From what we know Ozymandias was a king of kings. After him men like Alexander, the generals of Rome, Genghis Khan were all men on the road to conquering the known world. In the great age of exploration when trade routes were being established countries were expanding into the unknown, to bring new wealth and…
It’s Easy If You’re Not Doing It
I was watching some street dancers doing their somersaults, splits and acrobatics and it occurred to me that when we watch athletes or even just dancers we are not watching excellence but participating in an imaginary world where we can in some symbiotic form, dance and run as they do. It goes further than this…
What Am I Offered
I keep getting sales pitches from all sorts of people these days. I am almost at the point where I won’t buy on the Internet unless I can sign out as a guest and not give my email because even when I check the ‘I don’t want any offers’ I still end up getting offers….
We Live Our Ignorance
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…