A TWISTED ANKLE, A NEW PLAN & BEHIND THE SCENES AT LDF

I visited Portugal over the summer and, as part of our trip, we had planned a weekend city break in Porto – a city built entirely on a slope that seems to have cobbled every horizontal surface. I swear there are cobbled cobblestones!

And I arrived with a badly and recently twisted ankle.

A few hours in, I was in a tonne of pain, trying (and failing) to push through, and feeling terrible for ruining our holiday.

My husband sat me down in a cafe with an espresso and a pastel de nata and promptly disappeared.

A few moments later he reappeared triumphant with a walking stick, some painkillers, and the local Uber equivalent downloaded onto his phone.

He joined me at our table, ordered a beer and we hatched a new plan for our trip – one that called for significantly less walking.

“Sometimes you’ve just got to deal with what’s in front of you,” he said, kindly.

Holiday saved.

Or as Arther Ashe put it...

“Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”

And you know I love to find an environmental moral in every story(!), so here goes...

I had grand plans for that holiday just like I have grand plans for saving the planet. But trying to do it all, without taking into account your actual circumstances – much as you'd sometimes like to change them – can break you. It can break your spirit, your motivation, and possibly even your ankle!

Sometimes you just have to deal with what’s in front you, accept help, and take it one wobbly step at a time.

BEHIND THE SCENES AT LDF

Now that my ankle is doing significantly better, I am heading up to the big smoke for London Design Festival – and you can come too... sort of!

BTS with Katie is a private pop-up Instagram feed that you can subscribe to and get access to everything I see, as I see it – you can ask questions as I go, and even ask me to keep my eyes peeled for certain items or trends.

I will be posting live from Saturday 16 until Thursday 22 September 2023 and if you sign up, you will be as good as there with me. See you in London! ;)

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R/W/L:

Do you remember 'reading lists' at university or art school? Loooong lists of things you were supposed to have read that inevitably got pulled out of your bag – untouched since they got shoved in there – just in time for the lecture they related to?! My R/W/L (Read/Watch/Listen) lists are a bit like those, but waaaay more interesting and much more suitable for different learning styles...

READ >>

My favourite line from a Mary Oliver poem is "I don't know what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention." If the climate doom is getting to you, you could do a lot worse than to really pay attention to the more-than-human world, and nobody is better at inspiring that attention than Mary Oliver.

WATCH >>

There is an Apple TV series called Silo that I have just hoovered up – so good! It's based on the first ('Wool') of three books, so I'm hoping for two more seasons. I guess you would call it dystopian fiction, and depending on how the next season/book unfolds, possibly even climate fiction. But it's the best thing I've seen in ages and worth a watch for the kick-ass female lead alone.

LISTEN >>

Laura Eigel is a brilliant human, whose book Values First teaches, among other things, how to connect values, boundaries and habits – I have just re-read it from cover to cover and I'm finding it such a helpful way to work out where to place my energy right now and how to keep it where I want it.

That's all from me this month – I will BE back in October with more empowering stories to inspire optimism and aligned action in the face of climate change.

In the meantime, if you enjoyed this month's missive and would like to see me in your inbox a little more regularly, you can sign up for my newsletter here.

Stay curious, imperfect and defiantly hopeful,

PS Don't forget to sign up for BTS with Katie if you want to explore the London Design Festival with me next week.