Time shifts and slides sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes black, sometimes white, sometimes red Nine short months a howling wilderness in distance travelled, like a refugee, waiting for something to happen, a death or a birth Dark frontiers must be…
Read: Refugee
Despite huge demand, I am using this opportunity to present you with an excerpt from the Alternative Carol Service at St Augustine’s Church in Norwich. We like to intersperse the carols and readings with figments of our imagination – in this…
I slip into sleep but the conversation continues The word that was in the beginning changes in my absence: to me it sounds the same, and the story unfolds The difference may be subtle or not: the level of sound…
Read: The level of sound
I am not really much of a political animal. On most issues I find myself in a minority, and I am sceptical about received opinion. I am suspicious of experts. Actually, that’s only partly true. When I was operated on…
So; you are here again. Something solid near my grave: something I could almost touch. Except that when I reach for you, my fingers slide through your body: there is nothing to stop them. We are like that: we can…
Read: Secret
I was rather disappointed with The Daily Telegraph, which normally does a good line in obituaries. Leonard Cohen, who has died aged 82, is a man who deserves a bit of depth, but there in the first paragraph was the…
Read: Leonard Cohen was great, deep and truthful, says Dylan
Should Bob Dylan have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature? He certainly doesn’t need the money. But does he merit the applause? Looking back at recent Nobel prizewinners in literature, I recognise only three of the names in the last ten…
We walk into the glen, not knowing how far The path is good, but in the air are drops of rain, which we mistake for midges Nothing bites: the hills of Harris rise up on both sides, and we look…
Read: Jokes about penguins
When I was a young lad, many moons ago, we used to have three weeks of holidays a year. I know this is hard to believe – many of my contemporaries, I am assured, had to make do with a one-day…
We sit silently at the front, dumbfounded: before us, close on 300 sons and daughters of Blakeney House: no more stout Sir Thomas, no more learned sage, no more Crome and Walpole, no more history’s page – just a pleasant…
Read: Ghost in the machine