When I was eleven we lived in a village that had a seriously lovely, if small, beach. Strewn with coloured shells that still today glisten on the shell box my mother made. It was whilst there that I went swimming in the sea for the first time and letting go of a rock kicked out…
The Not So Obvious
When I was twenty one I stayed at a lovely house in the Cotswold’s that had been built in the time of Shakespeare. The bedroom floor was at such an angle going to bed was like rock climbing. One of the relatives of the owner needed a hedge clipped and I said I would do…
Sonnet To Childhood
The glories of your heaven cannot show A being quite as lovely to the eye As one that through the days and months will grow From babe to child, fro child to mystery. Inventions filter through your searching hands Ideas shape and mold your every move With grace you smile, with brilliance understand What others…
What Makes A Poet?
Having been to University and watched the rigmarole of the Chair of Poetry over the last year at Oxford University, I am reminded of how many ‘poets’ come out of Universities across the world. How college magazine publish them and how ‘movements’ are started by like-minds promoting each other enthusiastically for their entire careers. Most…
The Extraordinary Tale of Underwater Flying
The sea reflects the colours of the sky, letting the shadows of clouds ripple over its surface. The adult reflects their childhood in many of the ways in which they, think act and speak. Our society itself reflects how we have evolved and how we use patterns and systems to create around us what we…
To Be Desireless
The Buddha of course, taught people to desire less and to attain a kind of happiness by not engaging in the endless round of human ‘wants’, which are usually based on what others have, what others want to sell you and what others think you need. But he did go further in that he saw…
We All Have Something To Say
Trying to promote my new book I have noticed just how many outlets there are for people who want to say something, in writing or simply talking. I know there are a lot of people in the world but have you ever considered the ‘millions’ of weblogs that now have been added to the newspapers,…
Imagination’s Tenderest Gift
Of course we always wanted to have wings, we always wanted to be able to breathe under water and we wished we could speak to animals. In some people these are passing fancies in others they become life-long passions, never attained but dreamed of so that we get ‘nearly there’ with hang gliding, aqualungs and…
A Surfeit Of Puppets
King Lear once observed in the depths of his sorrow ‘As flies to wanton boys are we to th’gods, they kill us for their sport.’ (King Lear Act 4, scene 1, 37). Many people have an inclination to a conviction that in this life ‘something is going on’. Strings are being pulled. Destiny, fate, puppetry;…
Pied Pipers
I love children’s fairytales though the traditional ones have a longer history than as merely bedtime stories read aloud by parents to wide-eyed children fantasising about magic and witches. In their way they were morality tales. In the original story of Sleeping Beauty the prince raped the sleeping princess; Hansel and Gretel is about the…