Is a little different to city life. A farmer gets up at four thirty in the morning to start their day. Most things in their life are apportioned to cost and time from feeding animals to treats for the kids. The local shop is small and opens at eight and the post office opens too…
Author: admin
Green Vote
I have to pass comment on the United Kingdom General Election if only in memory of the many thousands of people who have died over the years to make elections possible. The leader of the UK Green Party has won a seat in Brighton. I remember many years ago canvassing in south east Cornwall for…
Primroses
The primroses have been flowering for quite a while now but this year they are abundant and as always, welcome. Being in a reasonably mild part of the United Kingdom we are fortunate that they flower through to December and will start around late February – so pretty close to all year round. There used…
We Are All Writers
We all write history each and every second we live. Indeed we write history because we live. We may write a story, paint, draw, create something that a thousand years from now inspires someone else to a kind of glory or or a deep depravity. We may have children and one of our descendants may…
To Women
My poems about love actually started with one written years ago about love of life, and what life meant to me. My mother said it was a very good poem and one of my friends said it was the loveliest thing she had ever read! Over the years it expanded in a strange way and…
The Brightest Noise
I left the window open last night because I have a slight cold and was awoken by a very loud dawn chorus. I think the birds must have been sitting on the guttering and in the trees that line the road. It was one of those “I can’t sleep-am still tired- don’t mind though” moments….
Poverty
I was fourteen and in Bombay for the first time in my life. I was on a four week holiday to meet with relatives. My entire childhood I had been brought up in the UK. I only spoke English and that with a received English pronunciation and I was at boarding school. Just started that…
The Colour Of Elephants
Being a writer colours have never played a conscious role in my work. But I recall a story of a blind man telling someone he knew what scarlet looked liked and when they asked him what he said that it looked like trumpets sound. Descriptions are my life and different people’s experience of life only…
Farewell To Books?
When they excavated the library at Herculaneum they found hundreds of scrolls. Mostly stoical philosophy, but to have a library and a country estate two thousand years ago meant the owner had wealth. You can see them looking at the scrolls and after years of collecting knowing where to look for what they wanted to…
Henry 5th and Barbarella
They don’t go together do they. When I was twelve and reaching what the Catholics euphemistically (and ironically) call ‘the age of reason’ we had a small black and white Bush TV and Olivier’s Henry 5th was on one side and Barbarella was on the other. They crossed over and I wanted to see this…