Comedian Tracey Ullman has produced a couple of sketches recently that poke fun at the an attitude to Christianity which seems to be becoming increasingly prevalent in our green and pleasant land. The first portrayed an applicant for a job who…
Like a reluctant schoolboy sent shuffling home to put on uniform, the fen sky shifts from grey to grey: deep mud on the banks of the Bedford sucks in the scents of the sluice The big rivers are laid bare:…
Read: Denver sluice
Once upon a time, a man (though he could have been a woman) lived in an enclosed room. He had everything he needed. It was a large and exciting room, and there was plenty to keep him occupied. Being an…
Read: Man in a room
When 1984 passed without much sign that George Orwell’s prophecies were coming to pass, we might have been permitted a sigh of relief. But there are signs now that such a sigh would have been premature. The kind of society…
Read: At last the 1984 show – and it may be too late to stop it
(for David Holgate, 1939-2014, musician, sculptor, master letter-cutter) The letter is the music carved like jazz into Welsh slate, the bass notes not too hard and flat, rubbed down again, until the skin is soft enough to bear it –…
Read: Never going away
Everyone I know seems to be ill. This is what is known as hyperbole. Sometimes it’s known as flu, or man flu. Other times it’s a bit of a flu. Occasionally it’s flue, but that’s just a spelling problem. Here…
At Venta Icenorum a man runs along ancient walls after sunset a shadow against the sky Is he running into the future or into the past? When we look through dust-boxes of your memories we see the past: secret pictures…
Read: Looking both ways