A few recent scribbles.
America
I’ve been a Paul Simon fan for more than 40 years. My parents owned Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. It was one of the I’d-inevitably-know-inside-out standards that my dad would play on the weekends, along with […]
I’ve found a buried chest
The term “cliffhanger” is considered to have originated with the serialised version of Thomas Hardy’s A Pair of Blue Eyes, published serially in Tinsley’s Magazine in 1873. At the end of one instalment, Henry Knight, one of […]
Storytelling
Everything turns. I’ve spent too long lately staring at a blank sheet of paper. I was never a great student. I was, as one of my lecturers put it, “the type of scholar who, when entranced […]
Line by line
I’ve been teaching myself to draw. It’s a long time since I’ve picked up a pencil for any meaningful length of time and I’m loving it. The results are patchy, but there’s a great deal […]
RIP Clive James
I first read Clive James, in barren suburban Australia, pre-teen, early seventies, when my dad would bring home piles of old copies of The Observer from the office. He’d bring them home to evoke homesickness, but […]
“I, in my great and unmatched wisdom…”
Trump’s latest eternal quote, destined for thirty ‘how not to’ textbooks, and a brilliant Brian Bilston poem by lunchtime, lays bare his Achilles heel. Before the political dark ages, a pre-Christmas episode of Question Time […]
One share is enough
Compliance, adherence and acquiescence are beefy words often used in relation to rules. Built into each of those words is a sense of resistance and belligerence – as if those rules, ideally, should be more […]
Dissent’s volume knob
Back in antediluvian times (before the ‘social’ flood), small arguments and disputes felt different. It often started with ‘I’m not sure that’s a great idea’. The person had to feel fairly sure of him or […]
Against reading on holiday
Ideas, they say, weigh nothing. Their receptacles are another matter. According to my amateur polling, most of us return from holiday with two or three books that we didn’t read. My estimate is that the […]