I feel like the richest person alive

when I am with all my family and doing the thing I love - creating art through song

What a blessing it is to live this life. I am a mother, something I always wanted to be and, well usually, I love my life.

We often hear this thing about abundance and prosperity, and it is definitely true - it is great and very useful to have money.

But more than that when I look at my children I just think “this is so amazing” and “how rich do I feel right now? “.

At the start of the week we had an EPIC adventure up to the most incredible and powerful stone circle I have ever visited. It is one that had not even heard of till a few weeks ago when my sister told me we had to go up there ASAP and take some photos for our upcoming album of folk songs.

I was absolutely knackered to be honest when I got home that evening. It was sooooooo cold and at one point (in order to hide my big clumpy, muddy boots that did not go with the old fashioned dress I had on) I decided to go barefoot on the cold, cold ground - ouch that did so bledy hurt!! I am often barefoot in the spring/summer but not winter.

It was also an unexpectedly windy day. That did mean we had some BEAUTIFUL shots of clouds and changing skies as the sun dipped down towards the horizon. I think we timed it well.

Here we are faffing around trying to get some good shots. It was actually really cool to see Alisa’s process for filming. She really is a pro at this and out doing this most weeks with her harp. So I left her to the technical stuff.

My daughter was camera woman that day and did a great job (usually my bro-in law has that role but he was at work). The lads wandered off together and the last I saw of them was when they headed to a small wood. An hour later they had reached the top of Robin Hood’s stride - a rocky outcrop where Robin Hood kept watch.

But this stone cirlce!! OMG this stone circle.

What energy! ⚡🌠🌟🔥 I definitely saw some things while roaming around.

All the stuff we lugged over the mud 🤣

After we had done our filming and took ten thousand pictures everyone bogged off to get warm and pack up the stuff (yes we carried all this stuff over muddy fields but didn’t use much of it really). I had a bit of time then on my own to sing in the middle of the stones.

But as usual I didn’t know what to flippin’ sing - my mind goes absolutely blank (and I had forgotten my book with song list in ). So I just stood awhile to see what came.

Went through quite a few to get the right one. An Irish one, with a bit of Gaelic, seemed way too foreign actually so scrapped round that. I did a couple of English songs and some old ENGLISH poems and runic chants. Even a bit of ‘Kulning’ (Swedish herding call but I bet we would have had something similar here seeing as though our ancestors came from the same stock)….Note to self to look that up.

And wow, how did all that echo and reverberate across the valley!! Well, its only a small and shallow valley and in fact I think the reverberation came off the Druids Cave (Rowtor Rocks) which is close by. I wrote about that place here.

In fact for more writing about my music and the songs that will be on our album soon I shall be writing lots more over there at Lullabies and Life-notes. So don’t forget to follow me there if you like folk music - this is the proper English stuff.

After we trundled back to the van (fortunately only one field away) we drove to Cromford and had hot chocolates to warm up. I totally embarrassed the children by getting a HUGE (Xmas) blanket out the van to wrap around me. Then we said our farewells to (Auntie) Alisa - my sis is the childrens’ most favourite person in the world, even now they’re all grown up - and we headed to Matlock Bath while she headed to a meeting for a new music project.

Our plan all day was to finish up at Matlock Bath. I bribed the kids with the arcades. We also had unexpected Fish and Chips in our favourite Charlies restaurant. I had packed the hugest picnic but these kids are never full so we had to go in there. Then ( the best thing lol) - off to the arcades for the slot machines!

Fish, chips, peas and a pot of tea. Can't go wrong

It was a REALLY long day. We actually started it off like this:

in the pool and jacuzzi at the gym

Life doesn’t get much better! I love these days with the kids. I think many (most) parents can’t wait to shuffle the kids back to school after the holidays.

After this great day I admit I have crashed for the rest of the week. Just many emotions and am still feeling very inward till the spring!

PS what on earth is going on with the weather

PPS is the government doing it?!!

PPSS anyway who knows

PROPER POSTSCRIPT - I shall be putting a long video up on Patreon of our filming process (there might be some swearing a messing about on there) soon and there's also this one already.