AN A-WORD! Here's an A-word! It is a word I had never encountered before my father became ill. It is 'autophagy'. And it strikes me that it is an important word to understand if we want to pursue better health for ourselves and those we love. Yoshinori Ohsumi wins Nobel prize in medicine for work on autophagy Japanese cell biologist is named 2016 laureate for his discoveries on how the body’s cells break down and recycle their own components ( read here) Autophagy, sim

As I said earlier, I have three aunties and one precious father diagnosed with forms of dementia. Another of their sisters and their mother, my grandmother, died with this disease. We could fairly conclude then that, with five female members experiencing dementia, other females in the family may also be genetically predisposed to developing it. As mentioned earlier, the field of epigenetics highlights the influence of lifestyle and environment on the turning on/off of our

Not everyone can afford to consult a functional medicine practitioner or nutritionist. But there are umpteen generous and qualified professionals who are currently, via book, blog, video, lecture and interview, seeking to help us reverse some of the devastating illnesses and effects our food and health choices have led to. It seems that, with their help and in utilising our own good common sense, we are now being given the chance to at least explore a very necessary and ur

In A General Theory of Love , the authors expressed their concern that, as poor nurturing and neglect increases, and as access to knowledge, particularly technology (which is becoming increasingly toxic and addictive) continues to open up, a neglected child may become a very dangerous adult, with an 'educated' brain but with the survival part constantly switched on, rendering him very reactive to stress or perceived danger but quite without empathy. He may be a danger to

There is a proverb: cleanliness is next to Godliness. And in a well-nurtured, well-nourished and well-maintained body, perhaps Godliness...

Following the uncanny dictation I took when writing Chicken Water in 2009, I woke up in 2015 with another title rattling around in my head. Rather, I heard a name. The name of a woman. Happy Lafrance. Once again I sat down and waited to see what would happen when my fingers hit the keys. Unlike Chicken Water, which felt like an ongoing 'download' directly from 'upstairs', the experience this time, although similar, helped me also gain a little more insight into the more

One morning in 2009 I woke up with the title of a novel clucking around in my head. The title was ’Chicken Water’. Yes! I was puzzled! But I knew somehow that I would write the novel. I just didn’t know what on earth it would be about. At the first opportunity I fired up my trusty Dell laptop and began. I began with no hesitation. And the ideas, the concepts, the jokes, the silliness, and the slow-forming plot came through my fast-flying fingers with no thought or con

I first encountered Tony Meeuwissen and his work a little under forty years ago. I had recently met, and fallen in love with, Tony’s fellow Folio artist, Don Cordery, and one of the first times we sallied out together was north-westwards, in Don’s pale green Citroen Dyane, to a party at Tony’s home in Stroud. Tony lived at that time in a small flat in The Castle, an imposing three-storey Georgian house set down in a hollow at the end of one of Stroud’s vertiginous and unreas

HEALTH WARNING! DON'T READ THIS! I recommend you don't attempt a reading of this in one go! It is ridiculously long, and my intention is to split it into smaller parts, take out the excess research and graphs and make it much more personal. It comes, after all, from a very personal and emotional place. It comes from a deep love and feeling of sorrow at seeing my dearly-loved father suffering a difficult illness, and also from my conviction that countless people's sufferin

STELLA SONIC: SAINT OR SINNER? Let's start with music itself and the difficulty one has in putting into words the visceral effect it can have. My son knows what I mean when I speak of the shiver, the lurch of the heart, one feels when hearing certain chords or phrases. All Your Love by Otis Rush, as an example, has been covered in stupendous fashion by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Gary Moore. Certainly the guitar sound is different, worlds different, but they both emphasise tha

I was tasked with photographing, for our website (www.gallery9.co.uk) the deep ocean blue ceramics made by Adam Stinson and which we have for sale in Gallery 9. When I looked, in particular, at his lovely, flat pebble-shaped vases, I first thought about gay and rather kinky photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's rather more innocent side-line: flowers! I remembered a particular photo of some irises that he had somehow balanced in a similarly-shaped vase. How did he do it? Ah, y

More stories and peregrinations from a curious wife, mother, photographer and gallery runner.