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.
In Nordic mythology the Tree of Life, Ygdrasil, connects past, present and future of a culture or bloodline but is also a symbol of eternity and divine intelligence. Above is Heine’s emblem that had sinister uses for the Nazis. Words have a right to change their meaning and their method of doing so is to … More Tradition: Can you choose it?
G.K. Chesterton wrote What’s Wrong with the World’ in 1910 and I have, I have to admit, never read it but I did search out a context for the quotation that is a little wider and here it is: “Nobody says, “This washerwoman rips up the left leg of my pyjamas; now if there is … More The art of cooking might after all be another defensive response to ‘raw’ truth.
In the self-published memoir-cum-novel poof: a curriculum vitae, James, the narrator, generalises on the background human condition assumed in the work. He says, for instance: ‘Despair over our own existences certainly makes us bury obvious truths. Masochistic for meaning, we give ourselves over to existing powers so easily’.[1] At one point, James says: ‘Now I … More In the self-published memoir-cum-novel ‘poof: a curriculum vitae’, James, the narrator, generalises on the background human condition assumed in the work. He says, for instance: ‘Despair over our own existences certainly makes us bury obvious truths. Masochistic for meaning, we give ourselves over to existing powers so easily’. At another point, James says: ‘Now I have become a master of fieldwork psychology’. Yet we cannot know the full context in which that naming of a role has meaning. This blog tries to read this analytic novel’s study of the lives of masters and slaves, and a world where power seems all there is in relationships, in a way that makes sense to me.
They say retirement’s a time for leisureBut not necessarily for pleasure. The little iambic couplet I composed, with obligatory soft and feminine rhymes (don’t blame me though for the sexist nomenclature of the discourse of poetic technique where double rhymes are named both feminine and weak), for this sad blog is meant to look at … More “They say retirement’s a time for leisure / But not necessarily for pleasure”.
In the 1964 comedy,Rattle of a Simple Man, a Northerner (in 1964 a synonym for a simpleton to the London elite) goes to visit a prostitute because of a bet he has with his mates (down in London to watch a football match) who think he he is impotent with fear. He spends the night … More Leslie, the Rent Boy, offers five things to his new punter, Herbert.
‘Gladiator II’ is a turkey – not least because it goes to great lengths to avoid being a queer turkey!! The inheritance of heroic Roman Republican virtue, aptitude for bearing a sword, and heteronormativity in Ridley’s Rome. Posted on January 20, 2025 by stevendouglasblog Weighed down with excess swordplay in the best cine-poster for Gladiator II , Paul Mescal’s … More ‘Gladiator II’ is a turkey – not least because it goes to great lengths to avoid being a queer turkey!! The inheritance of heroic Roman Republican virtue, aptitude for bearing a sword, and heteronormativity in Ridley’s Rome.
The idea of winning the lottery – or winning the pools as was the norm when when I was a child and before the advent of a state lottery in the UK – may have appealed once as an means of evoking impossible resolutions to real problems – real or relative poverty, economic insecurity and … More Why offer me a dream of doing what might be better never done.
The queer artist, Charles Ricketts, wrote: ‘There is something Latin in the fibre of Titian, in his sense of reality and sense of control. … he belongs to a patrician people to whom experience is met by the force equal to control it’. [1] Could such a judgement relate to the experience of queer life … More The queer artist, Charles Ricketts, wrote: ‘There is something Latin in the fibre of Titian, in his sense of reality and sense of control. … he belongs to a patrician people to whom experience is met by the force equal to control it’. Could such a judgement relate to the experience of queer life in a Britain certain of its Imperial pretensions?
The answer is, of course: ‘One, but FIRST the light-bulb has got to WANT TO CHANGE’. This story was told to me when I first trained as a social worker but it was not told in a spirit of antagonism or resistance to what therapy does in meeting the goals that a therapist might help … More How many therapists does it take to change a light-bulb?
First published in Open university blog Tuesday, 10 July 2018, 15:06 Visible to anyone in the world Edited by Steve Bamlett, Wednesday, 11 July 2018, 07:42 Fables for the age: The ambition of Tim Winton’s (2018) The Shepherd’s Hut London, Picador. I read every word of Tim Winton as it falls (in the UK) from the press. … More Fables for the age: The ambition of Tim Winton’s (2018) The Shepherd’s Hut London, Picador.
Of a ‘chert the size of an olive pit’, that travels with the narrator through the spaces and times of the novel Juice [2024] by Tim Winton, the narrator says that ‘… a stone is an expression of the earth, a signal of time. But it’s also a relic of experience. A thing propelled into the world. … More Of a ‘chert the size of an olive pit’, that travels with the narrator through the spaces and times of the novel ‘Juice’ [2024] by Tim Winton, the narrator says that ‘… a stone is an expression of the earth, a signal of time. … but its journey isn’t over, and neither is its destiny fixed’. In the dystopia imagined by Tim Winton whether destiny is fixed or not at any point in the globe’s political and environmental history is the central ethical problem of the novel.
Steve_Bamlett_blog 