Born in 1954. Chequered career including Lecturer in English, Social Worker and Lecturer in Social Work. Had breaks related to mental health that also meant I worked in social care. Now retired.
Since it now seems impossible for me to mount pictures on this site, I am reviewing whether to keep on using it and renouncing membership. This happened for the first time today. Panic over. It turns out storage on the site is limited unless I pay more money – £7 a month. duly did that. … More Unable to mount pictures on this site
The perception of beauty as an act of morality in the queer art of Paul Cadmus. If satirical visual art codes the objects of its satiric gaze as ugly, then how does it encode its moral alternatives to the immorality of ugliness? Paul Cadmus is so disregarded a painter at the present time that he is … More The perception of beauty as an act of morality in the queer art of Paul Cadmus. If satirical visual art codes the objects of its satiric gaze as ugly, then how does it encode its moral alternatives to the immorality of ugliness?
‘ … when what’s healthy and joyful is hidden, you never learn to tell the good and bad apart’.[1]Institutions, and the Irish Roman Catholic Church is one such, often control what we are allowed to see or witness and what we are allowed to remember or record of our witness of events (what we have … More ‘ … when what’s healthy and joyful is hidden, you never learn to tell the good and bad apart’. This is a blog about Niamh Ní Mhaoilcoin (2025) ‘Ordinary Saints’
Only for the medieval monk is jouissance equivalent to his habit: a fantasy dirty ditty about the phallacy of institutional religion (I am thinking Of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, having just read Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ní Mhaoilcoin (2025) London, Manilla Press – blog on that coming soon) It clung to me that habit of … More Only for the medieval monk is jouissance equivalent to his habit: a fantasy dirty ditty …
What’s your go-to comfort food? I think C. Lewis thought he might go one up on Milton in describing the role of food in temptation. But let’s start with Milton. Here is Eve having tasted the apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden: …………., for Eve [ … More We ingest self-sustaining comfort so that we might forget our emptiness in a world that starves others.
From a film made to support schools teaching the poem Give by the BBC. See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/class-clips-video/articles/znd7t39 I happened upon a word on a wallThat said just ‘Give’: Give what? I thought, I giveEnough in taxes, in support of those Who claim to suffer more than me. Who knows?If someone could write on walls can’t they … More What act suffices as an ‘act of kindness’? Or is that the wrong question? This is a blog that is partially about Simon Armitage’s ‘Give’, first published in a collection in ‘Dead Sea Poems’ (1995).
The following sonnet uses all the rhymes (nearly) and much of the iambic line of metre that still work with modern pronunciation of the words – dignity for instance just won’t make sense today if pronounced ‘dignit-eye’ – from William Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 94: They that have power to hurt and will do none‘ (see it … More A sonnet ‘stolen’ from Shakespeare: Mine is called ‘You with such power in sight, see nothing’.
The job of the novel is not only to tell a story but to edit it to fit some kind of purpose that is its raison d’être. Yet simultaneously questioning its own purpose has also been a feature of the novel since its inception in the best novelists. In a recent example from those written … More New directions in the queer novel. In a recent example from those written by the ‘best novelists’ of our time, William Rayfet Hunter’s debut novel ‘Sunstruck’ (2025), the story is often about the dual function of telling stories in society.
Word cluster images try to plot the frequency of the associations to concepts. like the one above (there are many variants) for the term ‘social change’. It is clear that the associations show no consensus about the nature of social change, its incidence – is a one-off event or constant, the methods of its occurrence … More Change isn’t that easy or that quick. Let’s start by realising that.
Félix Vallotton Le Coup de Vent 1894 A coup in French is literally a ‘blow’ or ‘gust’ but, of course, we know it best in the term ‘Le Coup d’État‘, such as that event on 18 Brumaire where Napoleon took control of French revolutionary forces and thus the state. it has been forever after the … More Today was a typical day: a gust of wind sort of upset everything.
What foods would you like to make? To sustain the body, we need to feed it, and in order to sustain it optimally, we need to select and pace the amount, degree, and type of food we use to feed it. So far everyone will agree! However, the excerpt from the Alice books of Lewis … More If only I could make food that feeds the inner mechanisms that validate the role of feelings as well as thought in evaluating the world we live in.
Let’s answer this prompt as if Thomas Mann were justifying his last novel: the ultimate ‘game’ – of confidence tricks and roleplay. In a diary entry from 25th November 1950, Thomas Mann calls his final and unfinished picaresque novel Felix Krull ‘my homosexual novel’. Yet the case for seeing it as that perhaps reduces to … More Let’s answer this prompt as if Thomas Mann were justifying his last novel: the ultimate game – of confidence tricks and roleplay. This blog holds my thoughts on Thomas Mann (trans. Denver Lindley) [1997 Minerva Paperback from ed. of 1954] ‘Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: Memoirs Part 1’.
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