Breakfast in the Paddock!

I sneaked away to the country for the weekend to glean from a bunch of freelance photographers and writers, willing to share their craft and ways at a Photography and Writing Workshop. It was a stretching exercise for me; put on the spot with many writing exercises, plus the requirement to then read your work aloud to the whole group. I am not sure why I thought attending a writing workshop, would mean I would just be sitting in my comfort zone, listening to their pearls of wisdom. I really should have expected that these 'real writers' would want us to write something... and they did!

Here are my words from one exercise - we were given just ten minutes to capture in our own words a moment from within the weekend!

'I relish every opportunity that presents itself to escape to the country. Is it the raw connection with the land, the sudden prominence and focus on nature or the wide open spaces that seem to whisper "you're free"?

City life constrains with its abundance of boundaries and limits, there such freedoms are denied. Nature is masked by the deception of progress, in gaining more and more infrastructure, the sacred simplicity of space slips away, until it exists no longer.

So when I awoke this morning in the countryside and wandered across the open field, to breakfast in the paddock by an open fire, I felt that freedom wrap around me. Free from constraint, just like the smoke that wafted from the fire across the paddock horizon.

As we huddled together, devouring baked apples with oat crumble and tiny cups of tea, we were surrounded by the scent of daphne, the banter of hopeful, creative women, forging connections with one another and the comforting crackle of that little fire. In that moment I was warmed and free.'