Author: stevendouglasblog

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.

‘For a long time, the mother thought life-changing moments were momentous. Entirely unambiguous’. This blog is a reflection of Bryan Washington (2025) ‘Palaver’ New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

November 28, 2025

‘For a long time, the mother thought life-changing moments were momentous. Entirely unambiguous’.[1]  This beautiful, moving and comic line from Bryan Washington’s Palaver rhymes with one of his chosen epigrams for the novel by Akira the Hustler (ハスラーアキラ, Hasurā Akira) : ‘Our days are demarcated in the repetition of little goodbyes’. Prompt questions are so encouraging of … More ‘For a long time, the mother thought life-changing moments were momentous. Entirely unambiguous’. This blog is a reflection of Bryan Washington (2025) ‘Palaver’ New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

The fifth, or ‘confession’ stage of the Alcoholics Anonymous programme of steps to recovery from addiction is that the addict has: ‘Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs’. What kind of drama does that produce? This blog reflects on seeing Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman in The National Theatre Live screening of ‘The Fifth Step’ at 7 p.m at Durham Gala.

November 27, 2025

The fifth, or ‘confession’ stage of the Alcoholics Anonymous programme of steps to recovery from addiction is that the addict has: ‘Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs’. What kind of drama does that produce? This blog reflects on seeing Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman in … More The fifth, or ‘confession’ stage of the Alcoholics Anonymous programme of steps to recovery from addiction is that the addict has: ‘Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs’. What kind of drama does that produce? This blog reflects on seeing Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman in The National Theatre Live screening of ‘The Fifth Step’ at 7 p.m at Durham Gala.

Where is my favourite place? It is a ‘place’ we construct by inviting (perhaps even willing) the senses to respond as if they were elsewhere – in some other space and time than the present, rather than somewhere in the present function of the neural mechanisms of the brain. Hence my favourite place has no agency except that I can form within it – beware relying on it as if it had such power!

November 26, 2025

Where is my favourite place?  It is a place we construct by inviting (perhaps even willing) the senses to respond as if they were elsewhere – in some other space and time than the present, rather than somewhere in the present function of the neural mechanisms of the brain.  Hence my favour place has no … More Where is my favourite place? It is a ‘place’ we construct by inviting (perhaps even willing) the senses to respond as if they were elsewhere – in some other space and time than the present, rather than somewhere in the present function of the neural mechanisms of the brain. Hence my favourite place has no agency except that I can form within it – beware relying on it as if it had such power!

“Boo only comes out at night”, so says Jem Finch in the 1962 film of ‘To Kill A Mocking Bird’. What does it take to make ‘darkness visible’. This is a blog preparing me to see the touring production of the play by Aaron Sorkin at the Lowry Theatre on 22nd January 2026.

November 25, 2025

Thrown to the pit of Hell, Satan in Paradise Lost looks around him: At once as far as Angels kenn he viewsThe dismal Situation waste and wilde,A Dungeon horrible, on all sides roundAs one great Furnace flam’d, yet from those flamesNo light, but rather darkness visibleServ’d onely to discover sights of woe,Regions of sorrow, doleful … More “Boo only comes out at night”, so says Jem Finch in the 1962 film of ‘To Kill A Mocking Bird’. What does it take to make ‘darkness visible’. This is a blog preparing me to see the touring production of the play by Aaron Sorkin at the Lowry Theatre on 22nd January 2026.

Wear colours as if they were things and contained emotion as well as expressing it, or, ‘if I were a fairy queen, I’d wear red and green’.

November 22, 2025

Wear colours as if they were things and contained emotion as well as expressing it, or, ‘if I were a fairy queen, I’d wear red and green’. There is some contention about whether the only personality who is allowed to be seen in ‘red and green’ is a ‘fairy queen’ or an ‘Irish queen’. Unfortunately … More Wear colours as if they were things and contained emotion as well as expressing it, or, ‘if I were a fairy queen, I’d wear red and green’.

Extra time. Isn’t that another way of invoking ‘…the respect / That makes calamity of so long life’.

November 21, 2025

Extra time. Isn’t that another way of invoking ‘…the respect / That makes calamity of so long life’. Asking himself whether he had rather ‘be’ or ‘not be’ (in short, die now by his own hand or continue living), Hamlet makes it clear that there is an angle (a ‘respect’) from which having ‘extra time’ would … More Extra time. Isn’t that another way of invoking ‘…the respect / That makes calamity of so long life’.

Considered from the abyssal plain, beaches are but stages of plateaus’; ‘raised beaches’ becoming remoter from the sea that defines them, on the ascent of a mountain to an unreceptive sky. Considered from the holidaymaker’s planning efforts they are colonies to go to when the world is too hot from the engine oil of busy-ness being burnt in the polluted skies.

November 20, 2025

Considered from the abyssal plain, beaches are but stages of plateaus; ‘raised beaches’ becoming remoter from the sea that defines them, on the ascent of a mountain to an unreceptive sky. Considered from the holidaymaker’s planning efforts they are colonies to go to when the world is too hot from the engine oil of busy-ness … More Considered from the abyssal plain, beaches are but stages of plateaus’; ‘raised beaches’ becoming remoter from the sea that defines them, on the ascent of a mountain to an unreceptive sky. Considered from the holidaymaker’s planning efforts they are colonies to go to when the world is too hot from the engine oil of busy-ness being burnt in the polluted skies.

This is a blog on Murdoch’s Queer Poetry. Is it a layer of Queer History or the record of  a Psychosocial Anomaly? It is based on Iris Murdoch (ed. Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson, Rachel Hirschler & Frances White) [2025] ‘Poems from an Attic: Selected Poems 1936 – 1995’

November 19, 2025

One line in a poem of complicated love between women, written to Brigid Brophy, by Iris Murdoch reads: ‘Don’t  make of sex a basic category’. To her journal she committed the following reflection about herself: ‘It’s no good being a female queer, one must be a male one’: This is a blog on Murdoch’s Queer … More This is a blog on Murdoch’s Queer Poetry. Is it a layer of Queer History or the record of  a Psychosocial Anomaly? It is based on Iris Murdoch (ed. Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson, Rachel Hirschler & Frances White) [2025] ‘Poems from an Attic: Selected Poems 1936 – 1995’

Most of us favour only one animal – humans, and pretend to enjoy instead the slavery of the animals we willingly harm and subjugate to our will in order to feed, in every sense, our needs! Why are we so wrong?

November 14, 2025

Most of us favour only one animal – humans, and pretend to enjoy instead the slavery of the animals we willingly harm and subjugate to our will in order to feed, in every sense, our needs! Why are we so wrong? We all think we have a favourite animal and assume when we say this … More Most of us favour only one animal – humans, and pretend to enjoy instead the slavery of the animals we willingly harm and subjugate to our will in order to feed, in every sense, our needs! Why are we so wrong?

Learning from the irritant of ‘ethnographic naïveté’: Truth, method and openness to awareness of myths of sex/gender.

November 13, 2025

When, in Act V, Scene 3 of King Lear, Lear carries in the body of his youngest daughter who had, unlike her sisters refused in the first scene to say enough to prove her love of her father to win his favour, he points out that women are to be preferred who speak hardly at … More Learning from the irritant of ‘ethnographic naïveté’: Truth, method and openness to awareness of myths of sex/gender.