Category Archives: Therapy

Fundraising progress (£1500 and rising!) and the elasticity of time

Mar 21

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Audi at the helm. Where she has always liked to be...

Two weeks today, and I’m off. Blimey.

Moscow, Beijing and beyond beckon, and nerves both emotionally and physically seem to be charging up, as I bid farewell to my very-nearly-85-year-old Mum (on the right at Braunston last weekend having a go at the tiller of our narrowboat the Molly May), and both greet and also very shortly thereafter wave goodbye to daughter Katharine, briefly over in the UK from her new New Zealand home with her partner Mela.

Self and Mater aboard Molly May

To these two, we meet again in September – an aeon, an awful lot of kilometres, but also just a tiny skip away.

And to Mum – hang on in there. It’s the longest we’ll not have seen each other since my correspondent days in the 80s, but six months will be gone in a flash.

So, suddenly it’s all very serious, prompting me to note just how curiously time stretches, elongates, contracts at times like this, as affairs are tidied up, relationships packaged ready for departure, as body and muscles and, again, nerves, are stretched and exercised ready for 60-80 miles a day, and I get used to the idea of a long separation from partner, friends, choirs, family… Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Canals, Cirencester, Cycling, EMDR, Mainstream, Therapy, Wychcroft

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26 days to go: Client endings & sobering reminder why maybe best to have quit journalism

Mar 9

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The Client's Chair

With a rapidly closing 26 days to go until I pedal into the sunrise (going East, after all), three things to muse about in this weekend’s blog:

  • The ending (at least for now) of the work of therapy during this coming week with some 20 brave individuals who’ve sat in that green chair in the CCPE’s 4th floor room 41 near Paddington for months and sometimes years, sharing profound personal journeys;
  • A reminder from my old journalist friend Graham Earnshaw, now in Shanghai, of why perhaps it was a good thing for all concerned that I quit the work of the correspondent in 1992; and
  • Chook alert (read on…)

First, the all-of-a-sudden winding down of psychotherapy at a time of my rather than my clients’ choosing is proving an extraordinary, and in some ways surprisingly rewarding experience, for many of those I work with as well as for me.

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Posted in BBC, China, Cycling, Mainstream, Therapy

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Raven – a Thorn bicycle made for the longest of distances

Feb 25

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Raven atop Minchinhampton Common

Cycling over to Stroud for my penultimate psychotherapy supervision session before heading off on (change of date) Wednesday April 4 prompted thoughts about a) the (at least temporary) ending of therapy for so many of my clients at once, and at a time not of their choosing, and b) the bike I’ll be using to cycle to Moscow, and then, with luck and a following wind, down through China.

I’ll post separately and later on the challenges of bringing therapy to an end as elegantly and supportively as possible – and finding just how powerfully and positively almost all the wonderful and brave people I work with are rising to that challenge of sorting stuff while there’s time.

But here, may I introduce the object with which I am to have an even closer  relationship for the months of April to August, going by the name of Raven – my extremely sturdy black steel steed, veteran of 4000 miles to Budapest and back and of 500 miles into Scotland a couple of years ago, and my all-time favourite bicycle. Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Cycling, Mainstream, Therapy

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Early MLB setting out in life

Continuing my journey back to the images of childhood, before setting out for six months on the road at 62, I can’t resist posting a couple of evocative pictures from the very early years, at Duckshole Farm near Holt in North Norfolk – causing my brother Hugh early grief, but already displaying the instincts of the traveller.

Looking at these pictures for the very first time 60 years on does make me reflect on how memory is constructed.

The picture above might in fact illustrate what I’ve always thought of my first memory, setting off down the lane at Duckshole to the gate onto the road to Holt, wanting to follow my father into town. Clearly preparing to a grown-up and set off on my own… (more…)

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