Baz was a rescue dog, aged 10 years when we first got him from a shelter at Darlington, he is often loving, intelligent and joyous dog but stricken with phases of extreme anxiety and what looks like depression. He backs himself into corners where he cannot be disturbed, freezing into an attitude of non-engagement and … More Baz and his sad eyes.
Why not name Troy, Byzantium, Constantinople, and Istanbul and keep proliferating names for names for the primary city of the Golden Horn until you reach 10 such names for cities rich in trade that are for ever renewed or ‘renovated’. In a description of the renovation of Istanbul under Erdoğan as ‘the simulacrum of progress … More Why not name Troy, Byzantium, Constantinople, and Istanbul and keep proliferating names for the primary city of the Golden Horn until you reach 10 such names for cities rich in trade that are for ever renewed or ‘renovated’. This blog is about Kenan Orhan (2026) ‘The Renovation’.
What’s your home decoration style? Let’s get it right from the start. It is almost an oxymoron to talk about a ‘home decoration style’ for ‘style’, however you define it (let’s instance the list in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary), is a cold thing. Often opposed to the notion of ‘content’, ‘matter’ or ‘substance’ , it is … More Let’s get it right from the start. It is almost an oxymoron to talk about a ‘home decoration style’ for ‘style’, however you define it, is a cold thing!
“If love be rough with you, be rough with love. / Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.—”. A quotation is a thing used again to make it live, not a thing to save and favour in secret. This blog in honour of Sisu Theatre’s production of ‘Mabel’, a dark feminist fantasy on … More “If love be rough with you, be rough with love. / Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.—”. A quotation is a thing used again to make it live, not a thing to save and favour in secret. This blog in honour of Sisu Theatre’s production of ‘Mabel’, a dark feminist fantasy on sex/gender and the death of Mercutio.
Who is the fictional character you relate to the most? Does anyone ‘relate to’ the Two Peasants Binding Firewood by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, ‘as Moralist and Entrepreneur’ as the Barber Institute of Fine Arts identifies their maker? If not, what could be the use of art that approaches humanity through the making of types, … More Does anyone ‘relate to’ the ‘Two Peasants Binding Firewood’ by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, ‘as Moralist and Entrepreneur’ as the Barber Institute of Fine Arts identifies their maker? If not, what could be the use of art that approaches humanity through the making of types, not persons?
When I taught social work, I very quickly learned that you cannot rely on the empathy presupposed in people who go into such professions, and that empathy can be co-learned. I use that term co-learned because one of the most damaging assumptions in education is that educators (teachers if you prefer) are often in deficit … More The statement, ‘Maybe I need to find out more before I jump to a harsh judgment’, is not necessarily the result of an inborn trait in human beings that think like that, and usually needs to be learned. It relates to ’empathy’ and empathy can and should be taught in schools.
‘It’s dark and I can’t see a thing, but the scent of Sixten’s coat finds its way in, causing something inside me to shift. To be rearranged.’ Do you suddenly stop worrying about death? Some thoughts based on reading When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén. The following lines of free verse came to … More ‘It’s dark and I can’t see a thing, but the scent of Sixten’s coat finds its way in, causing something inside me to shift. To be rearranged.’ Do you suddenly stop worrying about death? Some thoughts based on reading ‘When the Cranes Fly South’ by Lisa Ridzén.
Do Booker winners become so for a reason? The 2026 Longlist came out on 28 July The question is open. Each year I set out to read at least some of the books. Here is the list for this year, which I will update as I progress through my reading and responses: 2026 Booker Longlist … More Do Booker winners become so for a reason? The 2026 Longlist came out on 28 July
As I read Jem Calder’s celebrated novel ‘I Want You to Be Happy’, Ella Fitzgerald’s best-known lyric sung through as if it has lived with me forever. This is really a blog on that novel. To be honest, I was reading Jem Calder’s novel because is aid I would because he is appearing at the Edinburgh … More As I read Jem Calder’s celebrated novel ‘I Want You to Be Happy’, Ella Fitzgerald’s best-known lyric sung through as if it has lived with me forever. This is really a blog on that novel.
Since nothing is certain, we aren’t likely, any of us to get hold of truth and keep hold of it. The sands shift and what looks a solid foothold in the mountainside crumbles when asked to bear the weight of a person already in doubt of it, falling more from lack of any faith that … More I think I will choose as ‘a quote that perfectly describes my life’ Robert Browning’s ‘Feeling for foot-hold through a blank profound, …’
Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why? Some reaons for missing a technology that still required a person to drive and regulate its process: the case of the hand loom and cottage industry in literature. A blog on extracts from George Eliot’s ‘Silas Marner’ and Douglas Stuart’s ‘John of John’. My collage … More Some reaons for missing a technology that still required a person to drive and regulate its process: the case of the hand loom and cottage industry in literature. A blog on extracts from George Eliot’s ‘Silas Marner’ and Douglas Stuart’s ‘John of John’.
Changing the ending? The issue is not with ‘books’, so to speak, but with stories, where changed endings are only one form of a work, which must exist through history as ‘translations, versions, or adaptations of works’ that involve ‘a conversation with an earlier writer’. Let’s choose, then, as so many have already done, a … More Changing the ending? The issue is not with ‘books’, so to speak, but with stories, where changed endings are only one form of a work, which must exist through history as ‘translations, versions, or adaptations of works’ that involve ‘a conversation with an earlier writer’. Let’s choose, then, as so many have already done, a story where conversations with the original are ‘an encounter … across the span of two-and-a-half millennia’. Part Three of an examination of three versions of ‘The Oresteia’ before Simon Stone’s brilliant version: the ‘Girl Who Closed Her Case’ in ‘The Oresteia’ of Zinnie Harris, ‘This Restless House’.
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