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The Obsessive Diary

The diary of a literary obsessive

I write a diary and publish it. What could possible go wrong... eleanoranstruther.substack.com

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3:19

46. A Day In The Life Of A Cult

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/11/03

That motherfucker. He smashed my brain. I’d moved to a flat in Tottenham with other students, a place we could watch our thoughts, police each other and go limp together. I would wake at five and make my packed lunch and drive to the freezing outdoor pool in Hampstead where I’d dive in and swim thirty lengths. At school by six, within a term the third years had given me the keys to open up the building, realising quickly they could get away with a lie-in. School began at seven with meditation, yoga,

2:39

45. Drama School

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/11/02

It didn’t say cult in the brochure. It said, We will make you the best actor ever, or some such s**t because he was full of grand claims, the man who ran it. He’s dead now, of a cancer that had any student brought to the table, he would have ridiculed and shamed. He was like that. He believed in breaking you down. He’d been trained through Est, a psychotherapy system that was watered down into The Landmark Forum but he knew it in its purest form. He had not an inch of kindness to him. Let me zero in

3:06

44. Lordy Don't Leave Me

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/11/01

There was a song we used to play, the words had her name in them, Lordy don’t leave me, the Carpenter listened to it over and over. Her name was Lourdes, she’d arrived in our lives when the sun shone and everything was new, our first May Queen, she had black ringlet hair and the way she would say his name I can still hear now, the slant of a Portuguese accent, she seemed so knowledgeable. It was gradual, this eating less and less, small additions of things cut out, a concoction every morning that we

3:29

43. The Last Stone

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/30

And all this time we’d been building a stone circle. Inch by inch over slow grass from pile to track to hole in the ground, the rise and fall of the moon marked in rock. A year and a bit, from Beltane to Summer Solstice, the last weekend of every month. In sunny weather crowds came, through winter hardly anyone at all. One wet and miserable December with only twelve of us up there we’d put in three stones because we’d got that good at it, because we’d learnt it was less about strength than

2:33

42. The Exorcist

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/29

We’d gutted a rabbit on the central stone the day Father Juniper came to exorcise the children. Blood and entrails smeared a rock. It didn’t look great. We saw him lumbering up the field towards us, an enormous wooden crucifix over his shoulder. The hem of his brown robe was dampened by grass, his sandals snagged dandelions, his string of beads swung with every step. A squat woman followed dressed for weekend hiking; determined boots, no-nonsense shorts, furious hair. I want to give her a whistle

2:29

41. The Sacrifice

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/28

Because every good story needs a sacrifice and something lost. Jesus – devilish handsome, funny and sweet, an electricity coming off him like fire – god we’d had fun that summer; the sparks of something forbidden, an escape from a commune that had taken over and a marriage I hadn’t meant to make. In the normality of the Director’s house I laughed and ate ham and felt like just a girl. Jesus was my escape hatch and now he was missing. My husband at home – generous, majestic, kind, who loved me, who’d

2:41

40. The Passion

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/27

Not the real Jesus, obviously. The actor playing Jesus, and the effect he had was unholy. It was instant, that thing I didn’t know I’d been missing. With the Director, who still makes me laugh to this day, I found a real friend and with Jesus I found something biblical. It fizzed. It was alive. From the moment we locked eyes. I remember walking into the Director’s kitchen and thinking, S**t. These shows were no amateur productions, a cast of hundreds, an audience of thousands, the actors trail the

2:32

39. The Aftermath

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/26

Remember the girl we sprang from Hackney Marsh psychiatric unit where we danced to the broken strip light in the lift? We returned from Scotland to a chaos expressed by her – pyramids of used teabags all over the fields, and in the house, wedged into corners, teddy bears facing mirrors. She’d broken down. My man disappeared into Vispassana, meditating twice a day but I had no faith. And the stones went in, one by one, heaving their way toward completion through winter into spring. As the circle came

5:51

Upgrade

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/23

I was on the phone to Suzy. She mentioned Joe Dispenza, who I’d never heard of. It’s my last day in NYC, I woke crazy early and after the call I pottered about for a bit, packing, then came down to the salon at 4am, as has been my habit this past week, with my bag of mushroom coffee where the night porter sorts me a pot of hot water. As the lift doors opened I heard the voice of a man talking about intention, and the importance of sending clear messages to the fabric of this universe. The night

2:27

38. The Honeymoon

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/22

Shall we take a breath? Because it’s hard, this memoir business, and what happened yesterday and twenty-six years ago, was painful. A man died on my wedding day and we never talked about it, Angel man and me, at least I don’t remember we did, not how I would now when something scarring like that happens. I know we were in shock but we were also young and without the tools and wherewithal to understand that taking a breath is vital. Without it, it’s impossible to know where to go next, without it one

2:56

37. The Wedding

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/21

It’s true, I rode side-saddle, barefoot, silk butterflies tied to my toes, glass jewels about my eyes, a white slip hemmed with pearls and roses, a Victorian veil, a crown of flowers, nine maidens. Our guests divided, the women with me, the men with you to the wedding circle high on the hill. Flautists in the trees, drummers on the path, gongs hanging from branches made echo in the wind, a late-summer, warm September day in Surrey, a stone circle half built. My father and mother waiting for me in an

2:34

36. The Build Up

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/20

Yesterday a package arrived from my brother’s office, a file of things my father had kept, the notice of my birth, letters from me to him, addresses of all the places I have lived from Zimbabwe to Australia, and among it all was the newspaper article about my wedding in the woods. That’s what happens when you open cupboards, all this stuff flies out, brothers, without warning, send you packages they meant to send you years ago but forgot. That’s when you know you’re onto something. We announced the

3:16

No Kings

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/19

On the way up 7th from the west village, a man whose jaw stuck way out said, “I like being abused.” His lower teeth prominent like tombstones on a shelf, the opposite of buck. His friend nodded. On the way back, at the same spot, a woman behind me said, “Where do you even keep a horse in New York?” And in between these golden nuggets, hundreds of thousands of people, banners held high, marched in protest of a pretender, while across the pond a Duke was beheaded of title. This is today. I have landed

2:28

35. The Proposal

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/18

We used to hang out at the Bonnington Café in Vauxhall, but he didn’t propose to me there. He chose a farm trailer parked by the metal barn, straw bales against my back. He’d written a song and I didn’t see it coming. He was always singing something, devoted to his band, they wanted to make it big. My six-foot-seven Angel man; when we’d moved into the farm, I’d gone out to an architectural salvage to find a bath long enough. The piano player had painted clouds in a blue sky on the ceiling of our

2:30

34. A Trouble In My Bones

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/17

I spent a month in the desert of Sedona training to be a yoga teacher. I hung out with a man and his guitar singing songs that sounded like Paris, Texas. I hitched a ride in a camper and drove down through Utah and New Mexico where the rocks are piled like coins. I met an old friend and got hit by a truck on the highway, nearly turning us over. I flew home with yoga fitness to a commune thriving with musicians and healers, my Angel man waiting, a recording studio built in a cabin in the garden, his

3:44

Last Day

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/16

I’ve reached the end of my retreat. Today is my last day. Tomorrow I fly to NYC. It’s been enriching, deepening, hard work and holy. All that I asked it to be. Thanks to Deirdre I’ve been meditating for longer, thanks to this house I’ve been held in Divine abeyance of normal life, and thanks to the teeming life inside and out I’ve had company. I’ve learnt that trees sleep and giant cicadas have a sense of humour. I’ve seen a fox, huge and grand; she paused as I drew back the curtains one morning,

49:01

LIVE in conversation with SLART

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/15

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

2:45

33. Somewhere In All Of This

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/14

Let me expand because we were a village of misfits and outcasts, a tribe of off-grid outer-reaches travellers with an open-door policy that attracted the lost and the lonely as much as the brilliant and brave. We were unruly, anarchic, we somehow governed each other and ourselves. Healers, musicians, mystics, those who made sure the s**t pits were dug, others who prayed and cried. Bodgers and woofers got stuck in with fences and fires, party people decorated trees, foragers taught us what to eat

2:42

32. How We Learnt To Move Rocks

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/13

This is how we did it. Telegraph poles and railway sleepers, an engineer taught us how to use a windlass; a rope looped around a stone and a tree, and tightened with a stick turned clockwise, a coordination of hands to keep it winding and stop it snapping out of control and spinning anticlockwise; an arm was broken once, and once the rope broke and whipped me. But first we had to lever each stone from the pile. We used wooden poles to inch our way under, another pole, bigger and so on, inch by inch

2:44

31. The May Queen

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/10/12

This post is dedicated to Lourdes, who we loved. I can name her because of what happened, but it doesn’t happen yet. I have a photograph of her in her finery, dancing round the maypole in a blue satin dress, her arm raised in song moments before she met her king, the carpenter who dances behind her. She was Portuguese, Wiccan, dark curls, silk voice. She appeared in the commune that Beltane as the village rose on the hill and the stones were delivered; I don’t remember whose friend she was, who

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