JOURNAL
documenting
&
discovering joyful things
Our small but significant stories
Recently I participated in a giveaway, organised by Annabelle Hickson on Instagram. I’ll share more about that at the end of this post as there are some beautiful prizes you can win. But what prompted this blog post is that Annabelle asked me to share a piece of my story from “lockdown” for the giveaway and, as I was writing to Annabelle, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.
About all of us, really, all over the world. About how this whole COVID-19 experience is so extraordinarily… universal. Never before in history have we been so physically isolated from one another and yet, at the same time, never before have we been so united against a common enemy.
When generations in the future look back on this period in our lives, what will they say? The history books will talk about the big things: the spread of the virus, the deaths, the heroes, the privations, the cure or vaccine (assuming one is found!), the economic fallout… but what will they say about you and me? About what our lives looked like, at home, small but oh so significant, during this unprecedented time?
So I’ve been thinking that I would like to start collecting the smaller stories. OUR stories, little dispatches from isolation. Isolation and lockdown are powerful silencers: there are no external witnesses to my days and nor, I imagine, are there any to yours. Let’s change that!
If you would like to share your story of COVID and lockdown, I will include it in some kind of publication: a specialised blog, an online magazine, an e-book… I don’t know exactly how yet, because that will be governed by the quantity and style of stories I receive. But I can guarantee that if you tell your heartfelt story, you will be published. I can share your name, or keep you anonymous if you prefer.
SUBMIT YOUR STORY
Tell me about your experience of lockdown and social-isolation. Write a sentence or write an essay - it’s up to you! I don’t want to restrict you so you can write anything you like but, if you find yourself stuck for words, here are some prompts or interview questions (inspired by Annabelle’s questions to me) to help you:
Where do you live (just give your city and country)?
The date you’re writing (because things are changing so rapidly!)
What is your name (just say “anonymous” if you’d like to remain so)?
Where are you bunkering down for this period?
What do your days look like?
How has this pandemic impacted you and those you love?
How has it changed what you value?
What gives you hope?
At a later date, I may also be in touch with you to see if you have a photograph of your “lockdown station” that I can include in this publication, so give some thought to this if you’d like to share one.
To submit your story, either share it in the comments, or use the form below. (If you are reading this blog post as an email, simply click “view original post” at the bottom of this post, to see the form and/or comments box). Please don’t submit your story via email - I’m liable to miss or lose it and your experiences, thoughts and words are precious to me!
I’d love it if you would share or mention this blog post on your social media platforms, so that as many people as possible can potentially add their stories to our publication. I’m using the hashtag #dispatchfromisolation.
In the meantime, following is my own story (or a snippet of it) from my own experience of lockdown. The photograph is of my children, hard at work in “Mummy school” since the schools here have been closed.
MY STORY (26 March, 2020)
We live in an inner-city suburb of Melbourne, Australia, in a 100-year-old terrace house. My husband recently returned from overseas and the law in Australia says he has to self-isolate for 14 days, so he has taken over our front room, which normally doubles as my art studio. It has been incredibly tough on all of us - but especially the kids - having Daddy home but not being allowed to cuddle him or even share a room with him. Financially it is also a stressful time, as both of our incomes have been impacted. But, on the other hand, I’m powerfully aware of how lucky we are: we still have our health, we still have a roof over our heads and food on the table, and we are all here together as a family.
I make my husband his meals (and copious instant coffees), and deliver them to him throughout the day. We’re not allowed to share a bathroom with him, which has created an extra challenge for our six-year-old son, who has a morbid fear of being upstairs on his own. Every time he needs the loo, he begs other members of the family to go with him. I told him that singing out loud was a good way to chase away fears, and his fear-fighting weapon of choice is Cheap Thrills by Sia. Whenever we hear “Come on, come on, turn the radio on,” we know he’s making his brave little way up the stairs to the non-quarantined and apparently terrifying loo.
Since the schools closed, we have sectioned up our long, narrow house to keep the children away from their dad. My husband stays in the front part of the house, while I’ve set up “Mummy school” in our playroom out the back, overlooking the garden. (This garden has been a godsend: it’s basically just a courtyard, a converted parking space, but having a safe place to see sky and growing things is a sanity-saver these days).
We haven’t really been embracing all the “slow” activities that come from spending so much time at home, at least not yet. I’ve found home-schooling requires my full-time presence and attention (hats off, not for the first time, to teachers everywhere!) and any spare moments are taken up with trying to reconfigure my business to adapt to this new world. My plans of making fresh bread every couple of mornings have likewise been thwarted because I can’t buy flour right now. But at least we still have toilet paper!
Every day, while we are still allowed to, I take the children out for walks or scoots around the neighbourhood, aiming for parks that are quiet - no playgrounds. Thankfully the weather has cooled down, as I make the children wear mittens or gloves to minimise accidental touching of things outside.
Since they are missing their little friends, we have started writing letters for them, and making small gifts (the dreaded loom bands!) to enclose with the letters. We deliver the letters by hand, posting them into our friends’ letterboxes, then retreat a block or two before I text the family to advise them of their postal surprise. Their friends have been making and writing as well, so it’s a lovely new habit for all the children.
I honestly think that tiny connections like these will save humanity, emotionally, as our weeks in isolation stretch out to months. I’ve heard it said that the COVID-19 is is a battle being fought on two fronts: medical and economical. But I think there is a third front, and that is the emotional impact of prolonged isolation, the lack of physical contact, and sustained anxiety, as it plays out on entire populations.
We have lost so many of the tried-and-true ways we traditionally use to support and comfort one another: I can’t give you a hug, or pop around to your place with something home-baked. We can’t meet for coffee in a cafe or sit side-by-side on my verandah, or gather around your dining table or mine for home-made pasta, cheap red wine, and loud laughter.
In particular, the thought of so many elderly people stuck alone in their houses or in nursing homes absolutely breaks my heart: I worked in nursing homes when I was a university student and know just how lonely those places can be, even in the best of times.
That’s why letters are so wonderful right now. Because they are written by hand, they are tangible missives from me to you (even if we have to spray them with disinfectant) and the paper I choose, and my handwriting on it, give you little glimpses into my personality, my feelings and my world, beyond mere words. The children and I have committed to writing a letter a day to elderly neighbours and friends in the coming weeks. If they want to write back, we can become pen pals.
I have been so encouraged to see so many community initiatives of love, kindness and courage spring up since the lockdowns began. Like messages of hope written in chalk on footpaths for passers-by to read; and bear-hunts or rainbow hunts (people putting teddy-bears and pictures of rainbows in their front gardens or windows, as little treasures for children to find and follow on their lonely walks) are beautiful reminders that the people inside those houses - though locked away - are still with us, and we with them.
Landlords offering rent-relief to financially-strapped tenants. People sharing skills, courses and gifts online. Communities rallying to save and serve their local businesses. Those same businesses adapting to sell online and deliver, to continue serving their customers. People giving away that last roll of toilet paper, that last bottle of hand-sanitiser, to someone else at the supermarket. Families picking up food, medicine and mail for self-isolating neighbours. The teachers who continue to show up for at-risk children and those with parents who can’t work from home, despite the personal risk. Our healthcare workers who are under extraordinary strain, day in, day out, caring for those who are suffering. And whole neighbourhoods applauding healthcare workers from their balconies, every night.
Sharing - and kindness - these are what will define us for future generations, aren’t they. Otherwise, what’s the point? When the history books look back on 2020 as the Year of COVID, and inevitably someone references Lord of the Flies, I think all of us would like to be known as a Ralph, rather than a Roger. Acts of kindness, generosity and patience will give us the courage to live with the fear and uncertainty, and emerge on the other side with our humanity intact and a community that is actually worth rebuilding.
I’ve ordered some wildflower seeds - who knows when they will arrive - and we’re going to make seed balls by rolling up the seeds with clay and compost. In spring we’ll drop them around town on our walks, guerilla-style, to create little floral surprises for our neighbours. Messages of new beginnings and fresh hope.
I haven’t forgotten the giveaway! Annabelle is hosting a week-long giveaway with all kinds of gifts from her community, including beautiful clothes, artworks, books, and more. I’m giving away three places in my online letter-writing and mail-art course, The Most Beautiful Letter You’ve Ever Written. We will be choosing winners at the end of this week, so if you’d like to enter the draw for my course, you can do so here, and if you take a look at Annabelle’s Instagram feed, you’ll see loads more wonderful opportunities for you to win some thoughtful gifts.
As promised, the "tea stories" zine
As promised, I’ve made a little zine, celebrating “tea stories” from all over the world. A heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone who shared their stories on this blog post, as well as those of you who emailed me privately. And especially to Nanette via Instagram, who posted me a box of Dutch Tea and Lady Grey Tea all the way from The Netherlands, when I told her I didn’t know what Lady Grey Tea was.
I had seriously so much fun making this zine. I decided to embrace my inner-90s self, and made this thing completely old-school. I painted the pictures below then glued them in, drew others in by hand, cut old ads out of magazines, and hand-wrote most of the stories. So what you see here is something truly handmade, warts and spelling mistakes and stickytape-lines and all.
What I learned as I hand-wrote all of your stories, was that our mutual love of tea, while it is undeniably delicious, isn’t really about the taste at all. Tea is about taking a moment: it’s about self-care, it’s about slowing down, it’s about comfort, it’s about mindfulness… and more than anything, tea is about the people we love. Whether shared with our loved-ones or sipped in their memories, tea connects us and comforts us.
(I suspect that if coffee is more your beverage of choice, or hot chocolate, the same could probably be said of these drinks, too. Maybe one day I’ll make a zine for you.)
So, here’s the zine I made you: simply click the arrows on the right to flip through the pages, and if you want to make it bigger, hover over the zine and you’ll see an option to view it in “fullscreen”. (If all the pages in the flip-book aren’t showing for you, you can download a readable PDF here). I really hope you enjoy reading Tea Stories as much as I loved making it.
Download and print this zine
If you want to download the PDF and print this zine for yourself or your friends, simply click the button below. The file has been laid out so that you can print it back-to-back. It will print this way onto 10 sheets of paper, which you can simply fold in half, together, to have the whole zine laid out in the correct order. (It’s designed to fit onto A4 paper so if you use US Letter or Foolscap, you may want to trim it slightly.)
Once you’ve made up the booklet, if you want to post it to friend (perhaps with some of your favourite teabags tucked inside), you can simply fold it in half again to fit a standard letter size (although it will be fat).
OK I’ve got to go, I think I hear the kettle singing.
Naomi xo
The time spent navigating memories
It’s a slow process. I don’t just mean the making of the #100DaysInDinan project: combing through old photographs for inspiration, sketching a rough idea onto my antique postcards, going over it in pen, painting it. Then finding old pages from magazines, tracing onto them around the envelopes that had held the postcards for a century, folding them into place, then copying addresses onto paper and pasting them onto the front of the envelopes…
All this takes time, and perhaps in retrospect one a day was too ambitious.
But the real time is spent navigating memories. As I paint I walk my memories like I walked those old, cobblestoned streets, a hundred times over, during the 100 days we lived in Dinan.
As I sketch the outline of a fresh baguette, I am back there again, standing outside Boulangerie Banette with my children, tearing the still-warm loaf into into smaller pieces to share, and the smell is the best in the world: nutty, malty, a hug.
Scout announces, “I can’t go a single day in the world without this bread,” and from that day on, our baker Mohommed keeps one or two baguettes aside for us - and often throws in some free croissants and Nutella crepes - in case they sell out before we get there (which they often do).
Now as I paint I am climbing the steep hill to the castle ruins in the village next door and I can feel the muscles in my legs burning all over again. (And oh! That wicker picnic basket is heavy! Why did I think a picnic blanket was necessary? And did we really need that much water?).
My memories tumble onwards, gaining momentum like my children rolling down a steep and grassy hill on a sunny day, squealing with laughter. I think about the friendly grey cat at the ruins that had so enchanted Ralph. He sat among the wildflowers inside the crumbling castle walls and patted the wild cat while it purred like a tractor, and I dug into the bottom of that heavy wicker picnic basket for the hand sanitiser I was sure I’d packed somewhere. We learned that French cats don’t much mind if your French is somewhat lacking.
I paint my feet in canvas shoes, dangling over the canal on a quiet jetty. As I do it, I taste again the honey and walnut cake I’d baked the day before, and carried with us on our walk. I remember throwing crumbs for ducks that wouldn’t come, and watching the tiny bubbles and rings in the water made by unseen fish coming up to feed.
On comes the summer’s day we spent in nearby Saint Malo, digging and splashing in the beach all day and then running the whole three kilometres back to the bus stop just in time for the last bus home… only to discover the timetable had changed the day before, and we were trapped. So we trudged the three kilometres back into town and found a little hotel. We ate bananas dunked in yoghurt for dinner and it was hot, so hot, so we all slept in our underwear on a big bed. I left the window open all night and watched the moon rise slowly over slate rooftops and terra cotta chimney pots as my children slept.
It slows me. I start with an anecdote but all too soon I am lost in a fully-fledged memory, and follow that path deeper and deeper into the wilds of nostalgia.
It washes over me, a longing to be back inside those slower days once more. I was mindful then, truly mindful, consciously taking in everything: watching it, feeling it, tasting it, and appreciating it. Committing it to memory as best I could, not wanting to miss a thing, not wanting to lose any of it.
So when I paint and I am slow, I don’t mind. A hundred memories is taking me more than a hundred days to record, but this project has become exactly what it set out to be: a process in gratitude.
Frequently asked
I thought it was about time I answered the questions I receive the most, somewhere that they could all be found in one place. Have I missed something you’d like to know? Feel free to ask away in the comments, and I promise to reply.
Here we go…
How do you get watercolours to show up brightly on brown kraft paper?
The secret is they’re not just watercolours. I also use gouache paints, which look and feel pretty much the same, but are chalkier in consistency, and brighter and more opaque on the paper. Back in the old days, poster artists often worked in gouache. I mix my gouache and watercolour paints together within my images (and often combine them with one another to create the exact colour and consistency I want).
What pens do you use in your artwork?
I use fine-line archival ink pens for outlines and details in my paintings, and to write the addresses in my mail-art. The ink is waterproof, so it doesn’t run with the paints. My favourites are these Sakura Pigma Micron pens, and I have a collection of nib sizes that range from 005 (very fine for detailed work) to 05 (thick and bold, good for addresses).
Where can I find likeminded pen-pals?
There are loads of places to find people to write to. Pen-pal groups, yes, but also other projects and programs through which you can brighten someone’s day with a handwritten letter. I shared a list of some of my ideas for the show notes of this podcast episode with Tea & Tattle (scroll to the bottom of the show notes to find the list). I also teach about finding like-minded people to write to (and people who will write back) in my letter-writing e-course.
What camera do you use on your blog and Instagram?
To be honest, 99 percent of my photographs these days are taken using my iPhone. I have a DSLR Olympus PEN camera that I love, and it definitely takes better pictures, but the reality is that I can’t always carry it with me everywhere I go. The iPhone lets me capture small surprises and spontaneous moments in my day, no matter where I am.
Whats happening with the Meals in the Mail project?
Ahhh, that project. Meals in the Mail remains one of the favourite projects I’ve ever run. Here’s where it’s at: at the start, I promised to turn all the recipes into a book, but I received more than 250 letters (after expecting 20-50). To share the recipes, mail-art and stories in this way would make for a book that was around 750 pages long, which would be as unwieldy and impractical as it would be impossibly expensive, so I had to rethink.
I dabbled with the idea of giving the project its own blog instead, but that felt flat to me, and didn’t do these wonderful letters justice. So right now I am in the midst of making the recipes myself, one at a time, and talking to the makers about their food and the stories that make them special, for a podcast project. I can’t wait to share when it’s ready.
When will your snail-mail book come out?
Soon! The copy is finished and edited, the cover is done, and the design is in place. I am finalising some extra illustrations needed, and then it’s off to print. More about this book here.
How do you find the time for all your creative projects?
I could be glib and say there’s never enough time, and that’s certainly true to an extent. I’m definitely not as productive as I’d like to be (case in point the snail-mail book above, which has been in progress for more than four years!). But I do have some tips for finding or making time to be creative, or maximising the little bit of time we have. I’ve put them all into a little e-book called “Time to Make,” which you can download for free when you subscribe to my newsletter (which you can do here).
How can I do more with my creative ideas / start selling my creative work?
I teach all of my knowledge on the personal aspects of creativity (creative block, perfectionism, confidence, time, those sorts of things) in my hybrid coaching and e-course, Create With Confidence which runs once a year. For people who want help going public to share or sell their creative work I have a self-paced course called the Sales & Social Masterclass for Makers, which you can join at any time. I also share tips for free in my newsletter, and am happy to answer your questions via email.
Why and how did you come to spend so much time in France?
Think of that self-imposed sabbatical as me cashing in my ‘holiday savings’ after seven years of not stopping. The idea was my husband’s, after he knew he’d be heading to Italy for work in 2018, and thought that if the children and I were nearby we could all meet up.
We chose to stay in Brittany in France because that’s my family background on my father’s side, and we wanted the children to learn a little of the language and culture that was part of their heritage. At ages four and six, with Scout only in her first year of school, it was an ideal time to travel, before missing so much school became a problem.
I am lucky that I work from home, so I didn’t need to take leave from any bosses. I worked ridiculous hours in the lead-up to the trip, which in retrospect wasn’t the healthiest of ways to save money (ever heard of just “not spending,” Naomi?) but even so, we will be probably be paying off the debts incurred during this time for quite a while.
It was worth it.
That’s it from me for now. As I said, please feel free to ask me anything I haven’t covered yet here. Or (better still), tell me about you! What do you love, make, do, feel?
Creativity, kindness, and the Internet
So, this is one of the most beautiful stories I have ever had the pleasure of sharing. A few weeks ago, I shared a photograph of this mail-art on my Instagram account: a painted journey (kind of a map for the postie) of the route my letter will take, from my home in Melbourne, out through the suburbs, past vineyards and the iconic Hanging Rock (remember?), all the way to Pippa's house in a country town at the edge of the Macedon Ranges.
A day later, I received a message from a beautiful German lady called Fine. She had used my mail-art as inspiration to write a short story about a different sort of journey, the slow unfolding of an old man from retirement and grief to openness and adventure. She wrote the story "just because," and sent it to me as a gift. With her permission, I have reproduced it for you here (I gave the story its title, but the rest of the words are Fine's own).
Fine's gift of this story left me slightly breathless. I am always telling people that writing a letter (as opposed to, say, an email or Facebook message) is extra special because you are giving someone the gift of your time. I feel the same way about this story, because she took the time to think about my painting, and through it brought an old man to life with her words.
The next time social media algorithms or online bullying or targeted advertisements on the Internet weigh you down, think about Fine, and this story, and how people all over the world are making the Internet work for them (not the other way around), using it to spread creativity and kindness as far as they can go.
GUS AND THE YELLOW BICYCLE
by Fine Winkel
The elderly white haired man with his old and rusty yellow bicycle (that squeaked with every step on the pedal) had long ago stopped dreaming. Had stopped caring, and had stopped doing anything wholeheartedly.
When he woke in the morning, he allowed himself to wince for just a second, glimpsing at the empty pillow next to his, where he used to see Erna’s red curls and her beautiful, warm smile first thing every morning. As the red had faded into white Erna had begun to fade away herself, somehow getting smaller and in the end with her, all the laughter, the friendly chatter, the music and the delicious smell of apple cake had disappeared. After she was gone, the house felt empty and cold, and the lines on his face were no longer from smiling but from cruel scribbles of grief.
His light-blue mailman uniform was still pressed and the remaining strains of his white hair were neatly tucked under his dark blue cap, but he avoided looking into the mirror over the bathroom sink other than to shave, because he could hear Erna’s frail voice making him give three promises on the last morning they had woken up next to each other… and he could practically see her disappointment reflected in his own eyes.
The promise to call their son every week, the promise to harvest the crunchy and juicy apples from the tree they had planted together when their son George was born (so he could make apple cake with Molly, their granddaughter, who had inherited her grannie’s red curls and twinkling green eyes), and the promise to go to the pound and adopt a deserted old dog who would trot alongside his bike on his daily delivery routes.
He had tried the first year, he really did. But he wasn’t good at putting his feelings into words, so he had stopped calling George after a few stilted conversations with increasing periods of silence. He couldn’t find Erna’s recipe book so the cake had been a disaster, and Molly seemed to be afraid of the haggard-faced old man who had instead served dry-as-dust cookies from the rear end of the kitchen cupboard, having forgotten to buy milk and ice-cream, so he had stopped inviting her. He had made his way down to the pound several times, but just couldn‘t bring himself to walk into the sterile, rectangular building that crouched at the bottom of the hill just outside the village, for fear that even the poor creatures inside would sense his grief and plainly refuse to come home with him.
So when old mailman Gus stepped into the red-brick Post Office for the last time, the day before his dreaded retirement, he didn’t expect in the least that his life would be going to be turned upside down in a heartbeat. He didn’t mind that there wasn’t any bon-voyage bunting over the door, or a cake in the break room, or even a card on his small desk to bid farewell to one of their own after 49 years of doing his duty and unfailingly delivering each and every letter to his destination. He had become solitary, and his sendoff would be a silent one.
Still, he would miss slipping into his uniform and feeling his life still had a small purpose in this world.
Gus began to re-sort the few letters addressed by hand that couldn’t be read by the machine that by now did all the sorting. To make out the flowing handwriting, Gus had to put on his glasses, which he knew would have made Erna giggle with delight at her husband’s vanity and tell him, “Honey, maybe it’s a good thing you’re as blind as a bat without your glasses and you refuse to wear them. Your eyes have a built-in Gaussian blur to hide all my imperfections.” He briskly shoved aside this sentimental thought and concentrated on the task ahead, just now noticing an envelope at the bottom of the pile.
During almost twelve hundred days of delivering mail, Gus had never seen a letter more beautiful, and was instantly reminded of the most exquisite illustrations in an old children’s book Erna had loved to read to little George and later to Molly. The kids had spent hours discovering small details and oohing and ahhing over tiny maps depicting the magical village surrounded by woods steeped in legend. It made him sad to see all this elaborate drawing on the letter, knowing it would never arrive at its destination behind the densely wooded mountains. His replacement Kevin, though much younger and stronger than Gus, wouldn’t care for the extra work and would just mark it return-to-sender or, even worse, put it into a folder and forget it ever existed.
Once again Gus could hear Erna’s voice, but this time it wasn’t frail or sad or disappointed: it was strong and energetic, and it reminded him of all the adventures that he, George and their dog Albert had planned while studying the cherished illustrated map. More than once they had packed their backpacks and taken their bikes to start on an adventure, coming home sweaty and with messy hair, but with enormous smiles on their faces, to breathlessly tell Erna everything they had seen, while eating cake fresh from the oven.
No, he wouldn’t let this envelope that had, as if by magic, replaced his wife’s sad mutter with joyous incentive, just sit in a folder gathering dust. He would – and he couldn’t quite grasp his own boldness – deliver the letter himself, and start on an adventure once more. Quickly he glanced around, making sure no one saw him slipping the envelope into his pocket.
He hadn’t felt this alive in years, as the warm fall afternoon turned into night, and he made his way home from the pound on his squeaky old bike with a new faithful companion by his side.
For now he would call George and ask him to come over for apple pie next week (the handwritten recipe book had been found lying in a box with Albert’s old bowl and collar, clever Erna). But first thing tomorrow, Gus and the chocolate Labrador, Hamilton, would embark on an adventure. And he couldn’t wait...