It can be hard to hold steady right now in such an unsteady world and it suddenly dawned on me at the weekend that I hadn't made anything out of clay for over a week. Then on Saturday our little clay group met for a whole day of clay-making. We had arranged it months ago with the fanciful idea of working outside in the July sunshine but of course that was out of the question; it poured with rain pretty much all day and it was so cold that I wore what amounted, quite honestly, to winter clothes, but I soon began to feel warm inside. It felt like a port in a storm, a moments respite from a stormy sea. I was very pleased to be there; to catch up on the minutiae of three other lives, to share the delicious food we all brought for lunch, and to be burying my hands once more in the clay, tuning out of the everyday, and waiting to see what appeared. I started out with a plan to make something big and ended up making something small, but I know I felt grounded, and bounded, once again to the clay and to the earth, which felt as if it steadied itself, and me ... for a little while anyway.