Writing

  What we may well believe has the power to cut and shape and hollow out the dark form of the world surely if wind can, if rain can. But which cannot be held never be held and is no flower – Cormac McCarthy There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray, love, remember. And there is […]

I’m thinking of meadows after reading about them. These are the best, they say in The Times, for good summer walks. Different parts of England, Scotland, and Wales. The person who wrote it is not speaking from experience but finds them on the internet. That means two things. There will be better meadows inevitably, and […]

  There is something about winter which pares all living things down to their essentials – Moya Cannon It learns…something – Lex Fridman talking with Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet, and envisaged it as a utopian democratic space. We all did, excited with the new technology. Talk to anyone, reason […]

In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public […]

But I think if any song can touch the heart, then one should value it – Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong I’ll ask the interweb – Lance, Detectorists A few years ago I read about Amy Liptrot when she lived on Orkney, was preparing a book, and using a GPS sky app. I investigated and found there […]

Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we! – William Shakespeare I watched the Detectorists for the first time a few months ago. Then again, and a third time, and I’ve now watched the Christmas Special twice. When the jokes arrived I smiled on two levels. At the joke, and with the recognition. I laughed […]

The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories ― Carl Jung Landscape pictures can offer us, I think, three verities – geography, autobiography, and metaphor ― Robert Adams It can stay silent a lifetime. Who knows anyway what it is, that wild, silky part of ourselves […]

There is something about winter which pares all living things down to their essentials – Moya Cannon, Winter Paths There’s quite good local walking where I live. River, woods, lake and nature reserves within reach. Kestrels occasionally, kingfishers rarely but memorably, perhaps once a year. There are owls in the woods. In the pandemic lockdown […]

In the mountains, there you feel free – T.S. Eliot Some years ago I met two ladies in a Lake District pub. They were animated and interested in whatever was happening and who was there. I was enjoying food and drink after a walk. They’d been exploring valleys, not the high places, as a weekend break more than […]

  It can stay silent a lifetime. Who knows anyway what it is, that wild, silky part of ourselves without which no poem can live  – Mary Oliver Narratives can make us understand. Photographs do something else: they haunt us – Susan Sontag The Lascaux paintings are some of the oldest art we have. Palaeolithic, […]