Sally reads Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Frost at Midnight, and reflects on the importance of finding ways to escape, now and again, from a stressful world - to find a place of tranquillity, where we can think and create, connect with ourselves and with the natural world. It's a fundamental need, but very hard to achieve. So Sally outlines a plan - to create a "retreat", a way to provide our listeners with a temporary but meaningful respite from the world. As Sally explains, we are thinking of creating a longer form of A Reading Life, A Writing Life. It will be recorded, edited and produced in exactly the same style as the podcast, but it will be made over an extended period of time, and it will be much longer - perhaps about six or seven hours - instead of the usual 20 or so minutes. We are thinking of it as the audio equivalent of a writer’s retreat - a journey we can take together, created by words, sounds and music, a journey to a place of calm, quietude and deep reflection. We are calling the concept an “audio retreat”. The aim is to produce a mental space which you are invited into. It will be a place to hear Sally's thoughts on her reading, and how it relates to her life, how she is inspired to create, and how she writes, in extended, close-up, multi-layered detail. Our audio retreat will be a meditative experience, a way of disconnecting from the distractions, the clutter and mess of daily life. We hope it will help you unlock your own creativity and explore the corners of your own mind. And of course, as is usual in the podcast, Sally will continue to recount the joys and difficulties of living on a narrowboat as the seasons pass, while providing an eclectic, idiosyncratic and joyful guide to some of her favourite books and authors. The audio retreat will take many hours of production, so it's something we can only make if at least some of our listeners are interested in supporting it. So we want to ask you, the listeners, what do you think about the idea of "A Reading Life, A Writing Life - An Audio Retreat"? Please do let us know! You can message us through Twitter - @SallyBayley1 Or email us at [email protected] or [email protected] The producer of the podcast is Andrew Smith: https://www.fleetingyearfilms.com The extra voice in this episode is Emma Fielding. Thanks to everyone who has supported us so far. Special thanks go to Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, and Maeve Magnus.

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