Celebrations and a Daffodil

Last Wednesday, Mona, my mother, was 89 years old. The changes she has seen in her lifetime are immense! We took her and a dear friend of hers, Suzanne, to her favourite restaurant, The Ledbury. as soon as the staff realised it was her special occasion, a birthday (sugar tart & icecream) cake appeared with Happy 89th Birthday written around the rim of the plate. She felt very cherished.

We had a little drama last night. I realised that Magic must have been fighting again and suddenly had an enormously swollen cheek, so straight after dinner we whizzed him round to the emergency vet.

So we now have a very disgruntled little Magic, who is impersonating a daffodil. He must have said something rude to a big cat with mucky paws (Maybe: “Hey there, Mucky Paws! Puss off and clean up your act?”) and received a mucky smack in the face for his troubles. Anyway, it very quickly turned into an abscess, meaning he had to spend the night at the vet’s having a minor operation to sort it out and resulting in his having to wear a plastic collar for protection that makes him look like the proverbial little spring flower. We are not his favourite people at the moment. He holds us personally responsible for catnapping him and leaving him to the not-so-tender mercies of the Medivet Slasher.

Just back from a blissful holiday. We drove down to the South of France to Cassis just in time to cheer on the runners in their local Marathon (Marseilles to Cassis, 25 Km). There were some runners carrying wheelchair-bound folk and a wonderfully jaunty brass band on the quayside after the last runner had staggered into town. All the local folk turned out and cheered all the participants on, shouting "Bravo!" or "Allez, allez!" to everyone in the race. It was a very grueling race because it is all uphill from Marseiles for most of the way, then sharply downhill into Cassis.

We had stopped off in Reims (for the champagne) and Pérouges (for their special gallettes) on the way down, and returned via Macon & Épernay (for the champagne again) - so the car boot was full of bottles of Macon Villages, Pouilly Fuissé, Pommery........ I'll drink to that.

Back to work and thankful that I love my work. I have just written some feedback for the first year students' main written assignments and I feel so proud of them, they have done so well. Tonight I ran the Healing Clinic and all the students were really busy because there were so many people who came for healing. The energy that built up in the room was dazzling, and some lovely healing was taking place. Three of next year's students came and two of them received healing for the first time - and loved it! Still on the lookout for really good candidates for next year's Soul Therapy Course. Looking for people who want to develop their healing to national registration level and work in the most privileged and rewarding way that anyone could hope to do, in the service of Spirit. Someone once said that working for Spirit is fine, and the Retirement Plan is out of this world!

On Friday I met a lovely man called James Knight, who is the publisher of Hot Gossip Magazine. He likes my book, Eternal Sparrow: Poetry for love, laughter and life, and is going to publicise it in the magazine. I am extremely happy about that. Lynne, the owner of Rosie Brown Boutique, is also selling the book, as is Muswell Hill Bookshop. Charli has it on order too. People are contacting me and telling me which of the poems is their favourite, and that gives me quite a buzz. I have my favourites too, I suppose, for all sorts of different reasons.

The Sonnet, Italian Style, "The Orchid" seemed to write itself - it just flowed and the usual blood, sweat and thingummies were not needed - very unlike the haikus, so tight a discipline that at times I could hardly breathe with the effort of containing as rich a description as possible into three tiny and carefully limited lines.

The Grown Up Nursery Rhyme was fun to write because somebody challenged me to write a nursery rhyme and it just turned out to be a tad saucy. I started on the premise that nursery rhymes had to be clear, with simple language and if possible also with a nonsensical refrain (cf: Lavenders blue, dilly dilly); they have to have something magical, so I incorporated the number three by having three lines to each verse; also they have simple topics and themes so that children can easily relate to them, hence I chose two: primary colours and clothes. You can find the ever so slightly naughty result on page 54.

In later blogs, maybe I will talk about some of the other pieces....

Meanwhile, Rosh Hashana has taken up a big proportion of my time, and we have had a houseful of guests as usual. Tonight is Kol Nidrei, the eve of Yom Kippur, one of the most sacred festivals of the year. At the end of the week, I am off to Paris for Fashion Week. Vivienne Westwood's Show is on Friday afternoon, so I have to go straight there as soon as I get into town. Hussein Chalyan shows on Saturday and I am really hoping that my friend Melih will be able to get me a ticket to that one. I want to see Kinder's collection as I was unable to attend his London Show although he sent me a lovely invitation, and as always I love spending time with my friends Vicki Sarge Beamon (Erickson Beamon Jewellery), Maria Grachvogel and Aydin & Angie Kurdash (Gina Shoes). We always have a ball!

Slowly and surely, the people who are to make up the next year's group of students are gathering around us, ready for a January start to the Diploma Course in Soul Therapy. I am always so grateful to Spirit that the process of recruitment seems to occur around this time of year. Wonderful people are drawn to us at The Soul Therapy Centre and every year there is a unique group of shining individuals with a common purpose: to learn, progress and develop spiritually and to be of service to their fellows. Tonight, quite a few prospective students are proposing to attend the Healing Practice Clinic, and I am confident that when they meet our present students, they will be encouraged to apply for the course, as our students are our best ambassadors. Some of our practitioners are aiming to attend as well, and a few of them are running very successful Soul Therapy practices of their own now. I am very proud of them all, and of our AHA and UK Healers accreditations.

At the 60th Birthday Party of a dear friend, Zak, I was talking with my friend Nina, who is a Social Worker. She was bemoaning the fate of the modern profession which she tells me is now around 80% paperwork. She spends the larger proportion of her time not doing social work but writing reports and filling in forms. She also added that it is the young, inexperienced colleagues, just fresh out of training, who are assigned to the worst child protection cases, because nobody else wants to do them. They are chronically understaffed with very little admin back-up, and so it is no wonder that problems arise. We worked together in the good old days in the Inner London Education Authority, a world-class organisation that was abolished by Margaret Thatcher's administration in 1990. What a monumental act of vandalism. However, if it had remained, so would I, and I would now be retired and on permanent holiday - a thought to conjure with. Instead, I am still in harness, under the hardest of slave-driver bosses (ie, myself.)

Life has been good to me in the intervening years and I could never return to being employed in a corporate setting. Being one's own boss can be hard, and has its own pressures, but ultimately so rewarding.

Arriving back in London , on Sunday, we went to Regent's Park and hired a rowing boat. Very romantic, as I remembered that Nick had taken me rowing on Roundhay Park Lake in Leeds on one of our earliest dates, soon after we met in September 1972. He also took me rowing on the river in York on a lovely, lazy autumn day soon after that. Ah, youth!

In Regents Park on Sunday, there were hundreds of people, but the Park just seemed to absorb everyone. All nationalities in our cosmopolitan city seemed to be represented, all shades of colour, all varieties of national or religious dress codes, all enjoying the late summer sunshine and relaxing with their loved ones. Dear God, if only the whole world could take heed. We humans really can all get along when not posturing and not warmongering.

We could follow the example of these wonderful animals in these images here, loving and caring for each other and understanding that we don't need to harm each other. Thanks to Mia, who sent me these divine photos.

Once again on the anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, there have been the predictable television and general media documentaries. How inconsiderate of those in the media, who still see Diana as a means of selling papers or attracting viewers, with no thought for how it feels for the grieving families involved. Not just the Princes, but the Fayed family and the other loved ones of the chauffeur and bodyguard. How must it be to be regularly reminded of the tragedy of that night as if it were some kind of public entertainment.

Today I created a beautiful perfume with Tamara for her to wear on her wedding day on Saturday. I hope the weather keeps fine for her and Jeremy because they are getting married in a field somewhere out in the country and wellies would just sooooo spoil the pink bridal look. Sorry we can't be there, but I will be thinking of them of course, and sending love. I love weddings, I get very emotional and have to fight back the tears. The last wedding I attended, I conducted the ceremony with the Registrar and thoroughly enjoyed it. My darling friends Maria Grachvogel and Mike Simcocks were marrying, they both looked amazingly gorgeous and we had a ball. After the ceremony, the Registrar offered me a job! I thought that was cool. When people decide to get married, it raises their relationship into a magical space and the wedding guests surround them with so much love it is almost tangible. Everyone should be as happy as a bride and groom in love and on their wedding day. If I were Queen, I would make that kind of happiness compulsory. If I were Donald Trump, Richard Branson or Sir Alan Sugar, and feeling in a generous mood, I would find a way to buy it and send large free amounts to everyone.

This evening I was googling the title of my new book to see whether it was on Amazon yet (it is), when I came across a link to a major poetry competition, The Margaret Reid (which is entered by thousands of poets) and into which I had entered six of the poems from my manuscript last year. To my surprise and delight, all six poems had received Commendations! They were:

Reflections on Healing

Messages in Water

Wind Voyager

Eternal Sparrow

Sonnet: Beyond, Behind, Before, Above

The Wonderful Wizard.

I feel very pleased with myself. I wish I had checked months ago. I could have been insufferably smug for soooooo much longer!

One of my clients has a son who regularly visits the States. She is ordering the book and organising him to collect it on his next trip. Friends are telling me that they are forwarding on the press release to their friends, too. I popped in to my local booksellers, Muswell Hill Books, and the lovely manager, Tim Robinson, remembered me from my last book. A Year Of Spirituality: a seasonal guide to new awareness had sold very well, he remembered, and is going to order lots of copies of Eternal Sparrow for the shop.

We are beginning to meet potential students for next year's course of Soul Therapy. Kathryn has met a gynaecologist who sounds very interested in acquiring a nationally accredited qualification in healing, which is what the course centres around. I have met a couple of jewellers and a Feng Shui Consultant who are also very interested and can see the benefit of adding healing and psychotherapy as well as a knowledge of other major subtle energy techniques (which combination defines Soul Therapy) to enrich their work. We are delighted that last year our curriculum and the standard of our tutors were accepted by UK Healers (National Professional body) as having reached the highest level (Stage 4) of national accreditation for professionally qualified spiritual healers.

Another referral of a security guard from the lovely "Pathways Through Trauma" people. The only growth industry these days seems to be in bank robberies. I am delighted that those in trauma therapy with me are doing so well, even the ones who arrive in bits after particularly vicious armed attacks. These are usually big, strong lads who aren't accustomed to the disabling, overpowering feelings of fear and panic that severe trauma provokes. I love seeing them recover their equilibrium and go happily back to work.

I am now the proud owner of a web page on the Strategic Book Publishers site:

http://www.strategicbookpublishing.com/EternalSparrow.html

In the photo of the front cover of the book, the endorsement by Amelia is not easy to read unless you have 20/20 vision, and I am so delighted with it, so here it is:

"Some people are addicted to chocolate, some to ice-cream, some to wine, but I found Ingrid Collins' poetry to be the most addictive substance I've ever encountered in my life. Ingrid's poetry is utterly delicious, absolutely intoxicating, hilarious, wise, soulful, and impossible to put down. Read it and enjoy a delightful new obsession that will be kind to your waistline and your liver." Amelia Kinkade, best-selling author of Straight From The Horse's Mouth: how to talk to animals and get answers, and The Language Of Miracles, (New World Library), both the most amazing books, full of compassion, magic, humour, science and sense.

Help! I'm drowning in red tape! Everything seems to be complicated these days, with more new rules springing up than I can shake a stick at. I took back some lingerie to Marks & Spencers today. I had been busy and it hadn't been at the top of my agenda. Seems that now you have to return items within 35 days or you get around a third of the price you paid, even though the garments were in pristine condition. New policy, madame, since April, said the assistant. Company policy can't be challenged. Whatever happened to nice old M & S ?

I have been creating perfumes for ages for The Perfume Studio and life used to be at least simple there. Now it seems that they will be needing all sorts of extra information about the clients, including complete contact details and date of birth &c. What will they be wanting next? Inside leg measurements?

On a happier note, now that I have had my "Grumpy Old Woman" moment, I spent a pleasant lunchtime with my mother who, thanks to all the healing help and support from the Soul Therapy Group, is much recovered and once again attending her three bridge clubs, going to exhibitions and seeing friends. She is grieving for her younger brother, my uncle, and although they didn't see much of each other in recent years because they lived a couple of hundred miles apart, the idea that she won't physically be able to see him again breaks her heart. She is aware of the continuation of the soul into Spirit, but says that doesn't make it any easier. I am so thankful that she still has her mind intact, albeit her memory isn't always great.

I have just written some copy for a journalist on a new glossy magazine, the name of which I don't know - they're keeping it under wraps for the present. Media work is quite often unpredictable. Sometimes I get sensible requests like this one was. Other times the questions are on peculiar topics and my quotes are mangled beyond recognition, like this Monday in The Times, when I hope nobody I know read the garbled version of my remarks in the article on the psychology of wearing flat shoes versus high heels - it read more like a clue in the cryptic crossword!

Publication launch today in the USA for my book, Eternal Sparrow: poetry for love, laughter and life, ISBN 978-1-60860-535-4. What a great feeling - I have just had a message from Inez at my publishers, Strategic Books, to say that today's the day. Strategic will be setting up a website for me from which to sell it, and will be also selling it from their own site. I am a little shell shocked, I have to admit. This has all been done by email until the final Galley Proof arrived a few days ago in the post. Already two of my beautiful, generous friends, Maria Grachvogel (gorgeous designer dress shop: 162 Sloane Street London SW1X 9BS) and Vicki Sarge Beamon (fabulous fashion jewellers: Erickson Beamon, 38 Elizabeth Street, SW1W 9NZ) are wanting to sell it in their shops. I am very lucky with my friends. Another wonderful friend, the supermodel Marie Helvin, is offering to give me a UK launch party even though Eternal Sparrow is only published in the USA. I feel very blessed and very grateful. People will, of course, be able to buy it on the internet booksellers like Amazon. So now I am just praying that everyone will feel an uncontrollable urge to go and buy themselves a copy and lay in a stock to be used as Christmas, birthday or anniversary presents for their nearest and dearest - and then for their not-so-nearest and less-dear too. It is only $9.99 so bulk buying won't be painful on the pocket and will make this old lady very happy. It's kindness to old folk week, my darlings....

I was sitting in the sunshine in the garden today, watching our two cats, the stars of our next book, sunning themselves. Tui has a big, thick, fluffy coat and doesn't seem to mind roasting. Magic, his ears constantly on the alert, always is on guard against any would-be marauders with designs on his territory and (more importantly) his food bowl. It is his job and he takes his responsibilities very seriously - so seriously in fact that we never see other cats in our garden. These two animals are so beautiful, at ease and relaxed in the garden. Their ivory fur shining in the midday light, their bright, golden eyes half closed, they can be awakened in a heartbeat if there's chance of a game or the swift, crafty lick of a tasty morsel from our lunch plates. This is one of my favourite photos of the two of them, taken when Magic was still very young. No longer a kitten but adolescent, certainly not yet adult.

We had planned to go to the Serpentine Gallery today to the Jeff Koons exhibition, but the sunshine and the beauty of cats and garden delayed us, so Koons lost the contest. No contest!

I re-read my dear friend (Nick's cousin) Anna's book of poetry, called "Poems for People," today. She is a warm and wise woman in her 70s from the Scottish side of his family, a spirit medium, graphologist and palmist who has lived in Israel since the 1950s. When she published her book and generously gave me a copy, I was fascinated to read it but had no idea of the effort and the love that had been necessary to produce it. Isn't it interesting how, until you experience a process first hand, the understanding can only be limited. It is not until I am going through the same process myself - albeit with a different kind of publishers who do all the publicity and marketing for me - that I can truly appreciate what it entailed and all its attendant emotions.

In the hall at the moment there are some big, beautiful, white lilies whose perfume is just heavenly. In Anna'a book, there is a poem for her sister, Laura, who is a gifted concert pianist and composer, to the effect that she wishes her poems could soar off the page just as Laura can play a piece by Brahms. I also think for instance that it is the fate of the poet not to be fully able to recreate exquisite perfumes either. My attempt to do just that appears in my anthology "Eternal Sparrow" entitled, "A Passion for Perfume." Loads of words where just one sniff takes you into the most amazing altered state of ecstasy!

I create individual signature perfumes for people, and I am aware that experiencing perfumes is an activity that begins to develop at the latest at birth and certainly way before we master language. For this reason, and the fact that a scent's information goes straight to the brain from the nasal passages, without having to be carried a long way by the nervous system, our likes and dislikes are immediate, visceral. Every perfume I design with a client is different and, when finished, couldn't be a better expression of that person's soul. It never fails to delight me, and for the client seems to produce a new understanding of themselves in a dimension hitherto unused. Commercially mass produced perfume never can quite cut it, because along with all the fragrances a person recognises and chooses, there are always those that they haven't chosen and it becomes a "good enough" compromise. When I make a perfume for them, they choose every single component and absolutely love to wear it. It speaks where no words can.

This evening in the Practitioner Group we had a very interesting discussion about dreams. It is always fascinating as a therapist to work with clients as they try to make sense of their dreams, and to enable them to realise that the principle emotions and themes of their dreams are frequently useful pointers to issues that are engrossing their energy at the subconscious level. I sometimes find that characters in people's dreams who express difficult emotions (bullying, overbearing, tastelessness, insensitivity, illogicality and so on) are really aspects of the person themselves but the dreamer finds it easier to represent these negative emotional experiences by disowning them and giving them to someone else (known or a stranger) to demonstrate.

Unfortunately, I can only ever remember my dreams when I am on holiday because during the working week I wake up to our radio alarm clock. I therefore am under the impression that I am dreaming the 8 o'clock News on BBC Radio 4 every morning. What could be more of a nightmare than that!

Sleep is a fascinating topic. In my translation of an ancient Roman poem (p 16, Eternal Sparrow) I describe the Cave of Dreams where Somnus, God of Sleep, rules his kingdom. I remember writing that piece for homework when I was about 15 years old, and being so pleased when my Latin teacher, Miss Adamson, read it out to the class the next day. How influential good teachers are! I remember how she brought Ancient Rome to life for us and gave us such beautiful literature to translate from Latin into English. Today, that has all the qualities of a good dream itself. I find it hard to believe that it was almost exactly fifty years ago that I was sitting in that classroom in Allerton High School in Leeds, in a dark olive green school uniform, white blouse, green tie with a pink stripe!

At last, the Galley Proof of my book, Eternal Sparrow: poetry for love, laughter and life, has arrived in the post today (see above, front and back cover.) Giovanna's design is beautiful, and shows off the title and text really well. This is one step nearer to publication and I am so happy with the finished article. I have sent a list of names and emails to Strategic Books, so they can alert people when the book is ready.

Another two reasons to celebrate:

A new client with a bunch of debilitating allergies, whom I saw yesterday for the first time, rang me today to say that she felt brilliant and hadn't felt this well for ages.

Our friend Fru's aunt, whose doctors gave 48 hours to live a week ago, is not only still with us but is now conscious, sitting up and taking food. We have all been sending healing to her and it seems like it's working.

These days I am receiving quite a few interesting referrals of security guards who have been traumatised as victims of robberies. What I am finding is really fascinating; it is that when I begin to give healing to them, I quite often find that their aura is not so much in their physical bodies and they have "hidden" themselves energetically elsewhere. Not surprising, having found themselves at the business end of a gun being wielded by an aggressively yelling bank robber. My task is first to find a tiny remnant of their aura (human energy field) and attempt to coax it back and align it with their physical body. When I mentioned this to one of my clients, he became very animated and said yes, he had indeed felt very "absent" and found himself frequently "somewhere else." As he is recovering, he can feel the healing energy flowing again now when I work. Interestingly also, one of my clients has studied martial arts for many years and I am finding that there are many parallels between my advice and the advice of his Sensei. There is nothing new under the sun, is there? The good stuff appears in so many different cultures under different guises. When we work with the quality of a person's present consciousness, and the usefulness also of altered states of consciousness, I find that Buddhism especially has much to offer. The practice of mindfulness is particularly pertinent to much of our spiritual understandings.

This afternoon my mother, Mona, comes back from Leeds after having spent a week up there in our home town sitting Shiva (mourning) for her younger brother, Ronnie, may his dear soul rest in peace, who has died aged 85 years. At 88 years, Mona is still going strong, surrounded by a loving family and lively group of friends, with a hectic social and intellectual life. She is devastated at the loss of Ronnie, but knew that she has in reality been mourning for the loss of him for a good few years as senility gradually claimed his mind. In Eternal Sparrow I have included a poem written whilst Mona herself was fighting for life a couple of years ago in the Whittington Hospital. The poem is sparse, stark, because I could hardly breathe myself at the time. Her doctors were asking me to decide whether to switch off her life support system, and I had decided not to agree to that. Luckily that was the right decision but, at the time, I didn't know whether I was making it for selfish reasons. I wasn't prepared to take responsibility for my mother's death, and wanted her to stay even if she emerged from her three week coma (following emergency six hour surgery) with brain damage.

Her present love of life and thrill of every new day is a constant relief to me, as you can imagine. I am profoundly grateful to all those spiritual healers in my Soul Therapy circle who joined with her medical team and me in helping to save her life.

Kathryn, my co-Director at The Soul Therapy Centre, and I have been talking about the manuscript we are preparing for our next book. It is based around a telepathic conversation with animals, which was an incredibly moving experience. Both Kathryn and I were taught to telepath with animals by the amazingly gifted American animal communicator, Amelia Kinkade, the acknowledged leader in the field, whose work worldwide with animals and their rights is impressive to say the least. We are thinking that we should expand our company's remit to include the training in awareness of the spirituality of other animals, not just humans. We don't know if society at large is ready for it, but we certainly are prepared to take that step. Kathryn has for the last couple of years run workshops in animal communication and telepathy, which have been well received and well attended, but we are agreed that we now need someone to take on this area of work who is prepared to invest the quality and length of time and energy needed. Neither Kathryn nor I feel we are able to devote the time and effort needed to do justice to this important domain of spiritual and psychic understanding.

Welcome to my blog. I am delighted to have you here. This could be the start of something small....

Just received word from my publishers that the galley proofs of my book, Eternal Sparrow, are in the post. Can't wait! I love the whole process of publishing, and there is something so satisfying about holding a newly published book in my hand.

I still remember the thrill when my first book, A Year Of Spirituality, was published. I recommend the experience to you, so if you haven't already written it, go and put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. It is a complex, scrambled set of emotions, a mixture of bliss, relief, fear (what if it doesn't sell?), vulnerability, pride (this has to be a best-seller!) and courage. Courage at the exposing of my innermost thoughts and fantasies, pride that my publishers, Strategic Book Publishing, considered my manuscript worth taking a gamble on. In my "day job" as a Soul Therapist , my clients see in me whatever it is necessary for them to think I am. With the publication of Eternal Sparrow, this is nearer to the reality.

Having said that, poetry - the new rock 'n' roll? - is a distillation of who I am, plus an enormous amount of discipline in the crafting of each piece until it satisfies my super-critical ear. I hope that the birth pangs and agony are not in evidence (a swan glides over the water but we don't see the feet paddling madly underneath) and that each poem reads easily and, as Shakespeare said, speaks trippingly off the tongue.

Apart from everything else, bringing out a new book is one wonderful excuse to have a party.

I've been meaning to get to grips with blogging for ages but thought that it was some mystical, powerful entity that only the young and computer-savvy knew how to create. Now, I am thrilled to have created this blog at last. Chuffed up to the tickle mark, in fact.