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.

‘Elektra’: To travel into inner space and not, I hope, to get lost or full of hubris.

February 26, 2025

There is a chance that today’s blog will mirror yesterday’s. That is because what I find amongst the reviews of this play is  an even more extreme version of the attack on Remi Malek as an Oscar-winner but made this time on Oscar-winner Brie Larson. The attack is the more virulent in that this performance … More ‘Elektra’: To travel into inner space and not, I hope, to get lost or full of hubris.

Tomorrow I travel to London. My first destination experience is travelling to ancient Thebes recreated on the stage of the Old Vic Theatre to see Ella Hickson’s free adaptation of ‘Oedipus’.

February 25, 2025

Tomorrow I travel to London. My first destination experience is travelling to ancient Thebes recreated on the stage of the Old Vic Theatre to see Ella Hickson’s free adaptation of Oedipus. Reviewers’ comments have ranged from deliberate disdain to the usual passive-aggressive attempts to take down the reputation of visiting Hollywood stars alongside praise of … More Tomorrow I travel to London. My first destination experience is travelling to ancient Thebes recreated on the stage of the Old Vic Theatre to see Ella Hickson’s free adaptation of ‘Oedipus’.

Lapse and the Upward Spiral of Change, sometimes!

February 24, 2025

The model of behavioural change promoted by Prochaska and DiClemente to describe the usual process of escaping addiction provides the best model of how success occurs and is more durable in nature. It applies to any human behavioural task and suggests that only when serial occurrences of apparent failure in the task occur (failures which … More Lapse and the Upward Spiral of Change, sometimes!

‘I’ve done worse things, things I am not proud of including standing here in the dark with David, I know there’s a little bit of hypocrisy there, there are shades of hypocrisy in everything. Our principles stretch like elastic bands’. This is a blog on Nicola Dinan (2025) ‘Disappoint Me’.

February 23, 2025

‘I’ve done worse things, things I am not proud of including standing here in the dark with David, I know there’s a little bit of hypocrisy there, there are shades of hypocrisy in everything. Our principles stretch like elastic bands’.[1] When certainties fail us, as they must in time, there may be no alternative to … More ‘I’ve done worse things, things I am not proud of including standing here in the dark with David, I know there’s a little bit of hypocrisy there, there are shades of hypocrisy in everything. Our principles stretch like elastic bands’. This is a blog on Nicola Dinan (2025) ‘Disappoint Me’.

‘Education, Education, Education’ seemed good rhetoric to Tony Blair, whatever he meant by it. So let’s stay with its advantages as three sustainable objects.

February 22, 2025

Fighting for a historic third term in government, Tony Blair drove to his constituency in Sedgefield and said that his three-pronged object of political desire remained ‘Education, Education, Education’, without using the by then much mocked word. Here is what he said: Education has been, is and will be the driving mission of a New … More ‘Education, Education, Education’ seemed good rhetoric to Tony Blair, whatever he meant by it. So let’s stay with its advantages as three sustainable objects.

‘In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing’. Hence why be Earnest, Ernest? Seeing Max Webster’s version live-streamed at the Gala Durham 20th February 2025.

February 21, 2025

My photograph of the screen in the interval of ‘ The Importance of Being Earnest’ at the Gala Theatre Durham The words cited in my title are from Gwendolen Fairfax, one of the two young women in this play in love with the name ‘Ernest’. Is the name or style of a man his reality? … More ‘In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing’. Hence why be Earnest, Ernest? Seeing Max Webster’s version live-streamed at the Gala Durham 20th February 2025.

Being ‘other than the things I touch’

February 20, 2025

The ‘intentional fallacy’ was proposed by Wimsatt and Beardsley in 1954 in The Verbal Icon. It suggested that no work of art, especially a literary one, should be read with an assumption that the author’s ‘intention’ with regard to the poem’s meaning or function as discourse should or indeed can be made. Yet scholarship remained … More Being ‘other than the things I touch’

Making a man of yourself for yourself – the strain of the 1950s

February 19, 2025

Making a man of yourself – the strain of the 1950s Image from The Science Museum archive: https://coimages.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/58/936/large_2000_0549.jpg (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) We all assume we know what DIY means (without troubling to extend the acronym to the term DO IT YOURSELF). However, it was not always thus as the ‘Brief History of DIY’ page from … More Making a man of yourself for yourself – the strain of the 1950s

Is a day being a mythical version of someone else, worth the crashing out afterwards? “Jackie is just speedin’ away / Thought she was James Dean for a day / Then I guess she had to crash / Valium would have helped that bash”.

February 18, 2025

Is a day being a mythical version of someone else, worth the crashing out afterwards? “Jackie is just speedin’ away / Thought she was James Dean for a day / Then I guess she had to crash / Valium would have helped that bash”. It feels easier for me to say why not I would … More Is a day being a mythical version of someone else, worth the crashing out afterwards? “Jackie is just speedin’ away / Thought she was James Dean for a day / Then I guess she had to crash / Valium would have helped that bash”.

“And these few precepts in thy memory /Look thou character”. This is not how to be ‘yourself’ – whatever that means!

February 17, 2025

Imagining yourself giving advice to your own teenage self is a thing more strange than we like to think. It is one of those moments when we see ourself as ‘double’, having two characters in one moment that interact with each other, sometimes in a contest of power and / or authority. There is because … More “And these few precepts in thy memory /Look thou character”. This is not how to be ‘yourself’ – whatever that means!

If I would like to ban a word, it would be a word like ‘like’, like!

February 16, 2025

‘No two corpses are the same’, the surgeon,In forensic and appropriate blankTone, as blank as this verse reversing onItself. ‘They are alike only when sankIn sordid life’.                            Yet only as a corpseIs a body named a ‘like’, a word likeThat ‘lych’ that names the gated part of t’porchOn which dead bodies rest, or that old … More If I would like to ban a word, it would be a word like ‘like’, like!

‘People who make things also have an ambiguous relationship with time’. Appreciating the motion of passing time in Tracy Chevalier (2024) The Glassmaker London, The Borough Press.

February 15, 2025

‘People who make things also have an ambiguous relationship with time. … Its surprising hard to gauge the rate at which time passes – whether it moves faster for others than it does for you’.[1]Appreciating the motion of passing time in Tracy Chevalier (2024) The Glassmaker London, The Borough Press. Is it a spoiler to … More ‘People who make things also have an ambiguous relationship with time’. Appreciating the motion of passing time in Tracy Chevalier (2024) The Glassmaker London, The Borough Press.