This morning I have two fruity magpies in the garden which proves that the days are pushing towards spring and that there has been enough time to retrospect the New Year.  I’m not a great believer in resolutions, but I ‘ve found that organically something takes root each year, even if it’s unintentional.  This years adaption has emerged like a fresh breeze, a feeling of wonder, a walk in the park:  One day a week, usually a Wednesday, I take something that has intrigued or justified further exploration and follow it back to it’s roots, taking in the offshoots along the way.  This week didn’t start with a person or a thought, but a podcast.  There are so many out there, the only stipulation was it had to last ten minutes – the time it takes to tidy a kitchen. I found ‘The Psychology behind with Dr Linda Papadopoulas’ I listened, enjoyed and went back for more. That’s when I found her interview with Jordan Stephens from the Rizzle Kicks,(also to be found on Spotify) the cheeky scamps of British hiphop remembered with joy and mental connections of summer fun and lazy days. This was overlaid with the memory of a talk Jordan gave about toxic masculinity, a subject normally avoided by your average rapper. It paved the way for an inspirational interview that leaves you rewinding it in your head for a long time afterwards.

The next step back along the chain was the original Ted talk: Everyone loves an underdog, given by Jordan that inspired Linda to interview him. It’s the anti-hot house talk that many parents need to hear, how expectation can be a killer of growth. In it he mentions an ex-girlfriend, Cecilia Knapp who’s a writer, and you’re in the moment thinking what is this bed of creativity that bled, fed and made these attitudes? So you follow the story because Cecilia Knapp has made a Ted Talk too.

And I can only hope that by now you are as blown away as I was by her talent, performance skill and art, revelling in her silky words, caught in the rhythm of her mesmeric story telling.

The final step was to her website, to find she regularly gives performances – and that’s where this story will end – a trip to a poetry reading given by Cecilia Knapp, because I’ve never been to one before.  But I couldn’t be more excited: There are times when the internet becomes a weapon of war, anger and destruction, but like most things, it has a flip side, a slip side where, with the slightest of pushes, a wondrous world of imagination awaits.

Laters, Kate x