My uncle Allen was always full of stories all of them hilarious. It was like liquid wit, impossible to say where the ideas came from or where he was going they just poured from him, but amongst these stories were many that he claimed were true. He went to Durham University and trained as a…
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Disney
Now my mother enjoys watching endless Disney cartoons I recall how the political incorrectness, the terribly corny story lines and the inherent racism of so much of what Disney made went completely over my head as a child. I loved the colours, the magical way fantasy was brought to life, talking animals and all the…
Web Pages
Trying to find a template either to buy or clone or work from that suits a publishing house like FootSteps Press has been a labour of exasperation. I have viewed hundreds and having dismissed flash as being too glitzy and bandwidth hungry, I have yet to find one that does in a simple and efficient…
G.K.Chesterton
The Rolling English Road Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode, The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road. A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire, And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire; A merry road, a mazy road, and such as…
John Masefield
Cargoes Quinquireme1 of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus, Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores, With a cargo of diamonds, Emeralds, amethysts, Topazes, and cinnamon, and…
Louis MacNiece
Bagpipe Music It’s no go the merrygoround, it’s no go the rickshaw, All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow. Their knickers are made of crêpe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python, Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with heads of bison. John MacDonald found a corpse,…
NASA
I remember as a young writer of twenty-two writing to NASA. They had a policy of looking into the feasibility of sending a journalist into orbit as they could write about the experience with a better understanding of words than their astronauts. A policy that died or was shelved. I wrote to them as a…
Happy New Year
In the new Year prayers the supplicant asks god to take care of their enemies. It is a strange request that is born out of the Hebrew love of life, one of the great pillars of Judaism and two thousand years ahead of its time in the Western world. When you love life, you respect…
The Philosophy of Antangonism
It is well known that huge advances in technology and sometimes in science occur during wars. Inventiveness takes off because a war brings about a whole different feeling in society. Instead of people vying for personal space they are all pulling in the same direction, and governments eager to remain viable give money to every…
Hidden Behind the News
Recently in the UK a major provider of residential care went bankrupt. The news reported accurately that the company plan to sell off their houses and rent them back backfired in the economic climate. But no one in the news pointed out that every care home in the UK applies some form of salary subsidy…