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How gorgeous are these heart-warming words? I am particularly struck by the maturity of them as this young man was struggling on L5 at the beginning of the year and felt demoralised. He knew he could do better but his teacher wouldn’t explain how he could improve, you know… like how some doctors don’t take your symptoms seriously. The English GCSEs are now over and we wait to see if all the hard work has paid off. I’m so proud of all my students as I’ve watched them flourish academically and mature as individuals. It’s been a very busy year helping students as many floundered and lost motivation over lockdown. I know I have been mean to some of you for not doing doing your homework. I am mean but I know you have to do the work to get feedback. I continuously hear the same things from parents and students about the lack of feedback in school. Students are leaving with two or three levels lower than they can potentially achieve. I have proved that repeatedly by helping students secure much higher results than their predictions. I’m wishing all my students a lovely summer break and the grades you deserve! I look forward to seeing you one weekend during Cambridge Open Studios! As Atticus says; “Keep your head high and your fists low.”
All set for your GCSEs? Revision classes available if you need a boost. I’m so grateful to receive this positive feedback from a client. Helping to balance energy definitely improves well-being as more and more of you are discovering.
“It was an amazing Reiki healing experience with Ms De Rosa. She immediately put me at ease and took time to discuss with me details of what I would expect from the session. She was very knowledgeable and most importantly filled me with the confidence that I needed to explore the healing powers of Reiki. I have had issues with my digestion for several years and had tried everything from elimination diets, homeopathy, conventional treatment options as well as self help approaches like yoga and meditation. During the session I felt very relaxed yet positive and powerful. My quality of sleep has improved and feel less anxious about my health. My sense of well-being is much improved and I do attribute these to the Reiki healing session. Thank you!” I work at Salus Wellness Centre in Cambridge. Do get in touch if you would like to find out more about energy healing. Yes, I’m a Reiki Practitioner as well as an English Tutor, now practicing at the Salus Wellness Centre in Cambridge. I specialise in helping clients balance their energy before exams and interviews. I also work with clients who present a variety of physical and emotional ailments. I can help to resolve your sluggish and blocked energy to unleash your creativity so that you pursue ambitions and projects. In fact, that’s how I began my journey with Reiki. Other benefits include: Better sleep Less anxiety No pain Rejuvenation - The trillions of cells in your body should be working in harmony and when they do, your rejuvenated face glows. Reiki is Japanese for Universal Life Force. It is an ancient way to activate and harmonise our inner life force. I can help you become more conscious of this life force. With Reiki treatment that balances your energy you will be able to deal with the challenges of life. I trained with Reiki Master and teacher, Michael Kaufmann, following the Usui method and I am a member of the Reiki Association. If you would like to become conscious of your energy to create shifts for optimal well-being, contact me by email at: thespina@consultant.com Energy is everything 💫 Follow me on Instagram: creative_energy_healing I took this photo at Fen Drayton Lakes. It looks as if this Great tit is suffering from feather mites. He has feathers missing under its wings and the plumage on its body is patchy which may also imply an inherited biological condition. Great tits could be extinct within 80 years because of climate change. The larvae essential to feed their chicks each Spring appear on leaf buds but the leaf buds are emerging earlier each year and Great tits are not evolving fast enough. I also read this week that the ban on bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides is being lifted. It appears that everyone except for those in power know the devastating effects of annihilating pollinators. We know about the need for balance in our lives yet the rhythm of our weather and fragile eco systems is convulsing. Wildlife has depended on a stable climate for thousands of years. In fact the temperature has not increased by more than 1 degree in 10,000 years. Unfortunately now, thanks to global warming, the unreliability of more intense droughts and more ferocious storms are destroying human and wildlife habitats. Covid 19 is a zoonotic disease. Look how we treat animals... Fortunately, there are amazing people who work hard to stop the suffering of humans and wildlife - they are trying to save our planet. Most of us are at home feeling impotent - that’s if we even care. For just £5 a month we can support an organisation that’s doing the right thing on behalf of all of us. Some suggestions: RSPB NSPCC FAUNA AND FLORA WORLD WILDLIFE FUND FOUR PAWS INTERNATIONAL INTERNATIONAL ANIMAL RESCUE JANE GOODALL FOUNDATION GREENPEACE UK CANCER RESEARCH UK AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL BRITISH HEART FOUNDATION ALZHEIMER’S RESEARCH UK MACMILLAN CANCER SUPPORT FRIENDS OF THE EARTH THE WILDLIFE TRUST ENVIRONMENTAL INVESTIGATION AGENCY In ‘Silent Spring’, Rachel Carlson has written about the devastating effects of mass DDT spraying operations in 1957 and explores the human price of using poisonous insecticides; “We must be concerned with the delayed effects of absorbing small amounts of the pesticides that invisibly contaminate our world.” She also quotes Dr David Price who was in the US Public Health Service: “We all live under the haunting fear that something may corrupt the environment to the point where man joins the dinosaurs as an obsolete form of life. And what makes these thoughts all the more disturbing is the knowledge that our fate could perhaps be sealed twenty or more years before the development of symptoms.” Fowlmere Nature Reserve Life is a challenge for us all during this second lockdown. We have to keep reassessing our ambitions and commitments. Online teaching of whole classes all day is unnatural to me as I can’t check in on those who may need that extra encouragement - which I can normally gauge when they are in front of me in the class. Nevertheless, technology means that we can continue to educate most of our students and help them commit to a daily structure - even though it’s uncomfortable sitting at a screen all day. I have now started dressing up in costumes for the Year 7 Shakespeare lessons...instinctively for my own spirits methinks 😁 Year 8s now look forward to Mask Friday...all the more important as online teaching is set to continue into March... I’ve also made sure to have my fix of the natural world - to stretch my legs, breathe in fresh air and feel the changing season’s sunlight on my skin. So lucky to have beautiful reserves near Cambridge, including Fen Drayton Lakes, Wicken Fen and Fowlmere. I hope you’ll make a New Year’s Resolution to join me in supporting at least one of the organisations that strive to ensure we rescue and sustain the beautiful world around us. No Human Voices Where there are no human voices, Only the wind moving over the fens, The river singing its silent song, The crow calling. Tony Bowland cc all images on this site are author’s own It’s difficult enough to grieve for the loss of loved ones while cushioned in a life of material privileges, so imagine how difficult for those grieving who are struggling financially. How dystopian is this...in the fifth largest economy in the world? Who even cares? Do you? No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thine own Or of thine friend’s were. Each man’s death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee. I love John Donne. I think this poem should be written on the side of a bus. Oh wait, too late... At first, I was glad of the warmth and glorious sunshine pouring into my garden, energising every leaf and bud. I was also glad to have the radio. I’ll never forgot the mother who called in to the Eddie Mair show on LBC back in April. Her 57 year old son was coughing and desperately ill but was told to stay in bed and for no one to be in the same room as him. After a week, he deteriorated and an ambulance was called but he died as soon as they arrived. He had Covid 19. It was the calm (shell-shocked) manner with which the mother spoke, describing her son’s caring and fun-loving nature that was so moving and brought everyone to tears - as confirmed by Eddie through the messages he received. How could you not be upset by the reports from various journalists in A&E wards around the country. Patients struggling to breathe. Dying without family to hold their hand. Doctors and nurses calling family members to explain they can’t come in to be with their loved one as they die. So much sadness and distress. Most of us were fortunate to have food on the table and not lose our jobs or homes. We had to stay at home. Up the screen time and simultaneously discover that one’s home and outside space is one’s sanctuary. I’m lucky to have enjoyed rediscovering the joy of my living space. And I’m lucky to live by the Cam in the centre of Cambridge. What a joy to walk through the empty streets. An empty Cambridge is even more beautiful because you can take note the best of human creativity in the architecture that graces this historic town. Treading a daily, regular route like a visitor in a futuristic novel of an abandoned community with shop windows frozen in time; the same Mother’s Day gift displays on show for months. What solace it is walking along the river in the sunshine, connecting with nature and dousing one’s soul in peace and tranquillity. Radio 4 deftly rebroadcast programmes such as The Reunion featuring Terry Waite, Brian Keenan and John McCarthy. Exactly...should we complain about being stuck at home after what those guys went through? Radio 4 also rebroadcast Melvyn Bragg’s programme about the poet John Clare. His detailed poetic observations about nature, especially birds, were a pleasure to read again - especially as time seemed to collapse in on itself as we sunk into these lateral pastimes. For me, one of the most beautiful things I did during lockdown was to download the ChirpOMatic App. So many birds just metres away from me that I hadn’t noticed in twenty years of living in Cambridge: Wrens, Blackcaps, Song Thrushes, Goldfinches, Greenfinches, Great Tits, Long-tailed Tits and Dunnocks. I saw House Martins for the first time flying over the Cam at Magdalene College and the same Robin sang for me as I walked past St Clement’s Church every evening. I watched cygnets being carried on their mother Swan’s back and have been watching them grow over the past few months. So much nature on my doorstep, literally; a hedgehog visited every evening. I looked forward to spotting our local heron on my daily walk. Now that Cambridge was devoid of crowds, I noticed for first time the bird boxes high up in the trees on Christ’s Pieces, all emblazoned with the Extinction Rebellion logo. Well done, you guys at ER. Thanks to Emily Maitlis and Brittney Cooper. I listened to their latest books on Audible while transforming my children’s room into a guest room. Perfect listening for all that painting. I also recommend Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker. A true story: how seven out of ten children in a family develop schizophrenia. It is so well written and engrossing, I couldn’t even wash up; I had to stand still and just listen. And what a great opportunity to have time to read Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror & The Light - all 900 pages. I would never have got through without lockdown. I loved it and was so pleased to have read it before Mantel received the Booker Prize - well, she won with Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies and this was as good. But wait, she wasn’t even short listed this year!? Lockdown was positively utopian with regards to reading and creative expression. I did fail in trying to resist the Diderot effect and bought several items online to improve my home. I craved a workbench and discovered carpentry, making various storage items including a shelf to fit in a narrow space. Gabor Maté’s Scattered Minds is excellent- the best book I’ve read on ADD/ADHD and would thoroughly recommend it to parents of children with this condition or to adults like me who have recently been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. It explains everything and offers practical advice. It’s certainly reassuring and stresses the need for compassion - which sadly is lacking in some people (especially those who feel superior to everyone else). One of my online students has this condition and kept a journal over lockdown entitled The Making of Ellie. Like me, she had time to reflect on what is important and take care of the person that matters the most. Away from criticism and constant judgements we can function productively, creatively and peacefully. You are good enough and capable of so much more. I have enjoyed teaching students online throughout lockdown, helping them stay focused and motivated. I have deliberately overturned a dystopian-laden year into something that’s tangibly more positive to embrace as we career into 2021. Hoping we can all carry hope and positivity forwards. Happy New Year!
I’m so proud to be featured in the December issue of Gardeners’ World Magazine. Like thousands of other amateur gardeners, I read the magazine during those months isolated in my little garden. I was certainly glad to have spent six years nurturing this precious outside space as it proved to be a comforting, vivid, fragrant and beautifully verdant womb to contemplate life in. Nature has always been important to me but the Spring of 2020 juxtaposed solitary confinement with an even keener observation of details in the immediate world around us. I even created a public Instagram account for my garden. One of my favourite posts is the slow motion buzz of a bee as it alights on a Scabiosa flower, encapsulating the magnificent rhythm of the natural world: Cambridge_Flower_Show
Driving through the fens between teaching sessions, I was honoured to witness my first ever murmuration this week. A cohesion of starlings swerving hypnotically and gracefully over the fields in the clear evening sky. Black stars in the presence of a crescent moon at the moment of a stunning, golden sunset. Observe the movement of the stars as if you were running their courses with them. Such imaginings wash away the filth on the ground.
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