Sunday, October 30, 2011

Accentuate the positive?

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Chorus responds Originally uploaded by goforchris . Been thinking about positives, perhaps to counter the foul day we've just had...
Monday, October 24, 2011

The Willing Suspension of Disbelief...

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One of the very first expressions I learned in my youthful study of poetry came with the ballads that constituted much of the diet deemed s...
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Sunday, October 23, 2011

Poets in a Landscape

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A long time ago - we're talking half a century here - I found a dun-coloured hardback book in the school library and took it out for a f...
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Friday, October 21, 2011

Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

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I've just been watching the film of John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas . I haven't read the book, and I'm interest...
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Sunday, October 16, 2011

Quietus made with a bare bodkin?

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In P.D. James' excellent novel The Children of Men , there is a scene where the protagonists come upon a Quietus - the moment when a gro...
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Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Birthday remembering

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My mother, Margaret Findlay, would have been 100 years old today. She died seven years ago, and at the time I was still working, didn't ...
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Friday, October 07, 2011

Macs I have known

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It was coming - we all knew that. It was just a matter of when. But knowing someone is terminally ill doesn't really lessen the impact w...
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Wednesday, October 05, 2011

A cold turkey

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Well, that was interesting. As I've mentioned in passing, I recently had to cancel a holiday because of back trouble. A low disc - L3, I...
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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Being fair to the taxman?

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I completed my online tax return the other day. It reduced me to weeping and gnashing of teeth, and it took me all morning and made my lunch...
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Wednesday, September 21, 2011

The silver linings

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Though today I'm feeling rather less sunny than I have the past two days, I need to record that a couple of silver linings exist in the ...
Sunday, September 18, 2011

Marking time

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How strange life feels when you put everything on hold. Right now, I should be somewhere in the air above Europe, en route for a walking hol...
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Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Poetry roulette

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What a brilliant app the Poetry Foundation one is! I downloaded it on my iPad a few weeks ago at the suggestion of Ewan McIntosh , and on th...
Sunday, September 04, 2011

Health update on a Mac

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The blog's gone a bit quiet recently, I know. Partly it's been my need to keep up with my father's Letters from the Past - ther...
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Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Who's under the bed now?

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Oh, I shall miss The Hour . Quite apart from plunging me into a frenzy of 50s nostalgia , it's had me on the edge of my seat as it devel...
Sunday, August 21, 2011

Helped by The Help

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Belting through fiction as I am this summer, I feel that at least this one merited the (relatively brief) time I spent on it. I rattled thro...
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Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Scraps of memory

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Does the pic above stir a flood of memories, dear reader? If it does, I fear you may be approaching the sere, the yellow leaf, as I am ... b...
Friday, August 12, 2011

Jubilate fails to grip

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I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Arditti's Easter - so much so that I laughed aloud at the first page and exclaimed with horrified delight ...
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Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Very naughty indeed

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When I was very small, I used to lie awake in the light summer evenings and dread the arrival overhead of the 8pm flight from Paris into Ren...
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Monday, August 08, 2011

Reflecting on a link

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I've been thinking about the most recent of the Letters from the Past , in which my father introduces the subject of the bomb dropped tw...
Sunday, August 07, 2011

Grey day transfigured

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Holy Trinity church Originally uploaded by goforchris . It's a grey morning. I'm already damp because my umbrella was in the ...
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