As always with WordPress prompts there seems to be an agenda based on how a word is used in the immediate present of culture. After all only that could explain being asked for ‘your definition’ of a word, as if any words were amenable to purely personal definition and its use by that person validated … More Literally fabulous or confabulated – the dream of romance
What notable things happened today? This fable is entirely fictitious though thought about after seeing today the memorials to some soul now sadly lost to us from Newton Cap Viaduct, that I photographed and append to this verse. Newton Cap Viaduct: Eleven Arches The Land of Aucks they called the home they took, The Prince … More The Darling Buds of May: a fable
Is patience is the name given by Stoics and Christians to ‘the time we waste in waiting and longing for change’ so that it seems to be of the greatest value of all things? “It’s very dree work, waiting,” says ‘Old Alice’ in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton of waiting for news of her lost sailor … More Is patience is the name given by Stoics and Christians to ‘the time we waste in waiting and longing for change’ so that it seems to be of the greatest value of all things?
Let’s say my favourite ‘historical character’ is a mixture Pedro Almodóvar and Jacques Lacan, who are both ambivalent about mirrors. This blog reflects on stories in Pedro Almodóvar (2025) The Last Dream (translated by Frank Wynne) Harvill Secker London (Penguin, Random House). This blog has to be a bit circumspect about the concept of the … More Let’s say my favourite ‘historical character’ is a mixture of Pedro Almodóvar and Jacques Lacan, who are both ambivalent about mirrors. This blog reflects on stories in Pedro Almodóvar (2025) ‘The Last Dream’
In the Elizabethan theatre a secluded space off stage and curtained, or otherwise partitioned off, and called a ‘tiring house’ acted as as a place in which actors went when they left the stage on which they performed their role or roles: it served two purposes. It was a place in which actors changed their … More Retiring? Never and always simultaneously and repetitively is the only answer, however contradictory that is!
Describe your dream chocolate bar. Used as an adjective here, the word ‘dream’ is usually thought to have the equivalent meaning as, to some extent, clearer adjectives like ‘perfect’ or ‘ideal’, but the force of the meaning of the noun persists, which describes an event that occurs entirely within the person, and with the same … More The problems of expression with exactitude: how to start thinking about Gertrude Stein as a meta-writer [a writer who writes mainly about the nature of writing].
‘The linoleum, too, … is blue. So blue you’ll have the feeling of being swept away because you are, into a current of corridors intentionally too narrow to turn around in’.[1] Queer writers have so long challenged the false universals of heteronormative stability, and perhaps privileged the discourse of sexual interaction as a panacea for … More I am passionate about the role of reading and the redemption of material life it carries with it. This is a blog on Ocean Vuong (2025) ‘The Emperor of Gladness’
When I visited the wonderful John Bellany self-portraiture exhibition at City Art Gallery in Edinburgh on Friday 4th June, there was also another exhibition (on Modern Scottish Art) containing one other Bellany painting, that painting known as Obsession. Photography was banned so I rely on internet photographs to mark or note memories not my own. … More The meaning of notable! What leaves a mark? Who makes that note?
The one thing I cannot live without is theatre – however raw its raw materials. Uncluttering the classic stage: ‘Lear’, a production of The National Theatre of Scotland at the Traverse Theatre seen 2.30-3.30 p.m. Saturday 7th June 2025. Bcck in the old days at Honley Grammar School, my friend Ann will remember that we … More The one thing I cannot live without is art – however raw its raw materials. Uncluttering the classic stage: Lear, a production of The National Theatre of Scotland at the Traverse Theatre seen 2.30-3.30 p.m. Saturday 7th June 2025.
Who do you spend the most time with? Mine is the next train, and I sit here with my skinny cappuccino waiting for it, aware I hate leaving my hubby and doggy behind in Durham. But that’s what it is like to be driven to leave no vacant space that might get filled by experience. … More Perhaps we all spend ‘the most time’ with ourselves and that rowdy group of conflicting persons’ thoughts. Hence, the need to keep learning!
‘The Secret Seven’ fail to catch up on ‘The Little Prince’. When I was in primary school, Enid Blyton ruled the world of children’s fiction, yet apart from having a kind of loving fascination for The Island of Adventure (because I liked island books), I had not even a pretend interest in The Famous Five … More ‘The Secret Seven’ fail to catch up on ‘The Little Prince’.
It would be: ‘He tried to notice the underlying things!’ Is this a case in point: This blog looks at a discovered copy of the 75th anniversary issue of ‘Granta’ from 1964 [Volume 68, No 1233]. In it a poet speaks of another much earlier poet: ‘Going, he carefully left his words behind’. My husband … More It would be: ‘He tried to notice the underlying things!’ Is this a case in point?: This blog looks at a discovered copy of the 75th anniversary issue of ‘Granta’ from 1964 [Volume 68, No 1233].
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