Travelling Through... London, the World and Life

052 I Felt Like I Had A Split Personality - HELENA HALME talks about Displacement, And Being Finnish

“We had to call them Soviets, not to anger the large bear next to us.”
HELENA HALME is a self-published author of contemporary fiction. She is the Nordic Ambassador for the Alliance of Independent Authors. Helena has written two box sets, the Nordic Heart series and the Island series. One of her recurring themes is displacement and the human condition, isolation and discrimination. Her book Coffee and Vodka reflects her own experiences of displacement as a child when moving with her family to Sweden from Finland - an experience which would in some ways prepare her for life when she moved to the United Kingdom as the wife of an Englishman in the Royal Navy.
Helena’s writings are all based on life experiences and those of situations around her. She is a creative and believes you need to be near people, and live in creative areas to write. In the self-publishing world marketing is such a big part of the process and she believes, “you ignore it at your peril… being self-published is hard work, you run a small business, you have to think of market forces.” She laughingly adds,
“We are vampires don’t forget.
We suck the life out of everybody we know,
And, our own.”
In our podcast chat, Helena reflects on being Finnish and growing up in Finland, a country bordered by Russia, Sweden and Norway.
“We had to call them Soviets, not to anger the large bear next to us.”
She misses Finnish rye bread and herring marinated in spices.
Helena hates running but it does bring inspiration and can help her to work out plot lines.
“My Achilles heel is that I can’t churn out books to a template.”
To find out more about Helena go to: https://helenahalme.com
Helena is also a self-publishing coach: https://www.selfpublishingcoach.co.uk/
To BUY her most recent books go to https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09924KFBD
 
To find out about your podcast host EMMA you can go to https://www.travellingthrough.co.uk/
A big thanks to MARISKA Martina at https://www.mariskamartina.com/ for creating our wonderful podcast jingle!
 

051 Gender Diversity, Social Inclusion, and God - CANON GILES GODDARD talks about 21st Century Challenges

“We’re here for you, whoever you are.”
CANON GILES GODDARD is the Vicar of St John’s Waterloo and St Andrew's Church in London SE1. His challenge is one that many face while living and serving in a fast-paced multi-cultural, socially diverse, and gender diverse city such as London in the 21st century.
“We’re quite famous for being inclusive.”
Giles talks about his mission as Vicar responsible for the (almost) 200 year old church in the dynamic community of Waterloo - and neighbour of the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace - to "reignite" the community with ways to embrace justice, social inclusion, social engagement, equality and transformation. The annual Waterloo Festival is one such initiative.
Giles was, by his own definition, an atheist for some time after experiencing a lack of inclusion by the church towards him as a young gay man. During this time he studied theology at Cambridge University with a specific aim to disprove the existence of God because he was "angry with God". After University, Giles moved to London. It was the late 1970s, early 1980s, and Giles experienced London’s gay scene when HIV and Aids were at their highest levels. However, it was while staying with an old school friend in central London, that Giles was persuaded to go back to church and to his surprise, he found there was a place for him within the Church of England.
Fast forward to 2022 and Giles is now an honorary Canon of Southwark Cathedral, the Vicar of St John’s Waterloo and St Andrew's church, and is in a civil partnership with his Malaysian spouse Shanon. Giles is a central figure of London SE1, tackling many of Waterloo’s challenges with an open, inclusive attitude. He supports the Inclusive Mosque Initiative, and is a fervent supporter of climate change and environmental initiatives. His involvement with the Church of England regarding the understanding and inclusivity of all gender groups is ongoing.
To learn more about the community outreach projects St John’s Waterloo supports, the Waterloo Festival and its engagement with Accumulate and The Bridge please check out the links below.
“God is love, and those who live in love, live in God, and God lives in them.
You can’t talk it, you can just try and live it, and just try and be it.”
To find out about ST JOHN'S WATERLOO, the Waterloo Festival, The Bridge, church services, and more, please go to: https://stjohnswaterloo.org
Twitter: @stjohnswaterloo
Instagram: @st_johns_waterloo
Facebook: @stjohnswaterloo
To find out more about Accumulate go to: https://accumulate.org.uk/
To find out about your podcast host EMMA you can go to https://www.travellingthrough.co.uk/
A big thanks to MARISKA Martina at https://www.mariskamartina.com/ for creating our wonderful podcast jingle!

050 Without Your Attention I Cannot Connect With You At All - CALVIN NILES talks about Mindful Storytelling

"Stories Are Vehicles of Powerful Messages"
CALVIN NILES is a Communication Coach and Mindful Storyteller. He is an author, poet and founder of SOAR Book Club. Calvin also hosts a number of podcasts including Stories of Awakening and Mindful Conversations.
Calvin’s mission is to guide and inspire others along their own work and life path by empowering authentic and impactful communication through stories and dialogue.
Calvin is the author of The Sun Rises in Eastmoor, and An Unfinished Mosaic
In 2020, he founded SOAR Book Club (the acronym for Stories of Awakening for Readers) for anyone who loves stories, community and wants to grow in awareness in a fun, positive club.
On Sunday, 6 March 2022, Calvin is running a Mindful Storytelling workshop / mini-retreat entitled A Sensory Experience Through The Hero’s Journey collaborating with his Mindful Conversations Podcast co-host Shamash Alidina and his sister Simone Niles (of The Soulfull Sounds Podcast) on Sunday 6th March at the wonderful Shepherds Market Gallery in Mayfair during Renee Rilexie’s solo exhibition entitled Euphoria. A collection of artwork created and inspired by Renee’s synaesthesia – a direct result of her seeing colour through sound.
“We are always creating some version of our reality.”
 
To find out more about Calvin Niles go to www.calvinniles.com
To find out more about the Mindfulness Storytelling retreat and to attend go to https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mindful-storytelling-a-sensory-experience-through-the-heros-journey-tickets-264467438227
Shamash Alidina is best known as the internationally bestselling author of 10 books including Mindfulness For Dummies and The Mindful Way through Stress, go to www.shamashalidina.com
Simone Niles is an expert coach, sound healer, vocalist and author, go to www.simoneniles.com
Renee Rilexie is an artist and author. Details of her solo exhibition Euphoria can be found at https://www.artrabbit.com/events/euphoria-54-the-gallery
My podcast chats with Renee can be found at www.travellingthrough.co.uk/podcast-1 (episodes 014 and 021)
To find out about your podcast host Emma you can go to https://www.travellingthrough.co.uk/
A big thanks to Mariska Martina at https://www.mariskamartina.com/ for creating our wonderful podcast jingle!

049 Wherein Is The Authenticity? - JOHN BOLD talks about Learning From The Past To Sustain Our Future

JOHN BOLD is an architectural historian who specialises in English architecture and European heritage management. He was Head of Architecture for the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, as well as Reader in Architecture at the University of Westminster, and continues to be a consultant on heritage management to the Council of Europe.
John is Honorary Editor of the Ancient Monuments Society, which has recently changed its name to Historic Buildings and Places. It is a society whose mission it is to defend historic buildings of all ages and all types - with a 21st century mission: learning from our past to sustain our future.
John has collaborated and/or edited the following publications:
English Architecture Public and Private edited by John Bold (1993)
Authentic Reconstruction: Authenticity, Architecture and the Built Heritage edited by John Bold, Peter Larkham, Rob Pickard (2017)
Discovering London’s Buildings with Twelve Walks (2009)
Greenwich An Architectural History of the Royal Hospital for Seamen and the Queen's House (2000)
An integrated approach to cultural heritage - The Council of Europe’s Technical Co-operation and Consultancy Programme (2018) -
Guidance on Inventory and Documentation of the Cultural Heritage (2001) -
John was brought up in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire and after initially studying at Liverpool University; he transferred his academic interests to Reading University after which he moved to London where his career as an architectural historian flourished. Today our walk and talk takes us around the fascinating historic heart of Greenwich.
If you would like to contact John Bold, please send your initial enquiries to emma@travellingthrough.co.uk and put John Bold in the subject heading.
To find out more about Architectural Monuments Society / Historic Buildings and Places: https://hbap.org.uk/
To find out more about the Council of Europe: https://www.coe.int/en/web/culture-and-heritage
To find out more about Dannatt Johnson Architects: https://djarchitects.co.uk/
To find out about your podcast host Emma you can go to https://www.travellingthrough.co.uk/
A big thanks to Mariska Martina at https://www.mariskamartina.com/ for creating our wonderful podcast jingle!
 

048 Across the Balkans in a Vintage Yugoslav Car - Emma reads from her travel memoir DRIVING TITO

In 2009 Emma Carmichael (your podcast host) left her Council of Europe job as a conservation heritage professional in southeast Europe, and travelled across the Balkans in a vintage Zastava 750 classic car (a hugely respected rustic relic from the former Yugoslavia era).
In 2019, Emma published DRIVING TITO: Through The Balkan Backroads With A Celebrity which recounts her journey, experiencing the joys, thrills and terrors of driving such a car in a modern day Balkan world, where she is met with incredible kindness and hospitality from the people of this region.
This podcast episode sets the scene as Emma reads the first two chapters from her book. If you would like to learn more check out www.travellingthrough.co.uk/book where links will allow you to purchase a paperback or ebook from various sources.
To find out about your podcast host Emma you can go to https://www.travellingthrough.co.uk/
A big thanks to Mariska Martina at https://www.mariskamartina.com/ for creating our wonderful podcast jingle!
 

047 Somehow My Fate Is Linked Up With Ukraine’s Fate - LEONORA MERIEL talks about Living Brightly

"Why would you wait until you are seventy? Now’s the time to tell your story!"
LEONORA MERIEL : author – entrepreneur – businesswoman – mother
"I like to live very brightly. Life is full of excitement waiting to happen."
LEONORA is a writer of literary fiction embracing a range of genres. She has two books published and two in the pipeline for publication this year. Leonora’s writing style is extraordinarily wide as she continues to challenge herself to evolve as a writer in the self-publishing world. Her books are stocked in all the main bookshops and online.
Leonora’s back story is as diverse and interesting as her novels. She studied literature at Edinburgh University, which offered a third year placement in a Canadian university. While in Toronto she met and married her Ukrainian husband and together they co-founded Yakaboo, the highly successful online bookshop in Ukraine. After ten years in Ukraine, circumstances changed and Leonora, now thirty, divorced, with two children, moved to Barcelona and began writing as she had always intended to do one day, however, in the heady days of her twenties, she had been swept along on an adventure working for the United Nations and then an international law firm in New York, before moving to Ukraine to become an entrepreneur, a businesswoman, a mother of two and complete an MBA which took her to Taiwan and China in the process.
Today, Leonora is back in London writing avidly in the realisation that she may have more stories to write than she can complete in a lifetime, so she has doubled her efforts to writing two books in parallel. She has re-married and has a one year old son whom it turns out also comes from a Ukrainian blood line on her husband’s side some generations back.
Leonora’s love for Ukraine, its people, its heritage and its fight for the future, weaves sinuously into her writing and characters. Her many life experiences to date informs her writing and as she remarks, her “I have a treasure trove of experiences to dig in to which will feed my writing forever.” her favourite writing quote is:
“It takes 20 years of living before you have something to write,
and another 10 years to learn how to write it.”
To find out more about LEONORA check out these links:
Website: https://leonorameriel.com/
BUY her BOOKS on her website, in a bookshop, or online bookstore.
The Woman Behind The Waterfall
The Unity Game
And Breathe – launches in May 2022
And a fourth book is due out later this year also.
Facebook: @leonoramerielwriter
Twitter: @leonora_meriel
Instagram: @leonorameriel
 
To find out about your podcast host Emma you can go to https://www.travellingthrough.co.uk/
A big thanks to Mariska Martina at https://www.mariskamartina.com/ for creating our wonderful podcast jingle!
P.S. Apologies for the little sound distortion blips which I could not eradicate at the minutes mentioned below and I hope it does detract from your enjoyment of my inspiring chat with Leonora.
5.50 - 6.00 (10 seconds)
6.25 - 6.50 (25 seconds)
14.20-15.10 (50 seconds)
56.40 - 56.55 (15 seconds)

046 London, Inherited Memory And Time Travel - NIGEL PLANER talks about Writing, Acting and Travelling

“When you’ve got a relationship with a writer who just gets what you’re up to…
You just have the feeling that I can be really funny in this.”
NIGEL PLANER is an actor, singer, songwriter, and author - amongst many other attributes - and is forever associated with his role as Neil in the 1980s cult comedy series The Young Ones.
Today we are talking about Nigel’s latest book, Jeremiah Bourne In Time as he takes me on a backstreet alley tour of London between Waterloo Station and London Bridge, through pungent smells of skunk and wee, to reach those discreet parks, gardens and spaces that are very much a part of a Londoner’s London, and form the backdrop to Jeremiah Bourne’s time travel adventures.
Nigel reflects on a London cafe where
“The service would be glum and the tea would be real.”
Nigel admits to getting obsessed with the idea that “we inherit memory - rather like birds fly south, how can they know how to? “ And, influenced by Rupert Sheldrake’s ideas on morphic resonance (for which Sheldrake is criticised by many leading scientists as being a pseudoscience notion), Nigel has enthusiastically and imaginatively embraced the concept that you could inherit memory to travel in time, and his protagonist, a young 17-year old Jeremiah, travels between 1910 London, the present (2019), and an imagined future after, not one, but two digital meltdowns, while in search of his mother using memory as his mode of time travel.
On our walk and talk, Nigel is observing London’s history from a refreshing angle, while discussing the symbolism of Dr John Dee’s black glass; the contradictory ideas of the New Age academics of 1910 from socialism to eugenics, nudism to necromancy, a present time of mobile phones, apps and step-family, and a future time post digital meltdown of vitrification and steam punk.
“It’s not your normal stand on a plinth and look grand, statue.”
(Talking about John Keats’s statue at Guy’s Hospital)
On a personal level, Nigel reveals why he loves playing “the baddie”, and what happened when he bunked off to India at 18 years old without a word to his parents and was “sick as a dog”.
“It’s not the easiest place to visit but it’s absolutely thrilling.”
 
To find out more about Nigel Planer check out his…
Website: https://nigelplaner.co.uk/
GET INVOLVED in The Time Shard Chronicles and make a PLEDGE at: https://unbound.com/books/jeremiah-bourne-in-time/
Twitter: @NigelPlaner1
Instagram: @nigelplaner1
Facebook: @nigelplanerofficial
Dramatised audio version of Jeremiah Bourne in Time can be found on Amazon Audible OR at Big Finish Productions: https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/jeremiah-bourne-in-time-1769
LISTEN to Nigel’s spoken extracts from the book on Twitter, Instagram, OR at https://unbound.com/
 
To find out about your podcast host EMMA you can go to https://www.travellingthrough.co.uk/
 
A big thanks to MARISKA Martina at https://www.mariskamartina.com/ for creating our wonderful podcast jingle!

045 From Forest Bathing To Just Sitting Outdoors - HOLLY WORTON talks about The Positive Effects Of Nature On Your Mindset

“Winter camps are deliciously empty.
It’s kind of been my survival thing for this COVID year that never seems to end.
It’s nice to just relax,
And just sit in the outdoors.”
HOLLY WORTON is an author, podcaster, publishing strategist, personal and business coach, long distance walker, ultra-marathon runner, lover of nature and trainee druid. Despite all these things going on in her life, I was able to bring her down to a slow enough walk-and-talk pace to podcast chat with me recently.
Holly’s story is a fascinating mix of work experiences, entrepreneurship and adventures from her birthplace in California, into Central and South America, Spain and now finally she has settled in the UK with her Argentinian husband and relinquished her American passport for a British one.
We begin our podcast chat at Denbies Hillside in Surrey Hills – an area of outstanding beauty. It is two days before the end of 2021 and as we walk the muddy, slippery paths of the North Downs Way, Holly talks about walking, running, camping, forest bathing, her deep connection to the earth’s energy, why plants like lavender, mugwort and roses hold such an importance to her beyond their colour and scent, her favourite trees, and how through her deep love of nature and the ancient British landscape, she became a member of OBOD (Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids).
"Connect to Nature so that you can connect to yourself.”
Holly is the author of If Trees Could Talk, a number of walking books including Alone on the South Downs Way, and Walking the Ridgeway. She also talked about how to envision your year ahead with her book The Year You Want, and finally, she has a number of short self-help guides and plenty more which you can explore and purchase on her website https://www.hollyworton.com/
“It’s so easy to get focussed on what you don’t want.
Shift your vision to what you do want."
 
To find out more about HOLLY WORTON go to …
Website: https://www.hollyworton.com/
Into The Woods Podcast: https://www.hollyworton.com/podcast/ (I was recently a guest – Ep.440)
also, she's on Instagram: @hollyworton ; Twitter: @hollyworton ; Facebook: @hollyworton
 
To find out about your podcast host Emma you can go to https://www.travellingthrough.co.uk/
 
A big thanks to Mariska Martina at https://www.mariskamartina.com/ for creating our wonderful podcast jingle!