I was struck forcibly many years ago thinking about history. Thinking that using gunpowder in the middle ages completely changed warfare and I thought of the generations before the discovery, how people fought and all the time gunpowder existed, we just did not know. It’s a thought exercise you can do for anything from disease…
Shänne Sands
Fidelity Is For Swans is the first selection of poems by the finest unknown poet of her generation. Shänne Sands has lived and worked in Cornwall for most of her life. She studied at the Guildhall School in London penning her first poems when she was seventeen and publishing her first book when she was…
Eeni Meeni Miini Leader
The news today is all about Libya. The UK and the USA have finally managed to get revenge on Gaddafi for Lockabie and the killing of Yvonne Fletcher on London streets. On the forty second anniversary of his coup Gaddafi is no longer recognised as a leader. So now a new leader is being proposed….
In The Land Of The Blind
Milton observed, along with many others, that power is relative. The actual power of any person is derived from the people around them and their own power or lack of power. Depending upon where you look to draw your comparisons people may be very powerful or weak. For Milton if you can see through one…
The Art Of The Clown
Clowning around as any clown will tell you is an incredibly serious art form. If you chart the political necessity clowns had in Roman times through to the court jester traditions of Europe you can see they performed a unique role as truth tellers, as people given the social permission to make rulers feel uncomfortable…
Prizes
The function at school of prizes is part reward and part self-advertising. In the striving there is some excellence and a lot of work but in the actual winning does this all vanish? Does self-advertising take over? I wonder at this when I see hundreds of awards from small institutions, publishers and even blogs and…
Blueskin the Cat
Many years ago my mother said she thought the name ‘Blueskin’ was a good one for a book as it was the name of a real highwayman in the England. The book I wrote has become her favourite as it charts the adventures of a man reincarnated as a cat in the seventeenth century, as…
Something Mozart Forgot
I have been watching on you-tube some of the got talent franchise from around the world. Amongst the entertainers and outright show-offs there are some lightly talented people. Though I think the back-story to some of them and whole ‘show’ adds so much emotion to the whole saga one can hardly be objective. However I…
Life’s Got Nothing To Do With It
The more I watch TV shows and their supposed realism the more separated from living I think they are. I know they are just stories and it is escapism on a grand scale but as a story writer I can assure you they are not that inventive or that interesting, going over story-lines and themes…
Ages Past Are Ages Shared
I doubt there is anyone who has been disenchanted by their Times who has not wished to live in another time or another place. Hearkening back to a period of quietness, or simplicity and there are times when I have wondered where I would like to have been and in what age. Yet when I…