Say YES!

The beanie brigade. Myself (back) Carol Robinson and Siobhan Daniels (front)

I’ve lost count of the number of times that fate and synchronicity have dealt me a winning hand. When you are open to all the possibilities that life can bring, you start to notice the amazing ‘coincidences’ that occur.

Booking an artist residency in Iceland in 2019 was one of the big moments in my life from which has flowed so many wonderful opportunities. The travel agent said she knew someone who had just returned from Iceland who had a business two doors up. She took me to meet Carol, who enthused about the week she spent in Iceland, regaling me with wonderful pictures of icebergs, glaciers and stunning waterfalls.

Carol and I have since become firm friends and I stayed at the house she inherited from her auntie in London when I went to the UK earlier this year. We travelled through the Outer Hebrides together which was adventure with a capital A, flying in to land on a beach on the island of Barra then island hopping from south to north before I started my artist residency at the Island Darkroom on the Isle of Lewis.

It was on a ferry to the isle of Eriskay that we both met another wild woman traveller, Siobhan Daniels. The first thing I spotted was her colourful beanie and scarf. She is our people I thought and we all struck up a conversation.

On and off during my time on the Outer Hebrides Siobhan either came to visit me in my residency or I went to visit her at her campsite on the Isle of Harris. We explored numerous stone circles and megalithic monuments together, exalting in that sense of the past so evident at these stone sites.

She was writing her book Retirement Rebel, I was making art about climate change and stones as repositories of stories of time and place. We got along like a proverbial house on fire.

Now she is celebrating her book publication and she is going to join me for a special author book talk on November 21, 2022. I bless the day both of these women entered my life through a shared love of travel, adventure and saying yes to what the universe will bring.  Who knows what adventures and synchronicities will follow each of us as we continue our journeys. My mantra now is Say YES and figure out the logistics later.

Siobhan Daniels in colourful woolies on the Eriskay ferry

The happy author at her book launch of Retirement Rebel