter and the sunshine has been a much-needed balm for my soul. I always like this time of year because we start to get into Bank Holiday season and, one of the ways I cope with what can sometimes be a stressful job, is to make sure I know when my next days off will be so I can have something to look forward to. We are lucky in the UK to have four Bank Holidays across April and May (two for Easter in April and two in May - one at the beginning and one at the end). It feels like a reward for making it through the cold and the dark, a prize at the end of what often feels like an interminable slog through fog and frost.

Spring has ushered in cerulean skies, blossom the colour of candy floss and trees dressed in shades of jade, fern and moss. It is the renewal of colour that I like most at this time of year and that I appreciate even more, coming as it does on the back of months of a world tinged grey. In the spirit of living life in full technicolour again, here are this month’s glimmers from a world en plein printemps (in the Northern Hemisphere at least).

Flowers

One of the best things about living in a major city is the vast choice of things to do, see and eat. As I get older and my pace of life gets intentionally slower, I have started to seek out exhibitions at the various museums and art galleries that are prevalent in London as a way to offset the mundanity of daily life and to feed into my need for a cultural outlet. I can feel my 20-year old self shuddering in horror but this is who I am now and I am here for it.

Flowers at the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea was the best exhibition I have seen in a long time. Across nine gorgeously curated galleries, the exhibits explore the role that flowers have played, and continue to play, in our search for significance and meaning. With reference to art, textiles, literature, photography, film and fashion among other media, the exhibition seeks to understand how flowers have informed our cultural understanding and how they have influenced the way we interpret the world. Two of my favourite pieces (pictured above) were by an artist called Grace Gillespie who specialises in linocuts. Since my visit to the exhibition, it has become a dream of mine to own one of her pieces one day.

One of the galleries was devoted to a piece called La Fleur Morte by Rebecca Louise Law, encompassing over 100,000 dried flowers woven together with copper wire. The idea of the piece was to investigate the liminal space between life and death, showcasing our connection to nature through the use of flowers that are no less beautiful for the fact that their form has evolved. To me, the fine, delicate copper wire shows the fragility of our connection and how easily it can be bent or frayed if we don’t prioritise and care for it.

DJ Yoda

My husband celebrated his 50th birthday at the end of January and, given his love of 80s music, I got him tickets to see DJ Yoda’s 80s Mixtape live at the Royal Festival Hall as part of his present. Music has always been an area where we have differed and where there has been little cross over throughout the course of our relationship. My husband used to be a semi-professional trance and house DJ in his wilder days and I am a fully certified pop princess who wouldn’t know a 303 if it came and poked me on the arm.

80s and early 90s music is the one sweet spot that has something for both of us. Neither of us was really sure what to expect before we went but in the spirit of trying something new, and of making big birthdays into a multi-month celebration, off we went. Reader, it was wonderful. There was plenty of commercial pop for me and lots of nostalgic memories for my husband as the show cast a spotlight on songs from his teenage years. Given that we have a ten year age gap, it’s often difficult to find shared memories from our childhoods because when I was in my first year of primary school, he was taking his GCSEs, so our frames of reference don’t have much crossover. It is always wonderful, therefore, to find a moment that unlocks echoes of the past for both of us.

Blossom

I know I’ve written before about my love for spring flowers but it feels as if the blossom has been that bit more exceptional this year. One of the things I love most is that the flowers at this time of year come in stages (or, at least near me they do!); once the daffodils have finished and the magnolia has flowered, the tulips will come. Once the tulips have had their moment, the cherry and the wisteria will follow in short order. It means there is always something to look forward to and to notice. The beauty is always in the details.

Where I live, there is a long road between towns that is bordered on both sides by cherry trees - a masterful feat of street tree planning by the local council. Every spring, the trees blossom until they are laden with spun sugar petals the colour of bubblegum in clusters that look like a bridesmaid’s pomander. In the autumn, the leaves turn gorgeous shades of flame and bronze so they have a wonderful ability to capture your attention whatever the season. Wisteria is another seasonal favourite with its cascading tendrils of lavender flowers. I discovered the wisteria in the photo above on a walk from Islington to Limehouse Basin along Regent’s Canal. It covered almost one whole side of a brick building and there was something so perfect about the juxtaposition of beauty and function.

Next Steps for The Autumn Chronicles

Thank you so much to all of you who voted in the polls I added to March’s glimmer round up. It was really insightful to understand what you enjoy about The Autumn Chronicles and what you think could be honed for the future. I have been struggling for a while with publishing on a weekly cadence and to feel good about the writing I do in order to stick to this schedule. I often feel I am publishing for the sake of it, because consistency is important, because I don’t want to let people (or myself) down, because I have now set the expectation and the unrelenting standards I subject myself to mean that I can’t let myself do anything less.

As spring weaves a golden thread around my days and I spend more of the time I am not at work making the most of the daylight and the sunshine, I am going to experiment with publishing a couple of times a month instead of weekly. The idea behind this is that I will really be able to write about subjects and themes that I am passionate about and to be able to give them the time and attention they deserve, rather than trying to cram them in on top of a full time job that quite often leaves me creatively stilted. I hope, by trying this out, it will mean better quality writing, more interesting, thoughtfully curated pieces and letters from a friend that you are always excited to read.

I will continue to publish my Three Glimmers at the end of every month to try to showcase the best of each season and, for my other monthly piece, it will change depending on where I am, what I am doing and what has spoken to me but will still be consistent with the ethos of The Autumn Chronicles. I really hope you will continue to be a part of this community and that you will enjoy all that is to come in future. I have some ideas that I am really excited about once I give myself the headspace and time to properly commit to them.

In keeping with the spirit of flowers that has woven its way through my glimmers for this month, I wanted to pull an oracle card for the upcoming month of May. I have been using this deck for a few months now and I love both the block print flower designs on the cards and the harmony and calm that comes from taking guidance from the natural world. My card for May was the red rose of devotion:

This card symbolises romantic love but also the opportunity to heal and to find comfort and security. It indicates a need to take care of yourself, to ensure that you look outside yourself to properly understand the needs of others as well as recognising the importance of healing emotional wounds to ensure you do not fall victim to energies that may do more to harm you than restore you.

When I think about this card in relation to my life, I can see an immediate synergy between needing to balance my work and personal lives. I am all too often consumed by work, or things that have happened at work, and that leads to an imbalance in other areas of my life and to bad habits that I am working on trying to tame. I am not good at self soothing in a positive, constructive way and taking more time to ensure I heal old wounds will have a profound impact in all areas of my life. Sometimes we don’t realise how deep our scars run and life is so frenetic that stopping to examine how they affect us is always deprioritised in our haste to cross the next thing off our to do lists. The energy that I will take into May is the need to slow down, to focus on my emotional as well as my physical health, to examine why certain impulses and anxieties are my current driving force and to tend to those around me with extra care and attention.

I’d love to know: what, if anything, does this oracle card mean for you as we head into May?

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You might have missed…

If you’d like to catch up with last month’s glimmers, you can do so here:

If you missed last week’s post, co-authored with the lovely

Emily Male

of Generosity of Spirit, you can find it here:

If you are curious as to how to re-frame the greyness of winter, this post might offer a nice starting point:

If you have enjoyed this post or if something has resonated with you, please share to help others find The Autumn Chronicles. I am so grateful to you for being here and for choosing to read these words.