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 the second time in two days, Geoff, my husband, Daisy, our dog, and I set off for a visit to the Borders Book Festival held at the lovely Town of Melrose. Why the second time. Therein lies the tale and why I am still looking forward to Scotland not waking up in the Borders. … More Scotland, for the second time in two days. Lol.
Posted on 13th June 2024 by stevendouglasblog LITTLE TOM VISITS THE DINOSAURS AT BISHOP AUCKLAND: Part 1: The World of Oversize Insects This millipede would be, stood on its head, the height of two people, the top standing on the lower one’s shoulders, the plaque said. Tom thought of Mum onto Dad’s head landing not his shoulders: clumsy … More Some verses about why Tom likes dinosaurs & adores creepy-crawlies but might, in the end, prefer small ones? An exhibition at Bishop Auckland Town Hall seen on Tuesday 11th June.
Thomas Hart is an aging queer writer whose shadowy passions for transitory young men (the main instance being in the transit of a railway carriage) or a lover held not in body but only at a distance usually expends its dusty outcomes in using the world of astronomical science as a means of talking about … More Thomas Hart, an aging queer writer, is led to discard his writing with ‘a cry of disgust – at his imagination, capacity for characterisation, and, in fact the whole absurd enterprise of literature – …’. This is a blog on Sarah Perry (2024) ‘Enlightenment’
“What are you doing here’?” are the words spoken in the short film in Spanish above as a boy engineers to be where he knows his crush will walk. With impassive faces, the first sign for the boy leaning against a fence that he is daring to confront his ‘crush’ is in the looking away, … More Crushing – a teenage boy’s first love. His name was Tony.
At a point early in the novel Sheila English points out to her youngest son, Doll (a nickname given to him from a childish pronunciation of Donal) that to keep comp[any with his beloved older brother Cillian is dangerous to Doll. Sheila has a tendency to elevated description and warns Doll of ‘spending time with … More Sheila says: ‘I know the sorts that do be congregating over there. That house is a wild house’. This is a blog on Colin Barrett (2024) ‘Wild Houses’.
Do we have the capacity, as we live through climatological change to pick out a ‘season’ and characterise its preferential advantages? Scientists have to ensure, when they talk about a thing, that in order to measure how it changes exposed to possible change agents, it is precisely the same ‘thing’ measured each time. Hence Liz … More Should the question be: “What ‘was’ your favourite season?”
Abraham Maslow, the humanist psychologist created a ‘hierarchy of needs’ (it is pictured below using the simply psychology websites’ icon – because it is so simple). According to it (but of course I oversimplify) needs at a higher level of the hierarchy cannot be met before those at the lower levels, and these needs are, … More If self-realisation through reading is a luxury designed for an élite, yet I still can’t live without it, isn’t it a necessity? Why I buy and read about the obscure and unurgent things in life. I read Charles Freeman’s (2023) ‘The Children of Athena’.
Critics I have read of Colm Tóibín’s new novel, Long Island, have very correctly pointed out its reliance on minor deception, omission of truths and silence. But I think these intelligent critics are not sensitized to notice one of the minor characters in a novel as Tóibín’s loyal queer readers. Frank Fiorello has an important … More A queer perspective on Tóibín’s ‘Long Island (2024). When the feisty Eilis tells her Italian-American husband, Tony, that his brother Frank ‘is one of those men’, Tony holds his breath in shock before he bullies Eilis into perpetual silence about it: “you will never say this again. Ever. Not to me or to anyone”.
Most bloggers create a tagline, although they attach it as a tagline name or statement of intent only the blogsite. Mine was ‘Lifelong Learning’. I intended, I thought to indicate a response to retirement, to a belief that divorced the idea of learning from institutional education and from work. But terms deteriorate. Lifelong learning became … More Autonomic Learning For Life
A claim of being ‘passionate’ about something often comes with an apology these days. Passionate people don’t just talk to you. The ‘go off on one’ in the modern term. They seem forced to act or talk in ways that go beyond people’s expectations of them, or indeed anyone. Those people often include the person … More Passionate or not? Feeling forced to feel it or forced not to feel at all.
‘I want to be ugly on the cover of Time ‘.[1]This was to be the first part of a series of blogs on narcissism in the queer art, politics and representations of human feeling and attraction in Rainer Werner Fassbinder. This part examines Ian Penman (2023) Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors, London, Fitzcarraldo Editions. Other parts … More ‘I want to be ugly on the cover of Time’. This is a blog on narcissism in the queer art & politics of Rainer Werner Fassbinder as seen by Ian Penman (2023) ‘Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors’.
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