I love sea horses. I am sure it is because of their heads because I even loved them after I saw all the different kinds of sea horse there are even to those that look like bits of floating seaweed. And I was very interested when learning about their habits that the male and female…
When Do We Become Who We Are?
I was always amazed at my mother’s ability to sum people up when I was young. Not the least when she met my friends and would tell me how they were likely to react in certain situations. And I recall how many people see ‘character traits’ in toddlers and how people say of adults ‘oh…
Watch Me!
What makes us want to entertain each other? I don’t mean so much today with the huge amounts of money involved or the international recognition of one’s face, it would seem to me to be fairly easy to see that as a self-affirmation exercise. But what makes someone want to travel dusty roads and fetch…
Open Space
I live on the edge of moorland. To be precise Bodmin Moor which is very like Dartmoor and the famous Exmoor known as the home of the Doones in the book Lorna Doone. Although not as dangerous as years gone since there are now roads criss-crossing the area, there are still long stretches perfect for…
History In A Word
My Latin master (I wasn’t very good) used to love the word magnopere (greatly) which rolled off his whiskey soaked tongue as he said it. Most any writer you choose to talk to, or anyone who works with words, will have their favourite sounds. But the true wordsmith loves dictionaries. They read them for pleasure…
Coping With Success
You have seen the headlines. So many celebrities die young or fall from fame and end up penniless and you read their stories to find out if it was a character fault, corrupt agents, disinterested promoters or bad luck. Success and fame, and success without fame, brings with it challenges just like any other path…
Being Someone
Putting aside the obvious challenges in not getting on with one’s relations, every one of us either goes through a phase, or has a need, to belong. Whether to a tribe, a community or a nation we like to see ourselves as part of some wider human grouping. Even artists who are the archetype outsiders,…
Communicating With The Impossible
I am always told not to think of animals in anthropological terms, as if to imbibe them with some facets of human character were absurd, degrading or misleading to the animal and myself. Like the journalist who said on the radio his aunt would hear her budgie tweet and say ‘ Listen! every word clear…
To Women
What is the use of a bed without a Woman upon it, to sculpture the sheets With her form and the pillows with her play And make the springs sing at her deep love’s feats? And what is the use of an hour of night Or an hour of the day not resonant With sighs…
I Believe What You Believe
It is a very curious facet of the need to work together that we seem to be a species that needs to think together as well. I am not sure anyone has done much research on this outside of looking at ‘cultural homogeneity’ and I am sure that when a group goes through the same…