Paul had spoken of those who accept the received answers of their religion and find no calling to be seekers. Their satisfaction comes from being in the bosom of a congregation. Cool and detached, I had responded that I would not write about the hypothetical experiences of others, for I would not judge them or… Continue reading My true self
Category: Books
Fevered interlude
When you have a virus---cold or flu---it comes and goes in waves, and you don’t know what to do with yourself. I woke in the night, thinking about how to continue my memoirs. There’s plenty left in the pipeline. But after age 21 and before 59, there’s a waste land: not an arid desert, but… Continue reading Fevered interlude
Clothesline
I might have conveyed the impression in my last that the world has to be put right in order to provide the conditions in which we can live happily. I really think the opposite: that the world has never been better, and never worse, than it is now. We can do our little best to… Continue reading Clothesline
Breakfast Rant
One of the characters in The Secret Agent is Michaelis, the “ticket-of-leave apostle”. Pitifully obese, he finds it difficult to communicate with others having spent his twenty years in jail (judged guilty by association with some terrorist atrocity) developing his own anti-capitalist philosophy. So now he continues his solitude in a cottage provided by a… Continue reading Breakfast Rant
Steppenwolf
I’ve been wanting to write but it’s been difficult lately and I was in the dark as to why, or what to do about it. Yes, my circumstances have changed, and as it seemed to my foolishness, they have improved, for now I’m a house-owner and part of a community, instead of depending on a… Continue reading Steppenwolf
King James I School
At the school there was a Scout Troop in addition to the Cadet Contingent. At some point in my bookish diversions I had read Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys and been seduced by it just like millions of others world-wide. The essence of this seductive power was contained in the bush-hat, the neckwear and the badge-adorned… Continue reading King James I School
Fantasies
Recalling materials for a memoir is like being an archaeologist. Sometimes you have to make do with nothing but a handle, or a spout. From this you deduce and reconstruct the rest of the jug whose fragments have been ground small by Time. Painstaking effort must be aided by guesswork, for you don’t have every… Continue reading Fantasies
The angry caning
From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! I’ve hinted that my headmaster, Montague Brummell-Hicks, viewed me as a boy in need of control and correction. He seemed to have dark suspicions of my character and this irked me from the earliest days, for I saw there were other boys, more handsome and sunny of disposition, whom… Continue reading The angry caning
Mr Sudell
One could write a memoir based on where one spent each night of one’s life. It would be like a tune on the black keys only, or a painting of the spaces between things, not the things themselves. But there would be blanks in my memoir if I tried that. I can remember when I… Continue reading Mr Sudell
Back Home from Hospital
When I reached home from hospital I was pleased to find I had a proper bedroom. Well, it was my baby sister’s room. Her cot had been moved to my parents’ room and I was assigned a mattress on the floor but I luxuriated in its sparse furnishings and relative comfort. I soon found two… Continue reading Back Home from Hospital
Released from hospital
It takes effort to wrestle the facts from memory. I thought that it was summer when I came out of hospital, and that it had been a six-month stay. But I was discharged in time to see a long queue outside a tobacconist / candy store in Harold Place, Hastings. The public record confirms that… Continue reading Released from hospital
More from the Reading Without Tears blog
Monday 2 July 2007 Stringing words together Twenty-five years ago, I bought The Art of Writing, a volume in the "Made Simple" series. It had been written ten years earlier and has an out-of-date feel now. So what? I feel out-of tune with the age too. Browsing through it again recently, I discovered many shortfalls, the… Continue reading More from the Reading Without Tears blog
To Paul, from Vincent
Paul writes: One time I think on another blog you jokingly referred to agreeing with me for a change. But I’m not convinced you disagree most of the time so much as that you have your own outlook on life. My sense is that you tend to respond less to the content of my posts… Continue reading To Paul, from Vincent
The “Nothing Girl”
No blog-writer has to apologize for liberal use of the words “I” and “me”. It’s expected. But when you read mine, one-off or regular, you’ll be implicitly aware that my “I” is a lens for looking at the big mysteries of life. It is through the personal that I reach out to the universal. I’ve… Continue reading The “Nothing Girl”
Stepping out
For several weeks I’ve had nothing new to say. Were this a movie, my wordlessness could be wordlessly conveyed. The scene opens to a man turning the platen of his typewriter to feed in a fresh white sheet of paper. Surrounding him are bookshelves on all sides. He stares at the blank sheet. After much… Continue reading Stepping out
Ce Que Vouldras
"Fay ce que vouldras" is a Middle French phrase meaning "Do what you will" or "Do as you will". It was the motto of Rabelais’ Abbey of Thélème. At work, I can look out of the window to an interesting landscape, though they’ve pasted a reflective sunscreen on the glass which blurs it making me think I… Continue reading Ce Que Vouldras
Love to all
It has been wonderful to share with you, reading your comments and being drawn to visit your own blogs too, over almost a year. You have encouraged me to start a book, and so these posts won’t be the same any more. I can’t keep posting excerpts as in my last post because the writing… Continue reading Love to all
Managing my time on earth
In the Eighties, the Filofax was the thing to have. In the Nineties, time management courses using Filofaxes or equivalent were the answer to everyone’s problem. I still keep a Lotus Organizer program for storing phone numbers, copied ten years ago from a cute little IBM ThinkPad laptop whose keyboard opened out like a butterfly’s… Continue reading Managing my time on earth
Angelic Brightness
Simon Templar (“The Saint”) is the twentieth century Robin Hood. I have not encountered him on the screen and only read a few stories of his exploits, though I did recently thrill to the swashbuckling of Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood directed by Michael Curtiz in 1938. And now I’ve encountered a co-author of The Saint.… Continue reading Angelic Brightness
Angels and us
At some point in the Christmas season the pathos converts to joy; just as grape juice needs only yeast and a little time to turn into wine. This is the Christmas miracle, repeated every year: “Peace, goodwill to men”. I used to think it was a supernatural thing, as though some power, God I suppose,… Continue reading Angels and us
Christmas Past
Yes, time can be a spiral, as Cream pointed out in her comment on my last. But it can seem like a circle of recurrence too, as the season evokes emotions long past. I’ve been wanting to write of life’s pathos for weeks now, but today it caught up with me, with an inescapable twisting… Continue reading Christmas Past
Like wildfire
I woke in the night and fell victim to a train of thought, so insistent in its claim to significance that the only way to shut it off was turn on a bedside light and scribble some words in my notebook, raw and unpolished. It did the trick, I returned to slumber and then in… Continue reading Like wildfire
New Morning
In the last few days something happened to me. It felt like “I have found my power”. In 1972 I read some shortened version of Valmiki’s Ramayana – in an English translation – which, if my memory has not distorted it, started with some yogis competing with one another for the acquisition of assorted powers… Continue reading New Morning
Punishment or happiness
“Motivation is a major problem and one of the factors for people failing to meet their goals in life. So what do you do to get motivated?” I saw this question, with ensuing discussion, in a social media forum that I knew quite well (Ecademy, now defunct) Other participants didn't find it at all strange.… Continue reading Punishment or happiness
Powys and the dead frog
I don’t normally post extended quotes, but this—including the dead frog—expresses in more masterly language what I would have liked to write today. "When one considers how dependent we all are—especially such parasitic weaklings as artists, poets, writers, priests, philosophers—upon the hard one-track energies of the industrious producers and shrewd traders, it seems only fair… Continue reading Powys and the dead frog
Having no enemies
Many people supposedly educated don’t understand that the meaning of a word is in its use. Dictionary compilers know this of course, for their task consists in collecting usage as lepidopterists collect butterflies, pinning them to a board and labelling them. Dictionary compilers follow, not lead. So, as Alice learned, we are free to use… Continue reading Having no enemies
Is Soul Poured into Flesh?
In everyday life I act as though there is a power beyond Nature, that brings luck, answers prayers and sometimes sends miracles. When catastrophe strikes, I assume that in some way it is all for the best, at least in my own life and the small circle of those I know well. I accept that… Continue reading Is Soul Poured into Flesh?
Flat-Bottomed Clouds
What triggers the experience of magic I care not. For me it is immersion in Nature. Wild flowers, trees, caterpillars, hills, seashore, clouds. I had a guru who advised focusing on the breath as a way to enlightenment. It was boring, and though I did it for years and years, I can’t see what good… Continue reading Flat-Bottomed Clouds
From a nest of terrorists
High Wycombe is no different now that it has been exposed as the home of several “monsters of evil”, who wanted to “commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale”. It’s still a place where races and religions work seamlessly together. Good neighbourliness is the norm. This morning my car’s battery ran down again. So I… Continue reading From a nest of terrorists
Sex Therapy book
I've no idea where this snippet came from, perhaps this book, which I've written about in another post Sexual problems are not necessarily a reflection of a relationship's quality. They may, however, affect this if the couple are unable to manage any resulting anxiety, shame or distress. Thus, the 'problem' may have been easily fixed,… Continue reading Sex Therapy book
Sex Therapy
The other day I called at a friend’s house to give her a book and she gave me one in return, by a sex therapist. Before you wonder the significance of this exchange, I hasten to add that the book’s co-author, a professional writer, is a friend of hers, and presumably had left her with… Continue reading Sex Therapy
Zorba the Greek
I’m glad not to have yet seen the film of Zorba the Greek, for it is the book which speaks to me, as I savour a few pages for the first time each day. The film must be full of colour and atmosphere and dancing and dulcimer-playing, but Kazantzakis in the book covers spiritual search… Continue reading Zorba the Greek
The Cosmic Ordering Service
Updated on August 28th, 2025, as Ottokar's is sadly no more I have written on this blog about how I’ve beamed out my needs to the Universe, and had them promptly delivered, like pizza to the doorstep. I was careful not to join the chorus of New Age coaches who proclaim, “You, too, can learn… Continue reading The Cosmic Ordering Service
Angels and Grace
Personally, I’m glad to be able to simply say “What happens, happens”. I don't need metaphysical explanations such as Inshallah (if God wills it). Or poetic extravagances like the fall of Lucifer from the angels to end up as Satan, to explain the existence of evil in the world I've always thought there's more to… Continue reading Angels and Grace
Memories, Dreams, Reflections
"I am reading Memories, Dreams, Reflections by CG Jung, a work I had avoided till now, partly because I felt that the Jungians were the most terrible idolaters on the planet. However, this is mostly not Jung’s fault, just as being turned into a god was mostly not Jesus’s fault. The beauty of reading Jung… Continue reading Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Suffusion of yellow
Landlord came with 2 tall Poles who piggy-backed up into the loft space and swiftly hatched a plan to mend my leaking roof. So then I went to find a field of yellow (oilseed rape), and its neighbour (such a profound green - the young leaves of corn). A deer with big rump and white… Continue reading Suffusion of yellow
The Mindless Maid
We owe the word robot to a play by a Czech, Carel Copek, staged in 1920. The underlying concept however was far older. Indeed, ten years previously a one-act play was published about an automatic housemaid—Mechanical Jane. Such little dramas as this were intended as amateur productions for the drawing room; they did not deal… Continue reading The Mindless Maid
I Leap Over the Wall
I bought this book in 1994 from a bookshop in Folkestone. The proprietor was a very old man, Above the Introduction, he'd pencilled 10p, a bargain like the three or four other I bought at the same time, each of unique interest. Why did a nun leap over the wall? The page below says enough,… Continue reading I Leap Over the Wall
a wayfarer’s notes 