How many different speeds do you have?

The art of gear-shifting - and why it matters

The pigs at George Farm, shot by me

Dear friends,

If you’re in the UK or Europe - especially London - I hope you’re staying cool in the heatwave. London isn’t really set up for this kind of heat and it can be brutal. I used to be really bad in high temperatures, but I’m better these days. What changed it, I am convinced, was doing my yoga teacher training back in 2017 in India. It was 35 degrees throughout, there was no AC, and we were doing 4-6 hours of yoga per day. Suffice to say, the beginning was very uncomfortable - but by the end, my body felt like it could take on temperature differently. So, while I’ve been HOT like everyone else this week - and somewhat grumpy that work commitments have meant I haven’t been able to escape to breezy, balmy Margate - I haven’t been excruciated like I would have pre-2017 in London heat like this.

I also think these days I’m (slightly) better at slowing down. And that’s the thing about the heat. It really encourages you to go slowly. It got me thinking about how important it is to live at different speeds - to not expect yourself to be going at full tilt every single day, every single season of the year.

I’ve just had a period of intense activity, of speed, in opening my show at the Royal Court. After press night, I took myself away for a weekend to stay with my friend Claudia who is renovating a farm that belonged to her grandparents. It’s about 45 minutes from London and the site is perfect: rolling fields, huge weeping willows, wild daisies scattering the sides of the tracks.

Claudia is a psychotherapist, a former yoga teacher, and a very wise person in the realms of the mind and the body, and how the two connect. Whenever we see each other, we have a great deal to talk about - she’s a fascinating and brilliant person. At the farm, she’s exploring re-wilding and permaculture, and how this engaged, long term experience with nature grounds and stills us therapeutically. When she invited me to the farm, I knew it would be exactly the right gear-shift once my show opened. I jumped at the chance.

Claudia has a way of curating space which is hugely intentional, and calming. Our taste runs quite different - I am a maximalist, a real lover of pattern and colour and vibrancy, where she favours more neutral tones and natural fabrics and textures: wood, stone, linen, rattan. I find her spaces deeply relaxing because they are so simple, clean, clear and decided. As soon as I stepped into the space, I felt my brain move to a slower gear.

I’ve written before here about how much my dog, Pan, allows me to move at a slower pace. And bringing her to the farm to hang out with Claudia’s dog Olive was a delight. It was also the first time Pan had ever encountered pigs! Claudia’s three pigs (pictured, above, almost posing like movie stars) are still quite little - just three months old - and meeting them was completely gorgeous. Vocal, bold and incredibly sweet, I was taken aback by how much they are like dogs. They literally run towards you, wagging their tails, and they love nothing more than having their bellies rubbed. One of them lay on her back, trotters in the air, accepting rubs on her belly from me for probably 20 minutes, emitting little oinks of pleasure. Both of us were in heaven.

Feeding the pigs, walking the dogs, watching the blue tits flitting in and out of the willow trees snatching the live meal worm Claudia had put out for them - all of this was a real speed antidote for the fast-pace, high stakes technical rehearsal and preview period I’d just been through. It was an essential grounding, coming down from the high pitch of work I’d been at - and honestly, I’d like to try and do something similar after every show I make.

Often, I create a seasonal goal for myself. And I think my summer goal, now that we’re past the solstice, might be to stop rushing. To take my time. Things like allowing double the amount of time I think to do a task, or to travel to a place - so I can take a surprising route, or walk most of the way. Stopping trying to fit three things into one evening (as I did last night). Building in decompression time either side of a task - especially if it’s writing, or creatively demanding. Making time to swim every day when I’m in Margate. Rolling around on the floor with Pan as often as I can. Things that can be savoured.

I feel really uncomfortable when I think about slowing down. I reckon it’s something to do with being a lifelong freelancer: being in charge of my own time means I need to push push push push. I have this buried core belief that if I slow down at all, I’ll somehow run out of ambition and end up sluggish, lazy, totally unproductive. As I’ve started to introduce some of these elements of slowing down, I’ve felt almost existentially challenged: if I go more slowly, will I even be me? As though, if I am less productive, I’ll have less worth, less moral value. Of course, I know this isn’t true. But these are old patterns, and they might take time to untangle.

What do you do slow down? I’d love to hear. Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading, right to the end. You’re brilliant. I’ll see you next week.

J x