Happy Day

Today was the AGM of the British Alliance of Healing Associations, the umbrella organisation to which the Soul Therapy Association of Spiritual Healers belongs.  To my delight, I was voted in as Chair and Valerie Packenham Keady, our Student Representative, was also elected onto the BAHA Executive.  I am looking forward to three years of leading the BAHA into better times than we have had recently.  All the members of the new Executive will work well together, I'm sure, and bring harmony back to BAHA.

I have my wings back!

This summer, just before we were due to set off to Uzbekistan to travel the Silk Road, I began to notice that I had some worrying health symptoms. A trip to see Paul of Tarsus, my psychic surgeon who successfully operated on my knee injury confirmed that I did indeed have a heart condition that needed urgent attention. Off I went to my GP, who hit the roof when she found out that my cholesterol level was the highest she and her colleagues had ever found (11.4,) threatened to put me in the Guinness Book of Records, and bundled me off to the local hospital for investigations. The cardiologist forbade me to fly, which put paid to our Silk Road plans, so we drove to Holyhead and caught the ferry to Eire, arriving in Dublin just in time for the worst floods in around fifty years ! Luckily we were staying at the Clontarf Castle, an eleventh century castle (on a hill) developed into a beautiful hotel, so we didn't drown. We spent some time in County Wicklow's beautiful scenery, visiting Powerscourt to see their celebrated gardens, next before heading over to Dingle on the west coast because I yearned to meet Fungie, the legendary dolphin who hangs out in Dingle Bay.

We were lucky, he decided to come and play with us, swimming around, racing alongside our boat, sitting up and looking for all the world as if he were smiling at us. Quite an exhilarating and blissful experience. The boat crew told us that once they threw him some fish and he dived down and surfaced with his own fish in his mouth, showing them that he was there for the company, not to beg for food! He was first seen in the bay in the early 1980s, shortly after a female dolphin - probably his mate? - was washed up dead on the beach, and he has never left the bay since. He was befriended by local fishermen and is the self-appointed pilot for all the boats in the bay. He just likes human company. He was a fully grown adult in 1984, so he must be at least thirty years old now, quite a grand old age.

Later in November, still forbidden to fly, I had to make a business trip to Milan to give a Feng Shui consultation to some lovely clients who had bought a fabulous apartment in a massive town villa near the Brera Academy in the Historical Quarter of the city. My generous clients invited Nick too, and so we travelled by Eurostar to Paris and caught the TGV train from Paris to Milan. It was the weekend that Silvio Berlusconi had to resign as Italian Prime Minister and so everyone was in a party mood. I bought a beautiful red fan in a shop in the elegant arcade leading to the Duomo, and even the shop assistant asked us if we had come to "help to celebrate our freedom?"

On Friday I went to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead to have an angiogram and my doctors were pretty certain that it would show that I needed an angioplasty to insert stents to unblock my arteries. Luckily, apart from taking the statins and aspirin that my GP insisted I take I had also been treating myself with bioresonance on the Living Information Forms Energy (LIFE) System, taking Serranol (main ingredient serrapeptase, an enzyme that unblocks arteries,) CircuFlow (a combination of herbs &c containing hawthorn berry and horsetail) which is brilliant for the circulation system, and CoQ10, which metabolises excess cholesterol. As a result, the consultant cardiologist told me that I had "beautiful arteries"!

Since August, I had adjusted my diet by cutting out dairy and animal fat (even though it has been demonstrated that dietary intake of cholesterol has no bearing whatsoever on the cholesterol production in the liver) and adding oats, almonds and other cholesterol-busting stuff, and by Friday I had lost around 20 lbs and my cholesterol level was down to 4.8 - which my GP thought was absolutely brilliant and only due to the statins. I can see that I have a long argument with her ahead of me. She has never heard of serrapeptase, bioresonance, or the other natural herbal and mineral supplements I am taking, and attributes my amazingly good results solely to her prescribed drug! Bless her .............

Anyway, now that my heart and circulation have been proved to be OK, I can fly again - so the world is once again my oyster! I am amazed at how limited I felt, even though I probably wouldn't have wanted to fly off anywhere these last few weeks it was just the irritating idea that I wasn't allowed, otherwise my insurance wouldn't have covered me.

So now I am back on my Magic Carpet and can go anywhere again. I am a very happy bunny once more - see above!

Six New Healers

I am delighted that yesterday all our six candidates (Samar Labib Wassili, Frédérique Lhopiteau, Carolyn Marham, Bonnie Suchodolski, Hanna Trybowska and Emma Chandler) passed their final examinations to become Registered Spiritual Healers. That means that here at The Soul Therapy Centre we still hold on to our 100% record for success in the external Final Examination for all our students. We are all so proud of them, and wish them well in their shining futures as Spiritual Healers. So many people will be helped by them! They are all justifiably pleased with themselves, too.

Just as I was relaxing after a very hard day sitting in on the oral exams, I thought I could relax, only to be extremely upset by a message from somebody I thought I could rely on. Whilst we were away on our holidays, decisions were made that put me in a very difficult position. One of the pillars I have built my professional reputation on is that I can be relied on never to betray or let down anyone, be they client, colleague or friend. With a committee's permission, I had promised a very dear friend something and find that what had been definitely agreed by that committee was reversed in my absence, and in consequence the commission I have offered (and agreed the fee) to my friend has been withdrawn behind my back. Especially annoying as my friend had set a much lower fee than usual for the project as a favour to me. I hate getting caught up in these sort of dramas. More than that, I dislike the distinct feeling I have of being shafted.

Teaching and learning

Our beautiful new group of thirteen students who started the Soul Therapy course last month are settling in now and beginning to feel at home at the Soul Therapy Centre. The Advanced Year and the Practitioner Group are thriving too, so I guess we can relax and enjoy teaching for the rest of the year. The exams for national accreditation are scheduled for mid April, and the candidates are all busily revising the Manual, the Codes of Conduct and the Disciplinary Procedures. I'm sure they will all do well, and in a few months we should have six more Registered Healer Members of the British Alliance of Healing Associations. Our external examiners are always happy with the standard of our candidates and so far have passed all of them because of their high standard of training and their impressive dedication to the healing profession.

I have been studying just recently, too. I took an intensive course with four other psychologists & psychotherapists to become an Interpersonal Mediator. It was run by Mike Talbot, the Director of UK Mediation, the most highly regarded training organisation in the field. It was fascinating and very different from the therapeutic approach to solving conflicts. It is much preferable to litigation, which is always costly and takes ages, as does arbitration and, unlike the latter two methods, it is usually a win-win outcome, whereas the other methods are win-loose at enormous expense. After the course ended, I had to write six essays and assignments. so now I am even more sympathetic to my own students. After such a rigorous training, I feel well equipped to tackle mediation cases now.

Chesed, the beautiful but untranslatable Hebrew word

I was reading a beautiful essay by Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, in which he defines the Hebrew word "chesed" as combination of love, kindness, faithfulness and compassion. What we are in the end, what our life ultimately amounts to, he reminds us, is the love and kindness we give. We exist to inspire and encourage each other to practice such chesed in our homes and out in the wider community. Theologies may influence our values, but what comes first is the truth that where there is no chesed the presence of God has been forgotten or neglected.

Even for those who don't believe in God, the concept of chesed and its practice gives pause for thought. Where is chesed amidst so much suffering that we see in the world? How absent it often seems, far from the scenes of unjust misery and suffering. If we understand that the nature of existence is a oneness within all consciousness and all being, this must never be turned into a pious excuse for avoiding the reality of suffering. Our awareness of the oneness, and the importance of what Rabbi W defines as chesed, can help us to find a healing perspective that is of use in the world.

Sometimes in life, things that are really quite sad don't appear to be so at first glance. This morning I was reading the Guardian and came across this article about the mayor of Belfast vaulting over a giant human tomato and I'm still laughing! The poor woman sustained a slipped disc when he slipped on wet grass and kneed her in the back of the head. This marvelous photo was taken the instant before it happened.

Isn't laughter wonderful? Embarrassing too in this instance, as a back injury is no laughing matter. The worse I felt about laughing at someone else's misfortune, the more I laughed. I couldn't stop for long enough to explain to my husband what I was laughing about and just had to hand over the paper to him so that he could read it for himself.

It is said that laughter is the best medicine. If that is the case, Nick and I shall be very healthy for a long time to come.

Talking of laughter, I shall be running a workshop called "Heal Your Soul With Happiness" on 7th November at The Soul Therapy Centre. I promise that we won't be laughing at the misfortunes of others on that occasion, but we will be laughing a lot. Do come and join us and have fun whilst we discover the keys to huge amounts of joy! I learnt how to teach the art of happiness from Robert Holden of the Happiness Project and Patch Adams of the Gesundheit! Institute.

The Keys to Love and Happiness

Traditional psychotherapy really can be harmful. People learn to reflect on the history of their lives but psychoanalytic psychotherapy usually screws them right back into the negative aspects of their past. Recently I treated a lovely, talented client who had been in traditional therapy for a long time, with a procession of different therapists. She thought she was not able to connect with an open heart with her partner and children because she had learned as a child to protect her vulnerable heart. I simply created a safe space for her and lead her into a soul journey type of visualisation in which I simply asked her to imagine her heart opening slowly and to its full extent, and to tell me how it felt. She said it felt amazing. I was then able to challenge her erroneous idea that she couldn't open her heart, and offered her the idea that this was in her control, she was not a victim of some supposed psychopathology, as she had just decided to do it. She held the keys to happiness and love in her own hand.

Later, her partner phoned to thank me for "a miracle", as my client was transformed, happy, relaxed and loving. It was no miracle, just righting a therapeutic wrong as far as I was concerned.

Montevetro, Geese and Educational Assessments.

This evening Nick and I visited a friend who has just moved in to Montevetro, the apartment building on the Thames at Battersea designed by Richard Rogers. What a beautiful place, spacious and airy with a great view of the River. She has two cats and they are still finding their paws in the new place, but they are as pleased as our friend is with the gorgeously light spaces. Only problem is they are tormented by the Canada geese who waddle past and jeer at them in the mornings. She gave me a present of a beautiful jacket, black silk with gold embroidery, which had belonged to her mother. I am absolutely delighted with such a lovely and unexpected gift.

I am gradually getting through my backlog of reports that I have to write: Two educational assessments and one feedback on one of my students written assignments. The difference is striking and reminds me of how radically my work has changed now from when I worked for the Inner London Education Authority as a Consultant Educational Psychologist. It is good to do assessments with adults as well as children these days, it reminds me of the old times when life was certain and only based in the physical world. Now, running the Soul Therapy Centre, my work takes in the magical world of spiritual healing and subtle energy techniques that are so fundamental to health and wellbeing.

Bruce Lipton and Epigenetics.

I have spent today at an inspiring seminar given by Prof. Bruce Lipton on "The Biology of Belief." He, along with my friend Marilyn Monk of the Scientific and Medical Network, is one of the pioneers of Epigenetics, an important branch of the New Biology which proves that we are not governed by our Genes nor by our DNA. He demonstrates that it is our deeply programmed beliefs, the patterns of thought energy absorbed by us from conception, through birth, to around six years old, that inform and shape our lives. Our subconscious mind, which accounts for 95% of all our thought activity, determines how we create our physical realities. DNA and genes serve simply as blueprints to create the protein strings that are essential for health. Thought energy provides the biochemical signals that key into the receptors present within all cell membranes, which in turn interact with other areas on the cell membranes called effectors. These then open to allow further signals into the body of the cells to effect creation and behaviour of the protein strings, and also to affect the state of the nucleus. Our conscious mind occupies only up to 5% of all thought activity.

It is the environmental energy in which the cell exists that determines the health of the cell. Perception governs biology.

Last weekend Nick and I drove over to Burwell, a little village just outside of Cambridge, to attend a workshop given by Debbie Rye, a gifted dowser and holistic therapist. She taught us how to use dowsing charts to detect and assess Geopsychic and Geopathic Stress. Fascinating. These subtle energies significantly influence the health and wellbeing of the occupants of a house and, by clearing any negative patterns, the dwellers are enabled if at all possible to return to or to maintain good health. I thoroughly recommend everyone interested in this subject to attend the next time she runs this.

This last Thursday, I was visiting some clients, an investment bank in town, and was pleasantly surprised at how much faster I could clear negative areas in their suite of offices with the help of my pendulum.

Awareness of epigenetics and how to clear negative environmental energy leads me to realise that this is surely the medicine of the future. Although there is an important case to be made for the existence of some medical drugs, it is interesting to learn that the placebo effect (ie: the thought that something will do you good) or the nocebo effect (the thought that something will do you harm) can be potent and affect changes without the need for pharmaceutical medication. It is interesting that Prozac manufacturers have found that a sugar pill placebo has 78% level of success as the real drug. It is also interesting that an adopted child of a family will be likely to develop the same diseases usually regarded as hereditary, thus demonstrating the nocebo effect - ie: that learnt negative thought patterns produce the same negative or disease conditions. Even worse, according to Prof Lipton: apparently pharmaceutical companies screen out those subjects most susceptible to the placebo effects so that they don't interfere with their new drugs research results!

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....