Gabriela Sepulveda lives in America and answered my request for artists to illustrate my work. She liked Blueskin the Cat, which is actually also my mother’s favourite story, about a highwayman in the 18th Century who is reincarnated as a cat and his subsequent adventures which finally take him to America. I received on Facebook…
Back And Forward
When we are growing up and making choices, some of which may be forced upon us by family, circumstance and society, we are usually defined by what we want to achieve and the paths we choose. It is only when we are much older, when choices become more limited because time becomes fragile, that we…
Be Honest And Open
I come from a tradition of writers (that may have started in Spain) who believe that writing is about telling the truth and by so doing being honest about one’s own self; in the hope that by relating one person’s experience of the world others may learn that they are not alone. It comes from…
Memories Are Fast
I shot a couple of short videos with a friend of mine recently and as his wife has just given birth to their second child I suggested taking a video of his son and baby daughter. He did not want to, saying that he could take pictures in frames but moving images only made him…
The Quality Of Touch
I love using my fountain pen. I grew up with ink and pens and never really took to Biro though I can see their usefulness. But even today I still think my neatest and most beautiful writing is done in pencil, because I learned to write in pencil and I can still see myself trying…
Trust Me To Lie
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could tell when someone is lying the way we can with a four year old? “Did you have sex with that women?” “No I didn’t and don’t pay any attention to the woman holding my trousers.” “Of course I never took that bribe and my bank account deposit details…
A Passion For Breathing
We rarely think much about it – letting our lungs just do their thing; but philosophers down the ages and more recently holistic health-practitioners have more and more taught how to concentrate on one’s breathing as a way to settle one’s mind. How many of us I wonder sit at the computer and breath in…
The Perfect Cup Of Tea
The Far East of course has made an art form of preparing, making and serving tea and other drinks. And the exquisite apparatus they use in presentation puts the cheap cups they sell us in our supermarkets here in the UK to shame. I recall my mother saying her father always came in and asked…
How To Argue
We are very passionate about what we ‘believe’, even more passionate about things we have never really questioned or been challenged to think about. It is one of the strengths of a good education that it forces us to assess our thoughts and brings us into discussion with people who do not accept what we…
Forgiveness
It has been discussed in the West for generations that forgiveness is an important, if not often an overriding, characteristic of a civilised person. Being a generalised term this includes forgiveness of all people, or any state, for any crime. Which of course begs the description of what ‘crime’ means, it also requires thought about who…