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.
Create an emergency preparedness plan. Since nothing lasts but constant change be mindful still that the few chances for stasis range, except the pill that ends all, from nought to zero because body so wants to be its own hero never sorry For trailing mind through witless pain Defying hearts, Clear that cold flesh will … More For Joanne
‘Pa believed in ghosting, and so did I. … Sometimes I thought it was more than the game itself’.[1] This blog claims that this debut novel has found a path that reinvents magic realism as a form of writing and makes it work as it should in storytelling, to suggest the dark and unacknowledged in … More BOOKER 2023: ‘Pa believed in ghosting, and so did I’. This is a blog on Chetna Maroo (2023) ‘Western Lane’. Info to agent: @CamillaElworthy
What brings you peace? We tend as a culture to fetishise a notion of inner peace, precisely because we live in a world in which both what is good, bad or on some scale between them, are of necessity the product of a dialectic that is necessarily based on conflict. We feel that we have … More Peace in pieces: how searching for and overvaluing peace will always evade it.
What profession do you admire most and why? It is very difficult to admire a profession. Not least because some of the most undesirable aspects of some professions are those characteristics that are most usually given the name ‘professional’. It usually indicates taking a back seat on one’s own emotions or instincts and being driven … More It is still for me the ideal of social work that is most admirable in public life. But is public life itself doomed?
The Oriental Museum of Durham University is currently staging an exhibition of items and photographs loaned jointly by the Mayors of Hiroshima & Nagasaki in Japan. WARNING: There is disturbing material including photographs in this blog. BUT WE MUST REMEMBER. From the webpage on the exhibition Seeing an exhibition like the one currently on at … More The Oriental Museum of Durham University is currently staging an exhibition of items and photographs loaned jointly by the Mayors of Hiroshima & Nagasaki in Japan. WARNING: There is disturbing material including photographs in this blog. BUT WE MUST REMEMBER.
What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time? When I worked as an advisor on anxiety and depression in primary health care, people of all ages would claim that they would never go anywhere without their mobile (and I suppose the same may be said of cell phones in the … More Is my ‘Mobile phone’ the default answer to this prompt? Let’s not choose that, travel light and be truly mobile!
BOOKER 2023: The female protagonist of The House of Doors, Lesley Hamlyn, confronts the character Willie, representing William Somerset Maughan, near the end of the novel and says to him that he has “never written about a homosexual affair in any of your books. You’ve never even alluded to it in all your stories, not … More BOOKER 2023: Lesley Hamlyn, confronts the character Willie near the end of the novel and says to him that he has “never written about a homosexual affair in any of your books. You’ve never even alluded to it in all your stories, not even once. … And I think you never will. Why risk drawing the beam of that particular light onto yourself”. This is a blog on Tan Twan Eng (2023) ‘The House of Doors’.
What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world? I am never confident that writing of any kind changes things except in rare cases to change the ways writing itself is practiced. Nevertheless it’s clear that often very unambitious writing can often feel that it has the intention to … More To encourage others to know the desire and feel the will to change
Describe your life in an alternate universe. Human beings get horribly stuck in the notion of binary options when they think of themselves, yet the great thought experiments concerning the identity of things all have a clear message: Schrodinger’s cat is not either alive nor dead but on a continuum of potential states of being … More If there were alternative universes in which to live and describe your life, they would be, and indeed are, MULTIPLE.
What’s the most money you’ve ever spent on a meal? Was it worth it? This is a question you just have to undermine since its presumption is that there is a common starting point for people who answer it, but that is far from the truth, even if we take the fact the cost of … More Use value, exchange value and the sale of social appearances
Honour and the triumph of Western capitalism over ethics and the value of life in An Honourable Exit. A reflection on Éric Vuillard [trans. by Mark Polizotti] (2023) An Honourable Exit London, Picador. @EricVuillard This book followed Vuillard’s novel of historical analysis based on the life of Thomas Munzer and the socio-political complexities of religious wars, The … More Honour and the triumph of Western capitalism over ethics and the value of life in ‘An Honourable Exit’. A reflection on Éric Vuillard [trans. by Mark Polizotti] (2023) An Honourable Exit Info: @EricVuillard .
BOOKER 2023 LONG LIST (Ought TO WIN): ‘During the first month of his apprenticeship, Aunty Caro taught him how to measure and cut. … But when the last day of the month arrived and his parents did not pay his apprenticeship fee, she called him aside and explained that she could not continue training him. … More BOOKER 2023 LONGLIST: This blog examines ‘A Spell of Good Things’ by Ayò̦bámi Adébáyò̦
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