Adventures in Everyday Madness Continuing
Paralysis comes with dreams. It arrives at the moment when sudden movement is required and needs the reptilian brain to inform it of danger. Being in hospital during those days was like going to a safari park, getting out of your car and taunting the lions. It should have been easy to climb back into... Continue Reading →
Write about what you know, that's what they tell you. The problem is that I do not know these times, at all. These times have sprung up from the pages of novels that weave themselves around the possibility of a plague decimating the world's population. Interesting that the term, decimate, refers to the Roman habit... Continue Reading →
If you are reading this you have survived IT so far. The IT is the thing that can't be named. Think Macbeth, but only think it. You see, once it has taken to the air and spread its wings...Well, I think you get the message. I am writing this as a response to IT. I... Continue Reading →
Sunday morning has come around again; much too quickly. It came with two possibilities: a passive, meaningless stretch of twenty-four hours or a moment seized and gently squeezed of its goodness. We chose the latter. After a two year battle with the world, I appear to be content. Contentment is so different from its superficial cousin,... Continue Reading →
For The Summer…
I cried at the ending of The Song of Bernadette. I just sat and wept my young eyes out whilst my elder sister watched on, somewhat disturbed by my outburst.
When I was a child, such outpourings of emotional excess were embarrassing, especially for a boy. It’s a good job that my father had not returned from work or I would have caused him to sigh with exasperation at the thing that he had fathered, the thing that was called his son. I was highly strung, but not high enough to act as warning to others. From my earliest years, I was constantly practicing my empathy, I could put myself in almost anybody’s shoes and walk around in them.
It was some time back in the dark ages that I started to pray to God. It felt like the normal thing to do. I would have been at school by…
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This month has seen my adventures take me from an innocent cycle ride to a hospital continuing its functions in the face of Covid 19. Fortunately for my neck of the woods, Covid has pretty poor map-reading skills and a terrible sense of organisation. I wonder if this is the case with all pandemics. Anyway... Continue Reading →
I watched The Godfather when it was first shown on television in the 1970s. I watched it with my father. My father was a man who was liked by many people. His standing amongst his peers was peerless. At his funeral, my uncle, Dad's older brother, broke down and sobbed. My sister's sobbed, my mother... Continue Reading →
Since lockdown began I have been working in school once a week, looking after the children of key workers, and the most vulnerable or disadvantaged children. This has usually meant a team of three to four staff “looking after” and trying to “teach” a group of 15 to 20 children, aged between three and 11.... Continue Reading →
Being an individual in a culture that prizes the group over all else is difficult. There have been times when I thought it to be impossible. Even so, I pulled away from the general gravity and tried to free-step into a space where few had gone before. A little Captain Tiberius Kirk, eh? But it... Continue Reading →
