Television can be a dreadful waste of time, but good television is worth its weight in gold. This is what is known as a bad metaphor, because you can’t weigh broadcasting in the physical sense, but I think a bad metaphor…
All this poetry lies scattered across our lives: thrown from the high places, cast into the sea, like bread, or thrown from the window of a moving car And all this time I have fooled myself, thinking I was carving…
Read: All this poetry
Call me Scrooge, but there are certain things I could do without at Christmas time. One is companies who try to persuade me to buy things I quite obviously don’t want, just so that they can be delivered in time…
Charcoal mist eats away the sweet, sweet sky that warmed our skin Fierce fire consumes the past and the future, leaving ashes and driftwood, scattered beaches, strange signals We return to where we were before guided by touch and free…
Read: Before and after
We approached Little Gidding across the Fens, through Ramsey and into the middle of nowhere. This particular Nowhere, in case you should stumble into it, is a stunning piece of countryside away from the bustle of suburbs and motorways, – a…
Read: Into and out of Nowhere
Seen from the dunes – the Long Hills – seen, that is to say, from a distance – the wet sand folds like silk towards the sea Close to me now, your body, still like silk after all these years,…
Read: From a distance
A list is doing the rounds of what might make the news in the year 2030. You know the kind of thing – “Baby conceived naturally: scientists stumped”; “Average weight of a British male drops to 18 stone”. Chaos is clearly…
Read: The year of the bully is at the door – or is it already here?
A narrow path snakes between two young trees like a finger of incoming tide, then stops The house sits calmly, almost out of sight – white, green and glass: a high flint wall marks the border, and pale pink petals,…
Read: Gardener’s Cottage
I have obtained a blood pressure monitor. Whenever I feel the urge, I strap it on and take a reading. This can get quite compulsive, although I am not sure why. It does not make me feel better: there’s no…
The last train from Snowdon’s summit ran into clear weather about 50 metres down The summit is the summit by whatever means, and we stood naked in the clouds apart from our clothes and alone apart from the others The…
Read: Last train down