Robert Ford
robertmford.bsky.social
Robert Ford
@robertmford.bsky.social
Writer, community builder, & devoted tea drinker 🍵✨—on a mission to find the stories that connect us, spark empathy, and make the world a bit kinder (one cuppa at a time).

https://robertmichaelford.substack.com/
In Lower Tissington, scandal travels faster than tea cools.
One dropped page, three unsigned notes, and a biscuit tin full of plausible deniability.

www.brittleviews.com/p/redacted-f...

#BrittleViews #MaggieB #WryComedy #QuietRealism #EnglishVillageLife #LiteraryFiction
Redacted for Biscuits
On lost pages, polite rebellions, and the mercies that smudge.
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November 10, 2025 at 1:46 PM
A quiet one this week.
Ralph drifts between sleep and memory, Rachel and David find their footing over bad coffee, and a forgotten Barry White song brings the past home.

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#HoldingOn #LiteraryFiction #GriefAndGrace #QuietStories #EndOfLife #FamilyNarratives
Chapter Twenty-Four – Holding On
Welcome back to Holding On.
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November 7, 2025 at 5:53 PM
A borrowed key, a whisper, and a village that files gossip like minutes.

What happens when order gives way to kindness, and does mercy need to be written in ink to last?

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Come for the fuss. Stay for the mercy written in pencil.
Signed in Pencil
On rumours, revisions, and the affections best signed in pencil.
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November 4, 2025 at 7:48 PM
Love’s paradox: heavy as breath, light as grace.
A poem for those who carry, and those who lift.

If it resonates, share it forward or subscribe.

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#Poetry #Reflection #Caregiving #Hope #BrittleViews
Love, Heavy as Light
How moments of freedom can change the weight of everything.
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November 3, 2025 at 1:29 PM
When Audrey brings a clipboard, the evening rarely ends on time.

Motion Carried is part comedy, part quiet confession — about order, biscuits, and the grace of writing things down twice.

www.brittleviews.com/p/motion-car...

🫖 New Maggie B. Casefile on Brittle Views.
Motion Carried
On adjournments, biscuits, and the motions we carry long after the meeting ends.
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October 28, 2025 at 4:04 AM
Peace never arrives — it returns.
In fragments, in breath, in the small permissions to stop holding everything together.

This week’s After the Noise reflection follows that rhythm back to stillness.

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#AfterTheNoise #Essays #Presence #BrittleViews
The Quiet Work of Returning
How peace finds its rhythm again (Oct 20–25, 2025)
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October 26, 2025 at 1:01 PM
The Calm That Never Was — an essay on what happens when false calm gives way to real peace.|
Stillness stops being performance and becomes presence.

shorturl.at/0D8G8

If the quiet work of truth matters to you, share or subscribe.

#AfterTheNoise #Presence #QuietResistance #BrittleViews
The Calm That Never Was
For a long time, I mistook calm for peace —
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October 25, 2025 at 2:48 PM
When the noise fades, what’s left isn’t emptiness — it’s rhythm.

I explore how stillness shifts from recovery to daily practice, and how peace stops being escape and becomes attention that stays.

Read / listen: www.brittleviews.com/p/the-practi...

#AfterTheNoise #Presence #Stillness #BrittleViews
The Practice of Presence
I’ve been circling this idea of presence for a while now—how quiet changes when it stops being recovery and becomes practice.
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October 24, 2025 at 4:00 PM
The attic holds its breath — dust, lavender, boxes labelled in Lily’s hand.
In Things We Keep, the past isn’t gone; it’s folded, waiting.

A story about memory, touch, and the quiet ways love keeps living on.

shorturl.at/6re3j

#HoldingOn #QuietFiction #Family #Legacy #LiteraryFiction
Chapter Twenty-Three – Holding On
Welcome back to Holding On.
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October 23, 2025 at 1:07 PM
What happens when stillness leaves the page and steps into the street?

This latest After the Noise essay — a lived moment of calm, belonging without proof.

www.brittleviews.com/p/unclaimed

#Essay #Presence #Embodiment

If it lands, boost it forward — someone else may need the quiet too.
Unclaimed
I hesitated to include this one in After the Noise.
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October 22, 2025 at 6:20 PM
The newest in my After the Noise series — The Quiet I Choose — explores what happens when stillness stops being something you chase and becomes something that meets you halfway.

www.brittleviews.com/p/after-the-...

#AfterTheNoise #Stillness #Presence #Essays
After The Noise
Essays on what remains when the rehearsal ends.
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October 21, 2025 at 4:51 PM
Silence used to feel like absence.
Now it feels like authorship.

The Quiet I Choose continues my series on presence and renewal—what happens when stillness becomes not what you escape to, but what finds you.

www.brittleviews.com/p/the-quiet-...

#essays #presence #solitude #brittleviews
The Quiet I Choose
Some people find energy in company; others find renewal in the quiet company of their own thoughts.
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October 21, 2025 at 12:29 PM
Three notebooks. One apology.
Maggie B. files the story anyway.

A short story about regret, resilience, and the small kindness of silence.

www.brittleviews.com/p/filed-too-...

#MaggieB #LiteraryFiction #BritishFiction #QuietRealism

🕯️ Share, repost, or subscribe if quiet stories still move you.
Filed Too Late
Three notebooks, one apology, and a silence that stayed open.
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October 20, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Stillness holding warmth.
This week’s Brittle Views gathers what endures when we rebuild trust — and keep showing up for one another.

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#ReflectiveWriting #BrittleViewsDigest #PresenceAndRenewal
What We Keep Alive
Trust, renewal, and the quiet work of return (Sep 12 – Oct 19, 2025)
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October 19, 2025 at 11:04 PM
Sometimes rebuilding doesn’t look like reconciliation — it looks like kindness, returned and sustained.

What We Build in Silence — on trust, presence, and the quiet grace that follows forgiveness.

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#writing #trust #forgiveness #relationships #essays
What We Build in Silence
On the slow architecture of trust, and the grace of staying kind.
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October 16, 2025 at 6:04 PM
A Fortnum & Mason’s tin, a new face at the WI, and a silence that says more than it should.

Half-Measures — a Maggie B. story about charm, control, and what’s left unspoken.

www.brittleviews.com/p/half-measu...

#MaggieB #ShortStory #QuietFiction #BritishFiction #WryComedy #LiteraryFiction
Half-Measures
A tin, a chair, and the quiet art of taking up space.
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October 13, 2025 at 4:33 PM
What holds us isn’t always strength—it’s the quiet balance between stillness and fire.
New on Brittle Views: an essay about friendship, family, and the small acts of endurance that keep the light moving forward.

www.brittleviews.com/p/between-st...

#essays #writing #reflection #presence #stillness
Between Stillness and Fire
Light, memory, and the quiet architectures of defiance (Sep 28 – Oct 11, 2025)
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October 12, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Avoidance isn’t distance.
It’s defense — what love looks like when it’s been singed too many times.

My latest essay, The Architecture of Safety, is about learning to live inside our defenses differently.

www.brittleviews.com/p/the-archit...

#Essays #Healing #Vulnerability #Boundaries
The Architecture of Safety
What looks like distance is often defense.
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October 11, 2025 at 2:18 PM
Friendship moves through us — in gestures, laughter, and the stillness that asks for nothing.

The Light Between Us is about love as continuation — what we carry forward, and what carries us.

www.brittleviews.com/p/the-light-...

🕯 Read & share if it speaks to you.
#Friendship #Essays #BrittleViews
The Light Between Us
When I wrote The Light That Stays, I was thinking about the friendships that hold — the ones that steady us through change and silence.
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October 10, 2025 at 12:23 PM
A new chapter of Holding On is out.

Emma’s sketchbook becomes a bridge—between grief and grace, silence and story.

It’s about how love endures through the act of making.

shorturl.at/WI3Nz

#HoldingOn #QuietFiction #FamilyStories #LiteraryFiction

Read, reflect, and share if it lingers.
Chapter Twenty-One – Holding On
Welcome back to Holding On.
shorturl.at
October 9, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Even in Lower Tissington, the records don’t tell the whole story.
Counted, Not Named — a new Maggie B. Casefile about what gets tallied, and what’s left unsaid.

www.brittleviews.com/p/counted-no...

#BrittleViews #MaggieB #QuietFiction #BritishFiction #ShortStory
Counted, Not Named
A clipping, a crease, and the kind of record that forgets what matters most.
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October 7, 2025 at 4:05 PM
In this latest chapter, Emma sketches as Ralph recalls. Washing lines, laughter, a red peg swinging in sunlight. A beetle becomes a prince on a quest.

It’s a chapter about how memory is carried forward — in stories retold, in drawings remade, in quiet bonds between generations.

shorturl.at/ZjuMI
Chapter Twenty – Holding On
Welcome back to Holding On.
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October 3, 2025 at 3:01 PM
She wasn’t always “Maggie B.” Some stories refuse to be numbered, some moments refuse to be forgotten. 🍊
The new Casefile is live: This One Doesn’t Count.
Come for the village oddities. Stay for what lingers.

#MaggieB #ShortStory #LiteraryFiction #EnglishVillageLife

shorturl.at/70oIt
This One Doesn’t Count
A Maggie B. Casefile - Revisite
shorturl.at
September 29, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Defiance is lived in bodies: fire on the tongue, breath pulled from smoke, knees refusing the ground. When they come to erase us, let them meet a wall of us, together, unbroken.

www.brittleviews.com/p/unbroken
Unbroken
Not a whisper.
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September 28, 2025 at 11:50 AM
In this week's Holding On, a long-kept letter is finally opened. Lily’s voice returns—warm, wry, unflinching—her words reverberating.

It’s about legacies spoken aloud: silence, guilt, forgiveness, and the fragile hope of repair.

shorturl.at/2fgHC

#FamilyStories #LiteraryFiction #Caregiving
Chapter Nineteen – Holding On
Welcome back to Holding On.
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September 24, 2025 at 9:27 PM