Last night ended getting lost in Elephant and Castle and this morning I awoke to the noise of the Waterloo main line below my ninth floor windows at the Travelodge tower hotel, after what was a fairly succesful negotiation of London buses with my old man’s bus pass, if not the backways of the Elephant … More The Old Man’s Birthday Trip continued at the age of 70 years and two days.
The Old Man’s Birthday Trip Well, here I am.on my birthday trip, a present from my lovely husband Geoff, who couldn’t make that preesnt complete by travelling with me. Now, as I tap on my phone, on the station at Durham: Now on board:and breakfast orders come round.. I could get used to first-class. My lovely … More The Old Man’s Birthday Trip Day at the age of 70 years and one day.
‘The fear of being powerless. The fear of being watched and judged. The fear of infection. They blur together. The mysterious American disease has grown larger and more ominous in your imagination as it begins to spread in Britain. … You read about it in the Mirror and you kept the paper afterwards, hiding it … More Ekow Eshun (2024) ‘The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them’. Black and Queer masculinity in the life-story of Justin Fashanu.
Thoughts Before my Seventieth Birthday on Thursday 24th October 2024: An Acrostic: ‘Does Steven Fear Being Seventy‘ Do larks ascending raise up such volumeOf song as the rich racket in his heartEach time Steven’s shaken with sonic boomSome tolling bells of time, seem to shock-start;Surprised, that such a sage and serious Timorous soul has reached an … More Thoughts Before my Seventieth Birthday on Thursday 24th October 2024: An Acrostic: ‘Does Steven Fear Being Seventy‘
The White Heat of WES or the STREETING of the Blair Witch Project Two days ago Wes Streeting outlined the approach the Starmer government will take to implementing its key pledge to voters – the relaunch of the project called The National Health Service, although it is yet to be seen how clear are the … More The ‘White Heat’ of WES or the STREETING of the ‘Blair Witch Project’.
At the heart of Rosie Broadley’s beautiful National Portrait Gallery catalogue is a brief essay by James Hall about artist’s studios as self –expression called ‘Corners of Filth & Fantasy’. Hall tells us that Bacon saw his studio as a ‘dump’, and this appears no exaggeration, quoting Bacon as saying: ‘I feel at home here … More This blog prepares me for the first exhibition of Bacon devoted solely to the concept of portraiture with the help of Rosie Broadley (ed.) [2024] ‘Francis Bacon: Human Presence’.
My lovely husband who is 83 is ill of the lurgy-thing I seemed to be sloughing off, as I approach 70 next Friday. I am in the guest bed trying to let him rest and not able to sleep. I hope using a nonsense poem he loves from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to answer this … More A whimsical response from Old Father William to being asked his ‘favourite form of physical exercise’, implicitly at least, by his son.
In Danez’s Smith’s latest collection, Bluff, one way of reading the course of history lies in the poem made from footnotes within a longer poem, rondo:‘freedom was a door into a bigger cage & when they couldn’t shackle the necks anymore, their metal met the mind, they chained time, chained the money, chained the dreams … More And, as for our destination; ‘there ‘is a place’ but that’s ‘my own / somewhere far from your knowing’. This is a blog concerning Danez Smith (2024) ‘Bluff’.
Would this man have jumped if you knew the sea contained underground rocks and dangerous currents, or if he did not know there were emergency services to redeem what to him was personal failure? When I worked in mental health roles in both or either NHS and social work roles the concept of positive risk-taking … More Supporting the negative risks in positive risk-taking is working collaboratively and in the interest of all.
“If you can get the balls in, you will”. Elisabeth Frink quoted her mother as saying to her of sculptural work to her official biographer, Stephen Gardiner. She used this to illustrate her love of symbolic and embodied passion, imagined as entirely male, that is quite ‘the opposite of passive … somebody who can be … More “If you can get the balls in, you will”. This blog prepares to revisit Yorkshire Sculpture Park to re-see their Frink collection after reading Stephen Gardiner (1998) ‘Frink: The Official Biography of Elisabeth Frink’.
Cornelia Homburg cites a letter of 1888 in which Van Gogh saw a coal-barge on the quays of the Rhone river that was ‘a grand subject’ and was ‘pure Hokusai’, but it was a subject that he needed to think about painting very differently because, he says: “I’m beginning to see more and more to … More The current Exhibition at The National Gallery promises to make you see Van Gogh differently. I see it on Thursday 25th October I read: Cornelia Homburg (ed.) (2024) ‘Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers’.
“Do your parents know you are gay?” “They’re village people.” “People can surprise you. …”.[1] My name for this blog is Regions, towns, cities, identities and village people: Determining the nature of Community. In this blog I interrogate the decision of the Durham Book Festival to entitle a session on new novels by Andrew McMillan … More Regions, towns, cities, identities and village people: Determining the nature of Community. This is a blog about seeing Andrew McMillan & Tawseef Khan.
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