I have been described by my loved one as being a bit ‘train-spotty’. There is something rather apt about this as I live next to a railway line with steam trains passing by the door 12 times a day. But truth be told I really don’t know a saddle tank locomotive from a side tank one. Or at least I didn’t till I checked it on Google a few moments ago to make sure I was getting the terminology right. The ‘train-spotty’ side of my nature comes out in other ways – a milk bottle collection, obsessions with maps and yes when I was ten years old I had a phase when I ‘collected’ car number plates – that really is ‘train-spotty’.

 

After spending the summer at home with my family, I’m off on the road again, this time to see my old friend Bikko Matthe, a Sami shaman who lives in the Arctic Circle, before heading south to Oslo to begin my autumn programme of teaching. I spent 10 years dreaming about this shaman before I realised that he was a living man. It took me a further 2 years to find him. But then, things of quality do take time.

 

I was dancing when I was twelve; I was dancing when I was out. I danced myself out of the womb, so says Marc Bolan in T Rex’s, ‘Cosmic dancer’ - and then he danced his way into a tomb. I guess life is a dance; it is full of movement, we stop moving and then we die. From the cells inside our bodies, to the flesh and bones that appear static. They are all filled with movement and connections.