At school I was shy and hated speaking in public. I remember having to give a five-minute talk to my class on railways: the idea of it terrified me, and the execution was even worse. The fact that I knew…
Split light burns back from the buildings below the headland, the sea silent and shimmering after the storms On the street of the snake the houses are empty and the stones are treacherous but there is a ship waiting below…
Read: Looking for a kingdom
You live in small rooms like a queen Outside, tiled roofs and alleyways, curtains half-closed, narrow courtyards, choking in the night, suspicious circumstances I go to fight your battles but forget to pray and am deceived by someone nearer home…
Read: Playing the queen
Until quite recently I thought the most fascinating thing about Cley, a small village on the North Norfolk coast, was whether you pronounced it Cl-eye or Clay. Even locals disagree about this, and they are all sure they’re right. So…
Sitting at your bedroom window, I watch a black and white cat pursue a shrew Across the car park, the tiny shrew scurries through fallen leaves and into undergrowth, free for a few precious moments as you are free when…
Read: Death is a game
Erich Fromm, who described himself among other things as a “nontheistic mystic” (I wish I could come up with snappy phrases like that), had some interesting things to say about being awake. Possibly the most immediately accessible was this: “The…
Read: Hard to sleep and hard to stay awake? You’re not alone
Now it’s too late: no waiting game, no walking home no digging for a wild epiphany in routine clay The long, long count has fallen silent and my dreams have closed down Sullen sheep refuse to jump: my mail is…
As I walk down Queen Street, Lake Ontario, like a sea, merges into the misty horizon – lacy boundary of some other kingdom and on this side a picket fence and many mansions: this must be my father’s house, but…
Read: Queen Street
After I had got in the habit of turning the sub-titles on during TV dramas as a matter of course, I realised suddenly that it might not be the Geordie, Liverpool or New York accents to blame after all. I…
If you saw someone wandering around Norwich on 15 September with about 16 people in tow, it was probably me. To be honest, it could have been any number of official City Guides, but they would have known what they…