Daily writing prompt
Go on a walk today and share a photo of something that catches your eye.
Every morning, I take my dog, Coco, for a walk. This is what I saw… It almost looks like someone is watching me from the field. But no one was there…
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Enid Blyton, my first ever book
Daily writing prompt
What’s the first book you ever finished and still remember to this day?
The first book I ever read from cover to cover was Five on Kirrin Island Again by Enid Blyton when I was eleven years old. I still remember the excitement of turning each page and being swept away into a world of mystery, adventure, and friendship. This story changed everything. It opened a door to imagination and showed me that books could transport you to places far beyond your everyday life.
Looking back, that novel sparked a lifelong love of reading and storytelling. It was the beginning of a journey that would eventually lead me to become a writer myself. Even now, whenever I think about the books that shaped me, Enid Blyton’s adventurous tales hold a special place in my heart.
If I had…
Daily writing prompt
If you had an unlimited budget for 24 hours, what would you do?
If I had an unlimited budget for 24 hours, I’d do much the same. I’d make sure friends and family never had to worry about a roof over their heads, fund hospitals, schools, animal rescues, and food banks, clear medical debts, and invest in projects that provide clean water and food security. There is only so much luxury one person can enjoy, but helping thousands, or even millions, of people creates a ripple effect that lasts far beyond those 24 hours.
The real dream isn’t having unlimited money. It’s having the power to remove suffering from as many lives as possible. ❤️
Threads of Her Name
They told us
history was stone.
Cold.
Fixed.
Carved by careful hands.
But history was never stone.
It was breath held behind closed teeth.
Ink smudged by tired fingers.
A name hidden in the margin
because the page belonged to someone else.
It was women
writing themselves sideways into the record.
A spiral in the corner of a notebook.
A recipe that was really a warning.
A hymn carrying directions to safety.
A thread stitched red through grey cloth.
A footnote refusing to disappear.
They called us emotional
when we remembered too much.
Hysterical
when we noticed the pattern.
Difficult
when we refused to forget ourselves.
Still, we kept recording.
On scraps of paper.
On skin.
On kitchen walls.
In archives that smelled of dust and rain.
In the trembling space between speaking
and being silenced.
Because memory is not passive.
It is resistance.
And every woman who said
No, that is not what happened,
left a door cracked open for the next one.
The next reader.
The next witness.
The next voice brave enough to write her own name
before someone else erased it.
Listen carefully.
You can still hear them.
In libraries.
In classrooms.
In code.
In songs.
In the hush before a woman finally decides
she will not make herself smaller anymore.
The archive does not sleep.
It waits.
And somewhere, even now,
another hand is drawing the spiral
in the margin.
Jh
From a book I’m writing and will be out in the Autumn.
Taking it back….
The archives remember kings
because kings built the archives
our names survived in fragments
stitched into the hems of uniforms
pressed into recipe books
buried inside letters no historian thought to unfold carefully
they called us muses
wives
witches
madwomen
assistants
anything but architects
for centuries they edited us down
cut us from photographs
quoted our work without saying our names
turned our bodies into evidence
our anger into diagnosis
our exhaustion into character flaws
they built entire institutions
out of the belief
that we would stay grateful for the corners
but something is changing now
you can feel it in the classrooms
in the courtrooms
in group chats that turn into movements before dawn
in daughters who no longer apologise before speaking
in women comparing notes
and suddenly realising the pain was never personal
we are recovering each other
like lost cities beneath water
there is fury in it
but also tenderness
the kind born when someone says
I thought I was alone in this
and another voice answers
you were never alone
they just worked very hard to keep us separate
now the old language is cracking
the words that kept us small
hysterical
difficult
too emotional
too ambitious
too loud
they no longer fit properly
we are outgrowing them
there are women alive right now
learning to take up space without apology
without shrinking their brilliance
without softening their edges into something more acceptable
women rebuilding themselves from the historical record outward
women who understand that survival was never the final goal
we did not endure centuries merely to remain decorative
we are returning to ourselves
not quietly
not perfectly
not all at once
but together
and that changes everything
JH
Not right or left
They do not arrive with books open,
or sleeves rolled for the hard mathematics of truth.
They arrive with one word,
thin as a matchstick,
sharp as something thrown from the back of a classroom.
“Lefty.”
And suddenly the debate is over.
No need to answer the question about hunger,
or why the rich man’s dog eats cleaner meat
than the child beside the station.
No need to explain the smoke climbing from wars
signed by smiling hands in tailored suits.
No need to untangle history,
that long electrical wire
still sparking under our feet.
Just say “lefty”
and the room exhales with relief.
Because names are easier than thought.
Labels fit neatly into pockets.
Arguments do not.
The hater loves shortcuts.
Loves exits marked with insults.
Loves the trapdoor beneath complexity.
Call someone “lefty,”
“dreamer,”
“woke,”
anything that folds a human being
into a cartoon shape.
Then you never have to meet their eyes.
You never have to admit
that compassion is inconvenient,
that empathy rearranges furniture in the mind,
that fairness asks difficult questions
and waits for difficult answers.
Hatred fears debate
the way moths fear daylight.
It survives in slogans,
in chants shouted over microphones,
in comment sections foaming like poisoned rivers.
It survives where nobody listens.
Because real debate
requires a dangerous thing,
the possibility of being changed.
And those who worship certainty
would rather burn libraries
than move one inch from themselves.
So they throw words like stones.
“Lefty.”
A tiny word attempting to bury
entire landscapes of thought.
But language remembers.
The teachers remember.
The workers remember.
The poets remember.
Every quiet soul who ever asked,
“Could this world be kinder than this?”
They remember.
And somewhere tonight,
beneath fluorescent lights humming like tired bees,
a student raises a trembling hand
to ask a forbidden question.
Not left.
Not right.
Just human.
And that question
is heavier than every insult
thrown to silence it.
JH
Lantern Heart
Lantern Heart
Some days
the world feels like a siren
that never quite switches off.
Headlines flicker
like distant fires
and I stand in my kitchen
holding a cup of tea
wondering
how can we do this
to each other
How can hands built for holding
learn to strike
How can mouths shaped for lullabies
learn to spit stones
Children sleep under broken skies
while men in suits argue over maps
as if lines were worth more than lives
And my chest
small and human
tries to contain it all
I was not built
to carry continents of grief
yet I feel them
pressing against my ribs
Still
there is a woman
feeding birds in the morning rain
there is a stranger
who kneels to tie a child’s loose lace
there is a nurse
who smooths a blanket
as if it were sacred cloth
The news does not linger there
but I do
Because I have seen
how kindness moves
not as thunder
but as a ripple
touching one shore
then another
Respect is quiet
Equality is patient
They grow like roots
in the dark
before anyone notices the tree
I cannot command the powerful
I cannot silence the cruel
But I can refuse
to become hard
I can speak gently
when sharpness would be easier
I can listen
when turning away would be simpler
I can write
so that someone somewhere
feels less alone
Perhaps the world is not saved
by one great blaze of goodness
Perhaps it is saved
by lantern hearts
that choose
again and again
not to go out
And so
when the siren rises
I place my palm against my chest
and whisper
be the ripple
be the root
be the light you are waiting for.
JH
We must remember
Not as stone remembers rain
but as skin remembers fire,
the way a name once spoken can still bruise the air
History is not a museum with clean glass,
it breathes, it waits,
it hums in the wires above our streets
and in the silence after a door shuts too hard
Hands have built hospitals and cages,
the same hands,
fingers that can cradle a child
or sign a list that turns people into numbers
Do not look away,
forgetting is a luxury paid for by the broken
memory is the candle we keep lit
even when the room wants darkness
We remember the trains that did not ask questions,
the ships that mistook profit for prayer,
the borders drawn like scars
across living, speaking hearts
This is not about guilt alone,
it is about vigilance,
about love standing guard through the night
with tired eyes and an unyielding spine
Because the past is patient,
it will repeat itself softly at first,
a joke, a shrug, a rule,
until cruelty feels normal and silence feels safe
So we remember, loudly and tenderly,
we say the names, we tell the stories,
we teach our children that dignity is not divisible
and humanity is not a trend
Memory is an act of hope,
a refusal to let tomorrow be built
with the same old knives
We remember,
so that kindness stays awake
and the world, bruised but breathing,
gets another chance to choose better
JH
Step away a while….
There are moments when the world feels like it has had far too much tea and is humming with nervous energy. Every screen glows like a tiny sun and every notification tugs at your sleeve. That is when the universe itself seems to whisper go outside for a breath and touch something real. Let your toes wander into grass or sand or onto a quiet bit of earth. Feel the steady pulse beneath you. It is ancient and patient and it never rushes you the way your inbox does.
And when you do step away for a little while the strange magic is that everything inside you begins to settle. Thoughts stretch out like sleepy cats and worries shrink to their proper size. A small offline pause becomes its own kind of rebellion a reminder that you are a living creature not a constant broadcast. In a world spinning faster each season there is something brave and bright about choosing stillness. The future will always need dreamers who remember how to breathe.
JH
Julan62 