My Biggest Sunflower

Red Seed Diaries #1

August 2025

Last night, the moon was so bright, I felt like I'd been given a second chance to get the day right.

I don’t know what you did but I kept on gardening til 3am

Then I flopped on to my bed, muddy feet hanging off the side, covered in scratches, every muscle aching and I numbed out on YouTube.

The moon sets at dawn and of course I am still fast asleep.

Then at 9.30, I’m awake, late for school and this day feels OTT with its too hot to garden cicada-techno vibes

Full Moon and I feel overwhelmed.

So:

Coffee and I give myself a holiday.

I lie in the stream at the top of my land.

I lie there, watching the dragonflies lay eggs and one by one, memories parade, unbidden, through my mind

And the more I remember, the more I remember.

I’m 17, on my way out for the night, striding down that hill in Tufnell Park with its summer olfactory mix of:

petrichor and 134 double decker bus fumes.

I’m miniskirted, kicker-booted, ripe, tanned and bold, the fine hairs on my knees glint. Gold.

Builders in plaster covered dungarees look up as they set down their pints and they wolf whistle in cockney from the pub benches across the road.

Of course they do, mate,

Of course they do, my knickers are so wet nowadays that I keep on having to check that I am not bleeding.

‘Summer breeze! Makes me feel fi-hine’

Those builders sense my fearless fertile mucous, I toss my spiral perm and flip them the middle finger in time to the funk from my Sony Walkman and

I stride on.

Now, 23, my father’s been dead 3 weeks and I’m in a pear orchard in Catalunya, watching my Iraqi lover.

I’m naked, flushed and content.

Content amongst the rotting fruit

Content under his spell

Mazin’s watching flies.

He’s watching the flies buzzing around his small, limp and bloody penis.

He turns slowly and shows me his devilish eyes.

Then, laughing, he washes himself matter of factly, with water from a plastic bottle that he has held poised for the past minute.

An old man cycles past ¡Cúbrela! he shouts

‘Cover her!’

Now backwards and forwards I am still 23 but I’m also 50.

It's July but it’s also August.

I’m walking out of a London hospital with my brother and sister

We are leaving a cold, dead and complicated parent behind.

Rigor mortis has set in.

First our dad and then 27 years later, our mum.

And now I’m singing with my siblings at funerals

Amazing Grace

The Parting Glass

Now I’m 15, lying in a sleeping bag, in a pitch black tent next to a sweet boy with soft brown hair.

I think he’s cool

My body is one big pounding heartbeat and I am fully committed to swallowing my saliva as quietly as I can.

His rock-hard hard-on is pressing against the buttons of his faded 501’s.

And I am pretending to be asleep, pretending not to notice the warmth and weight of his hand on my tummy.

I savour this beautiful moment

I’m 19, in a room full of huge Rothko paintings, stoned, stunned and sobbing.

I didn’t know that art could do that.

Now I’m 48, walking down an icy slope at a French ski resort.

I am on crutches, my partner has marched on ahead, he didn’t like the clumsy way I opened the cafe door so he marched on ahead and now he's watching me from the driver's seat of his white VW Transporter.

And I am pretty sure:

a) that I hate him

and b) that it’s game over.

Fuuuuuuckrrrrr

The owner of the cafe comes out and takes my arm

‘est-ce que c'est ton mec?’ He says, pointing, ‘Is that your guy?’

Now I’m in SoHo, outside a club, I’m 15, on acid, it’s a school night.

I’m retrieving a pair of lacy black knickers and passing them back to a transvestite who is peeing in the gutter.

Did that actually happen? Maybe.

Now I am 37 and I’m also 41.

I am at home in Sussex and I’m at home in Ariege.

it’s dawn and I have just given birth to my baby girl, my baby boy.

We've survived and I’m triumphant and for a nanosecond, I think that I know what peace feels like.

I’m 49, My friend tells me that it’s terminal.

I walk around the olive tree a thousand times.

Weeping.

Now 26, collecting a box full diaries from my ex-boyfriend's boat in Greenwich on the day of Princess Diana’s funeral.

‘I read them all’ he says, ‘And it made me love you even more’

He tells me that he’s suicidal.

we hug

he smells of diesel.

25, it’s dawn, winter, I have followed up a handwritten advert on the ‘Infinity Foods’ notice board and I am sitting in a tiny front room of a tiny flat in a shitty seaside town near Brighton with an old man, a stranger.

We sit cross legged, listening to a poor quality cassette tape of a Japanese woman chanting.

His 2 bar electric heater is on full blast, his dog's farts are noxious

I am wondering if I am going to faint first or throw up.

Fast forward to 28, just before dawn.

I’m breathing so lightly that my body feels electrical.

A door opens and I feel a rush of cold air which carries with it the smell of porridge, stewed prunes and ecological floor soap.

And then when the breakfast bell rings, I open my eyes

I am surprised to find that I am not lighting up the whole meditation hall

I’m suprised I am not golden

Not levitating.

And then at 48, also before dawn, I hold my breath for the longest time ever and a sentence forms all at once inside my head:

‘Keep going, Lizzie, you are approaching the centre’

Now I am 51, at my meditation spot in Órgiva,

‘my office’

I’m with my neighbour and our wheelbarrow.

We are wearing our flowery lock-down fabric masks, doubled up in hysterics.

We are moving a putrid dead wild boar that has been dumped there in a black plastic sack.

I retch.

Back to aged 30.

I swim past the yellow buoys and then I float on my back for hours, releasing every muscle, surrendering each vertebrae, letting go, releasing, surrendering, letting go.

until the sea disappears.

I am 34 now, in Basingstoke hospital, taking handprints from a baby smaller than my hand for the ‘memory box’

It’s summer and her see-through skin is so fragile that it keeps peeling off.

I work quickly.

I am still in that hospital, it’s still summer and I’m still 34, but this time I’m in the morgue.

I am watching the autopsy of an old man who died in his deck chair, he is naked but his tan line makes him look clothed.

They nick his intestines as they open his stomach and the smell makes me vomit white toast into my mask.

43, my son has fallen backwards off a wall, is he dead?

34, full moon, I have fallen down a steep flight of wooden stairs, I go in and out of consciousness. I know it is serious.

35, I’m midwife at a home birth, in a posh house in the woods in Sussex, that’s gone on for far too long.

Their dog lopes in and slowly regurgitates an intact, yet furless rabbit right next to the birth pool.

we all laugh

And then we transfer her to hospital.

And now, I’m 12.

A man has his hand on my head and I am crying.

I’m speaking in tongues at a Children’s Christian horse riding summer camp.

I have let Jesus into my heart and when I go back home I won’t allow my parents to say ‘God!’ ‘Jesus!’ or ‘Hell’s Teeth!’ and they tease me mercilessly.

And so, I sit in the stream for hours, hollowing out a little pool for myself and the memories continue to surface

Birth, death, vomit, blood, betrayal, lust, meditation, grief and laughter.

I have so many more stories about these subjects to tell you

But I am actually beginning to feeling cold.

¡Fíjate!

So I climb back up out of the creek and I listen to Blindboy Boatclub whilst eating mackerel straight from the tin.

And I review the past 3 weeks:

I sliced pears to dehydrate whilst listening to Blindboy's podcast.

I avoided humans as much as humanly possible.

I dealt with my own shit.

I texted my children who are camping in Wales, making their own sleeping bag memories.

I thought about Sisyphus. A lot.

I wandered up and down this half hectare in the same clothes.

I watched ‘Would I lie to you’ on YouTube. A lot.

I opened and closed water gates.

And I felt joy.

I want to spend the rest of my life on this land.

Then, it’s moon-rise-time again and I can garden for hours.

I am addicted to gardening.

I work without obvious plan or skill, sometimes I lead, sometimes the land leads.

I’m weeding and pruning and watering my mind.

I don’t know what the fuck I am doing, actually, the fruit trees are suffering, covered in aphids and I don’t know why yet, but i treat them once with ‘Jabon potasico ’ and then I more or less ignore them.

But the overriding feeling I have is of joy and gratitude.

Luxury is clean intelligent water constantly springing from the earth

Luxury is the shade of a huge avocado tree.

Luxury is privacy, earth to piss on.

Luxury is picking pears and blackberries for breakfast

Luxury is humour

And I have all of this in abundance and i don't take it for granted.

I consciously make the most of this time alone, I make sure to fully enjoy this freedom because I sense that things are going to change.

I see that the more focused I become, the more committed to my visions, the less freedom I will have.

But that’s a sacrifice I am willing to make.

I garden and then flop onto bed, muddy feet hanging off the end

I listen to Pam Gregory and I pore over my Ephemeris,

Tonight I am able to focus long enough that the numbers translate.

I begin to see glimpses of the next steps I need to take

And to be honest, I’m daunted.

When did I ever really put in any sustained effort?

When did I ever do anything but lazily coast on my natural charm and gifts?

So many things come so easily to me

But when did I ever work hard at anything?

And what makes me think that things are different now?

Then I watch The X Factor on YouTube for far too long

And finally I say, ‘enough’s enough moon with your interrogative spotlight’

I wash my feet, close the blind and when I come, I cry and then I sleep.

And at the very coolest moment of the night.

(after the dogs have stopped barking and before the donkey and the cockerel)

I drag up the duvet

The moon sets:

And I find myself spiralling upside down

like a breakdancer

propelled by a twist of my hand on the cold tiled floor.

My body rises up with a grace I have never known before.

I am weightless.

I am home.

Morning comes, of course I’m late for school of course it’s too hot to garden.

Coffee.

It’s time to cut down that sunflower now.

The stalk’s so thick.

I need a saw.

I feel like a murderer

I am 53 and I am naked

looking at the camera

waiting for that 10 second timer to click.

I am naked, sitting in horse manure next to my biggest sunflower.

I know I am small

I know I can make big things happen.

I wonder if I will.