I love liminal spaces – marshes, tidelines, fens, doorways, veils, wishing wells – anywhere where one state of being merges into another. I like to call New Year’s Day, doorway day because, though human chronology is a man-made construct, new year’s still feels like stepping from the past into the future. Which is kind of why I’m blogging now – to log exactly that sort of moment – when I phase-shift into what’s coming next.

Here are two photos, one of the outside right now, just beyond my writing-space window, where it’s blowing a hoolie and lashing it down as the latest named storm, Goretti, batters the garden. And here’s me just behind the fragile glass , warm and toastie with my log-fire lit. Inside and outside so very close and so very different, separated most precariously by my liminal window. And inside, I’ve just enrolled on my PhD in creative practice at York St John – part-time and by distance learning. I’ve also just set up my student deets and activated my email. My student portal now says enrollment completed. That’s all I can do until I receive my registration email next week, so I am, really, genuinely and absolutely in liminal limbo before I start my PhD proper in February, which is why I am documenting the moment and taking stock on this exciting tideline day.

I’m going to savour the moment and think a little – do what the poets say and stand and stare because I know I’m on the brink of some seriously hard work but it feels exciting, bracing even, like I’m facing a raging sea at the turn of the tide, catching the salt on my face as I stare at the horizon .It’s my 61st birthday next week, another threshold to cross and then the rest of 2026 to look forward to. I have totally no idea what the next few year’s reading and writing will bring, but I have never been so up for anything, ever. .I may well be the oldest student in the village but I am so grateful for this opportunity and feel genuinely raring to go. Also, I’m going to document my PhD journey like I did my MA journey by blogging here and vlogging too most like, so watch this space if you’re interested in experimental flash fiction, silence in story-telling and/or horror novellas-in-flash.