I remember vividly being a small child sat on a swing making up scenarios in my head, visualizing little screenplays of situations, potential future episodes of my story were written on those swings, chapters created, my own little imagined world. Almost always these day dreams were accompanied by a musical score, as if my little world was being composed by John Williams or Hans Zimmer.

That creativeness has always been within me. Its why I write, its why I love photography, art, and museums. Not for the objects within, but the stories surrounding them.

In my younger teen years, I was ordering prospectuses from The New York Film Academy. I never wanted to be in front of the camera, but behind it. Directing, writing, lighting, location hunting or setting the scenes. I grew up on a diet of golden oldie films, some of my earliest crushes were on James Dean, Paul Newman, and Gene Kelly. I was an old soul in a young body. I had a book that I looked at everyday on the greatest actresses of the last 100 years. I skipped straight to the 40s and 50s and loved the images of Rita Hayworth, Elizabeth Taylor and Vivien Leigh – it was the composure of the images, the flawless lighting, the exaggerated eyelashes, they sparkled, were luminescent, magical beings of a bygone era.

As I grew older, I found more magic, I immersed myself in Tolkien, comforted by the clear divide between good and evil, Middle Earth and Mordor. I escaped every Sunday evening through the wardrobe into Narnia and dove headfirst into Lewis’s carols rabbit hole before I slept at night.

JK Rowling filled the hole of my twenties, I was one of the people queuing outside Asda at midnight awaiting eagerly to find out what happened next to the boy wizard and his mystical crew.

Don’t worry, this is not some form of self-pitying… what happened to that girl, where did my dreams go type blog…  more of a memoriam of my former self, for myself, to remember what it is that wakes me up, what drives me and what makes me happy. Somewhere between the pages of my make-believe book and the real world I lost that spark.

It’s so easy after a long day at work, and the endless chores that follow to come home and put some mindless drivel on the TV to try and relax. Sleeping hours become so precious that my library depleted year after year as the twilight hours were for sleep, never getting lost in a book.

Lockdown has its many vices – but its also awoken the creative in me and allowed me to recognize something I didn’t realize that I had lost… Time.

Time for myself, time to get lost in a book, time to write, imagine and create. As a single parent working full time its very easy to lose the luxury of time. There is always a job that could fill it, a chore you should do, a person you should call, a meal you should prepare. It’s no wonder we are a generation of burned out, brow beaten, anxiety laden men and women. Lockdown has changed that landscape for me. Because time… has been reintroduced in the most forceful of fashions.

As I close the last Chapter of Delia Owens spectacular Where the Crawdads Sing, having been on a journey through the marshlands of North Carolina with the wonderous Kya. I smile and sleep soundly in the knowledge that I have just fed my passion, the truest form of self-love.

This is no epiphany – it has been available to me all along? Hasn’t it?  Yet, I’ve chosen to spend my time doing things that have not nourished me, the creative part of my brain has been in shut down and suddenly – anything seems possible again. All of this from a few books? Yeah, all of this from a few books. As Stephen King once said, “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” – I think he is right.

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