The Places That Met Me

A personal reflection on complex trauma, recovery and the support, relationships and flexibility that can help people step back into community life and remain involved.

A playful poem about memory, basketball and an old netball court at Hillcroft Women’s College, written from memories of being a student there in 2003-2004.

Alongside Sam and Taz travelling between Kings looking for work and a room to rent hand roguing wild oats sprawling through shimmering swathes of barley up down down up singing as we went. On Fridays a small brown wage packet pressed into my hand a passport to music. Portass & Carter paired me with a dark green six-string. We thumbed our way nine miles to Holbeach tipping coins into honesty boxes devouring strawberries from Fenland gardens. The winter before I slept crouched

Four oystercatchers squeak-squeak-squabbling again at Stevenston Point Between them one stubborn clam unmoved we pause as we pass them my dog has no time for gossip ears splayed blonde wings at her temples she dives her long body into rough yellow grasses I call out warn her again about ticks she takes no notice Ailsa Craig our local Olympian looks this way I wave but she is busy with gannets Poem note Written at Stevenston Point, North Ayrshire. A spoken-word poem by Claire

Part One Stonehouse, Plymouth. Norah Jones’s Sunrise playing, with tea ’n’ toast Easter my birthday. Friend of a friend Toot! Toot! Surprise! drove Daisy and me in his silver Ford open sunward, to a wild-windswept-rugged-headland sand-dusted ponies sea-salted sheep and a chocolate Labrador < look left look right > so fucking amazing my heart filled up nine times at least then my eyes caught a minnow of a boat dancing on the belly of the blue THIS IS A NO-ANCHOR ZONE PLEASE CH

Baby tomatoes asleep on the vine, roots tucked into cosy compost at the cherry-brick house on the corner of Clarence. Kate Rusby’s Underneath the Stars filled the ceiling space of our warm-bread kitchen observatoire. A burgundy town bike propped against the wall in the paved side yard, where our cat squeezed himself through the trellis like piped icing. I rode to work as the sun clocked off and home in the mornings, clattering past Four Lane Ends metal mudguards menacing the

A helicopter above Saint-Lary-Soulan opens a seam between the French Pyrenees, family history, mining, childhood memory and home.

After more than a decade away from sport, walking football offered an unexpected way back. A reflection on memory, the body, belonging, and the simple joy of playing again.