September - November 2025: Life at 50
I cleaned thick dust from Eric the damaged double bass who has been with me; quietly standing in the corner, for my entire life. My tortoise, Trevor, loves sleeping underneath him - dear Eric, who was the key to my being able to physically leave behind my abusive childhood in Walsall.
Mirjam - the ecotherapist at Forest Farm Peace Garden, invited me come and just ‘be’ in the garden if I can’t buddy - which meant a huge amount; that she still trusts me to do my job even though I’m feeling besieged and trapped. During one session, a murmuration of starlings swooped really close while Tora, Jeremy and I were sitting at the table under the crab apple tree studying Jeremy’s map of all of the trees in the garden; I enjoyed a torrential downpour while we were all in the polytunnel; cooked vegetarian hot dogs over the firepit to celebrate our very successful Abundance Day; head gardener, Daniel suggested that the oak tree I visit is called the Repton Oak - which indeed it is, and I got my hands in garden clay for the first time while making seed bombs.
Our animals help keep me functioning, gentle and kind as I grieve the gradual loss to dementia of the Jan that I’ve always known.
I noted down all of the happy things that happened, and there were lots of them.
My local Co-op have stopped selling eco-friendly cleaning products - which says it all about peoples’ attitude towards the impending climate catastrophe in these parts…
In my heart I definitely want to be living in an off-grid homestead / tiny home community / ecovillage / on my own land in a bus conversion with my pets.
An interview I gave to the NE Londoner about being an Ecotherapy Buddy Volunteer at Forest Farm Peace Garden, Hainault: Forest Farm Peace Garden brings people in Redbridge together in ecotherapy to help isolation and mental distress by Toby Hall
Somehow I managed to attend all of the first module lectures in sustainability and adaptation of my MSc in Green Building at the Centre for Alternative Technology by distance, which I’m loving (with my beautiful black cat, Buddy on my lap). I’m especially keen to learn more about CAT’s Innovation Lab. My personal tutor, Anna, admires my determination, said that I make astute observations and that I show a lot of natural promise in the subject of green building. I told her that I don’t feel safe in buildings, to which she reflected that this is why I want to learn how to build them; for myself and other survivors of incest to feel safe in.
Having breakfast with two bees at Claybury Park ‘theatre space’ has been a wondrous pleasure: on one occasion I was having a heated discussion on the phone and suddenly lots of bees surrounded me as if to protect me in that moment, then vanished as soon as the conversation was over.
To Nathalie Nahai (futurist and web psychologist), I reflected: “My pockets of refuge are being an Ecotherapy Buddy Volunteer at a local permaculture-run peace garden, doing my MSc in Green Building, my music, poetry, art, an oak tree I visit as much as possible, and my plants and animals. The rest of my life is pretty unbearable with my deteriorating mental health, a partner with dementia and no support, poverty, being profoundly let down by the system, the rise of AI and worrying about the planet.” Nathalie Nahai: “There is so much in what you shared; both the beauty and the pain of this world, of this life. I hope that from these pockets of refuge can spring the vitality and hope that is so needed to help weave more life-sustaining systems of regeneration into being.”
I’ve said no to being emotionally abused and bullied by Universal Credit and chose my MSc; about the only thing I can do for myself right now work-wise (for months none of them bothered to inform me that studying at postgraduate level would make me ineligible for most benefits). This decision left me with no income as of Halloween, but I felt like a massive weight has been lifted and am proud for having stuck up for myself. What sort of society do we live in where abuse is normalized… where people with complex lives and needs are invisibilized; where I’m expected to just take it? I don’t know where I go from here, but not colluding with a system that robs people of hope and agency is a positive step in the right direction.
The government pay people to train in green construction… Good to know.
Tora: “Find the courage to be selfish.”
Through reading Walking in the Woods: Go back to nature with the Japanese way of shinrin-yoku by Professor Yoshifumi Miyazaki, I’m learning about how the Japanese revere, worship and personify nature.
November was about taking all the time I need with my phone off.
These words from Tristan on Etsy lifted my spirits: “I love your work. You are very talented! Some of your work reminds me of Otis Jones. We just bought a new home and it previously had a couple of his works in it. We fell in love with the style. I think I love your Winter Woods even more.”
Repton Oak sit-spot - September - November 2025
Please see my September and October 2025 oak tree videos here: Repton Oak sit-spot Playlist by Gemma Boyd - YouTube
As of October 2025 I transferred my musings from this project onto my Instagram page, @geminthemud
Was the Repton Oak dropping a limb it’s way of telling me to leave? Is the Erraid Community attracting me towards it?
A cowboy plumber left Jan and I without any water in the house and we had nobody to help us out, which was beyond terrifying. I asked the Repton Oak for help and Mark from Thames Water - an angel in my opinion, went above and beyond to fix it, advocate for us, and make sure that we were safe.
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Cold. Early morning. A grey squirrel was scampering up the trunk when I arrived. Do birds (the fledgling great tits who had a nest here in the spring), remember / return to the tree they grew up in? Things suddenly became busier than I'd known it for a long time when a fondle of tits with black caps (great tits, coal tits, willow tits)? filled the oak's upper branches. Geese honked against the drone of distant traffic. Water droplets hung off grass clumps. Birds imitated each other from opposite sides of the tree. Since it's darker in the mornings meaning I'm arriving later, I didn't see the faces I normally do when I visit. The great tits / coal tits / willow tits flitted around the canopy and I felt as if they'd come to join me. Screeching parakeets flew around the treetop. A very tiny brown wren-looking bird inched along a twisty branch like a mouse. A short creamy yellow grub or caterpillar landed on my magic carpet. I hoped it wasn't one of the ones that are not to be touched. I was surrounded by greenery; a green cuddle. White and light grey pigeon (?) filoplumes laid next to the trunk.
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Calm early autumn morning. I'm scared of being squashed by a falling branch. Screeching parakeets can be heard above other bird chat. I'm happy to be back in my favourite peaceful place, trusting that the tree won't harm me after having established a tight connection with it - that could reside entirely in my imagination, of course. A dead oak leaf floats down beside me. Spider silk lines glint in the sun between branches. Loud background traffic. Fresh green grass, and at the base of the trunk a pointy-leafed clover-type ground covering, following how parched it's been over summer. My mouth fills with saliva, signalling that I'm relaxing. A loud rustling reveals itself to be a grey squirrel scurrying across a network of leafy thin branches opposite. Small pieces of tree debris drop heavily to the ground. I feel sleepy enough not to care if the tree takes my life: all of the mind-mashing decisions I must make aren't important anymore. I feel more connected sitting directly on the soil, sharp twigs and fresh grass than I do on my magic carpet. Shadows of upside down grass stems on the white page of my journal. Specs of illuminated golden insects dancing in the air. I watch a brittle pale brown oak leaf twirl after its detachment from the tree and softly land. I forget that I shouldn't be using my phone after filming a living mandala I made out of the material that surrounded me which a tiny black insect moves within.
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[15-minute sit-spot]. 8.38 am. So cold I can see my breath. Large water droplets dripping from the tree. Maybe dew, guttation, transpiration, aphid droplets, a sign of tree disease? Did it rain overnight? I've never sat and observed from this position before. Light pillars shining to the left onto the outer boundary of bramble bushes. Two parakeets exchanging squawks accompanied by the song of a much smaller bird. Seeing right through perishing leaves to the top part of the tree where a parakeet is perched with water droplets looking as if they're cascading from its tail like diamonds. Loving feeling the cool through my clothes, the Peace. Raining dust (?) as well as water quite heavily - but only under the tree. Maybe the most intelligent thing to do is nothing at all. Imposing a time limit on this sit-spot is helping me to appreciate the experience more intensely.
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8.44 am late October 2025. The traffic noise in the background is almost roaring today, what with it being half term and all. I'm sitting on the damp massive branch that fell during a recent storm. There are lots of yellows in the tree foliage. Years gone by scored into the tree bark. A creature's hole next to a bend in the limb opposite, an eyeless mouth. A great tit dancing in the air next to a clump of browning leaves at the end of a branch, followed by a banditry of them as if they are doing a display of all the moves they can do in and around the tree... maybe thanking me for looking after their dead friend the other week that had fallen at the base of the trunk. The birds are more visible in the branches now; one of them with wings like an arrowhead. Cold raindrops from the oak hit my face with the breeze. What if it was silent here?
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8.46 am at the end of October. I can see my breath again like I could in the spring. A bit of respite from people making mincemeat out of me. The tree's trunk and main limbs looked black with damp on my approach, but the side of it I'm sitting opposite is lit up. A great tit causes a dying leaf to fall from a top most twig. Singular strains of different birdsongs. I don't know what I hope to gain from sitting here. Flash of green of a noisy parakeet in the canopy. A magpie near to it. These two are replaced by two pigeons tussling, landing on a branch, tussling; a confusion of grey wings. A headache creeping over my skull. The fallen branch a rocking horse beneath me. My heartbeat as strong as ever: why? To find a way to keep honouring my soul's path despite being penniless? Because I won't allow myself to be abused anymore? Because I still have much to offer the world? Because my pets need me? I love that I can come here and just be me. Yellowing, limp leaf-laden branches drooping like a peacock's tail. Surrounded by trees of gold and fading green.
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10.06 am. 2nd November 2025. Jan and I are dying. Nobody cares. A magpie flew into the tree and stopped for a while. Before I arrived I saw what I thought was a Muntjac deer in the woods.
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9.59 am. Beginning of November. Mild and breezy. I was going to forage apples from a tree nearby which was full of big juicy red ones only weeks ago, but there's absolutely no sign of them: how quickly they burgeoned then rotted. Sitting on the fallen branch; nestled at the junction between the main limb and three branches. Running the palm of my left hand along the bark of the limb and squeezing the sides of it; pressing my forefinger through the deep crevices. Wanting to lean back and be cradled and rocked with the breeze. The limb is cold and I can still feel the imprint of the bark tingling the inside of my hands and fingers. Wishing I was safe, unseen, held at the top of the tree with my legs and arms wrapped around it. It feels like I'm on a boat sitting here. Twittering of birds - not a chorus like there was in the spring. My 50 year-old leg bones against this ancient wood. A small tree with green leaves remaining on it opposite, full of great tits darting after each other, almost a swarm of them. A magpie landing on then flying to different parts of the canopy. It's nice to just look up, breathe and feel my body uncoiling after truckloads of morning stress. Running my hand over my lined chest and smooth soft throat, as I crane my neck to look up. An angry / irritated / playful parakeet dives down from the tree and swoops around the corner of a line of trees at about 200 miles an hour. I think the great tit I buried under the tree has gone...
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Nearly the end of November. Mild. 8.08 am. Virtually no leaves on the tree, revealing all of its secrets. This tree has seen me through worst times than this present moment. On my approach I could see a large nest right at the top of it. Grey. Occasionally leaves fall. Surrounded by dull, dank, orange-yellow woods. The young oak opposite is still holding onto its leaves and a new natural fence encircles it. I hadn't noticed this tree before. A cloud of dark grey birds indistinguishable from the leaves, alight on a bare floret of a branch then swoop away almost as soon as they came. Honking goose. A warty caramel leaf falls and ends up in my hand; a reminder of some sort. I breathe in its smoky, pissy scent. I feel so relaxed.
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30th November 2025. 8.35 am. Cold. Sitting on the broken off branch, the shadows of its dead leaves scrunched up like fists of newborn humans cast by the low, full sun as blobs of shadow on the oak's trunk. Someone has placed tangerine peel in a miniature cave at the illuminated trunk bottom. Creamy brown mushrooms mostly intact among fresh grass blades. A blackbird, a parakeet and a great tit land separately in different parts of the crown; the three main types of birds I've observed here this year. Two great tits pecking at bark high up. One of them instigates the tumbling of a few leaves down a branch. These tits then dive together down into a small green tree next to this one where a robin often sits singing. The wet wood beneath me is calming my bones. The constant sound of car wheel rubber on road. I'm glad not to be going places. Glad to be here, now. It's easier to be angry than it is to be grieving.
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Repton Oak, Claybury Park, Ilford by Gemma Boyd
“There are, it seems to me, four main pathways to the truth: science, reason, intuition and imagination.”
“And jazz, less self-conscious about self-invention, less insistent on escaping the idioms of melody, harmony and rhythm – though treating them with a freedom that can be exhilarating (if sometimes pushing the bounds of the perceptible) – seems to me one of the great creations of the modernist era.”
“Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”