Previously published on January 5th, 2015, a favourite reminiscence from my days working for Notts.* County Council , as described in this post If you want to go somewhere and enjoy an undisturbed smoke I suggest the Nineteen-Fifties. If you were actually around at the time, it’s no problem—wings of memory will take you and… Continue reading On Fresh Air Alone
Category: narrative
Eagle Flew Out Of the Night
Waking up at 3 am, I find a song playing endlessly in my head. Not just the tune, but some of the words too. It's one of the most extraordinary popular songs, more potent than anything by Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen. Peter Gabriel has his own explanation for how it hatched in his mind… Continue reading Eagle Flew Out Of the Night
Valley Creatures
Days pass. Not much wayfaring and not much writing. The two are connected. I had promised to dedicate a post to Lady in Red, who writes “I love it when you describe the places you walk through, bringing it alive for those of us who can only imagine both the countryside and the industrial areas… Continue reading Valley Creatures
Just like that
This is an impromptu rant, just to get things started. Perhaps meaningless and incoherent. From someone who used to support the #metoo movement—not any more.
Life-story, part 1
I want to tell the story of my entire life up to the present: the bare-bones series of events, with no fanciful embroidery. Let it be like a series of chess moves without the expert commentary. Let it be like a dispassionate ship's log. Let the facts tell their own story. As far as possible,… Continue reading Life-story, part 1
Jotted psalm
We cannot own love, only glimpse, feel it touch us, pass through, dwell in us. We are more or less feeble receivers, picking up signals from an unnown transmitter. Science is a petty thing before love, for it wants to know, grasp, possess, dismantle to fragments harness, claim, proclaim. Yet science is a thing: wonderful,… Continue reading Jotted psalm
Clouds and simple things . . .
I like clouds, trees and grass. They help reconnect with my primitive self, which has no care for fashion, technology or politics. So we went to Saunderton Lee, where I photographed flat-bottomed clouds, the sort you get on a day of sunshine and rain, and which first struck me as worthy of note one August… Continue reading Clouds and simple things . . .
Kindness (audio podcast)
click to to access the podcast transcript … I don’t know why, but the pain and the weariness started first thing Sunday morning, February 5th and here it is today, on the 23rd. I don’t even know what. At first, when I was told it was diverticulitis, I took the antibiotic and thought it was… Continue reading Kindness (audio podcast)
University dreams
Continued from "How I came to inhabit this body". I’d been accepted for some Civil Service or academic post, it wasn’t clear which or what. A colleague from a different department invited me for a chat, a sort of all-day induction. He was such good company that I felt guilty to be getting paid for… Continue reading University dreams
Four Weddings and a Funeral
We managed to make it to his last show yesterday, but not to any of his weddings. That’s him on the left when he came to ours. We didn’t know him well but his acts of kindness were unforgettable. Often it’s the way of things that you don’t find out what a person is till… Continue reading Four Weddings and a Funeral
Living in a body
In my last I described how a stranger’s eyes met mine in the street. I imagined that his glance said “My soul soars, but I’m stuck in this body.” I don’t claim the power to discern a person’s thought from his silent face. More likely, the thought had lain dormant in me for a while,… Continue reading Living in a body
Death Row
Yesterday the young man who shot 12 people in a cinema was sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of release, though some had expected the death penalty. No one has any idea why he did it—the court said it wasn’t relevant. I wasn’t interested in the verdict or his motives. It was just a… Continue reading Death Row
Colloquy
I was moved by Ellie's recent comment: We engage in a colloquy reflecting one another’s light through the jewel of our own perception. In my last I spoke of the sound of waves breaking on the shore, and in subsequent comments the ebb and flow of tides. May this blog share the connectivity and outreach… Continue reading Colloquy
Cover Story
Brian Spaeth’s been helping me design a front cover for Wayfaring. His style tends to be low-res—or even ultra low-res. I respect that, but I wanted a picture you could enter, so as to walk the paths it depicts, and see every detail. Up till June 2005, I could only gaze at enticing landscapes, and… Continue reading Cover Story
The magic fence
It’s been raining every day for weeks. Catching a cold gave me an additional reason to stay indoors, but the other morning, in the bright lull after a heavy downpour, I ventured out for a couple of errands, taking the usual shortcut to the shops on Ledborough Road, through the derelict school yard and the… Continue reading The magic fence
Whithersoever
I went on a small journey in preparation for a bigger one. On Monday I fly out to Amsterdam, so this little trip to Loudwater was to change some pounds to euros at a bureau de change. I set off in walking boots, they’re best for my swollen toe-joint. I might have gone on foot… Continue reading Whithersoever
Invitation to a Close Encounter
I was invited to an evangelical-charismatic church service lasting a couple of hours. The invitation arrived by email: “On Sunday, if you would like to come with us to our church (it is an experience not to be missed!) we would love it ...” The church hasn't found a building of its own: that’s another… Continue reading Invitation to a Close Encounter
Lisbon
To mark a double celebration, we took a few days off in Lisbon, a city of beauty and charm which I’ll try and convey in snapshots rather than words. Click on any picture to enlarge it. Our hotel was not far from the great Praça do Marquês Pombal, above. I didn’t discover who the Marquess… Continue reading Lisbon
Reunion
I felt pleased on finishing my last piece, on Everything. What else was there to say? Much as Thomas Aquinas must have felt trying to wrap up his great work, Summa Theologica, but in a tiny way. But then in his latter years, Aquinas saw things in a different proportion, and said one day to… Continue reading Reunion
Glimpsing Eternity
When we speak of God or gods, it’s to express the otherwise inexpressible. This is something that atheists and materialists seem to wilfully misunderstand, when they say that it’s irrational to believe what you cannot see. As you’ll see from various entries in this blog, there are two kinds of immortal I can’t do without… Continue reading Glimpsing Eternity
This blessed plot
If I have a favourite spot it is Cowes, or more precisely five acres overlooking the Solent, the strait which separates the Isle of Wight from the English mainland. I lived there aged thirteen for a year; and again at seventeen, at a different house nearby. Each was a front-row seat at a non-stop theatre… Continue reading This blessed plot
Encounter in a landscape
Belatedly, I discover that manual work is better than being desk-bound, better for the soul—and the world too, probably. But first some words to continue from yesterday’s set of photos. One of them shows part of the track I walked: down the hill through the nature reserve where the wild roses grew, then through high… Continue reading Encounter in a landscape
Back to Slough
I went for the fourth time in a week, on an errand to Slough. It’s a town occupying a special place in the British imagination: perhaps from The Pilgrim’s Progress, which describes the Slough of Despond. “Slough”: a strange English noun, meaning a muddy place: does it rhyme with “cough”, “through”, “though”, or “rough”? With… Continue reading Back to Slough
Purpose
Outside the supermarket a three-year-old boy was expressing his distress in voice and reddened face. Solicitous, his mother bent down to him. No doubt he had wanted something in the shop and been denied it. He looked like me at that age and in a flash I recalled how I used to behave: a lot… Continue reading Purpose
The constant spring
Sunday morning: I’ve taken my writing-book out to the backyard, where I can sit on this bench and be warmed like a lizard for the first time this year. Surely Spring has arrived! The yard is so tiny, the fences so high, that in winter the sun never reaches the ground: the best it can… Continue reading The constant spring
Bus ride
It is wonderful to be able to rejoice with the fortunate: to see someone beautiful and young who is making the most of what he or she has, in a simple way. When I was at university, I was preoccupied with my own loneliness and wasted my time. If only I could have appreciated what… Continue reading Bus ride
Bus station
I was waiting at the bus station, that haunt of pensioners, new immigrants and indigent travellers---in short, the dispossessed. I feel at home there. For the first time in fifty-three years, the name of Morton Spencer came back to me. Katie Spencer was my mother’s schoolfriend: vivacious, pretty but still a spinster, still in her… Continue reading Bus station
Belonging
The day after posting my last, I felt cleansed, as a Catholic might feel after a visit to the confessional. Burdens removed, joy restored. I had published only a small selection of what I’d drafted, but had never felt such catharsis from writing, if it is justifiable to link effect and cause in this way.… Continue reading Belonging
Fog on the Solent (Norfolk House 5)
The Solent may have been the busiest sea-lane in the world and the most varied in its traffic. There were ferries between the mainland and our Island; the Royal Navy base at Portsmouth; the transatlantic liner port at Southampton; the Sawley Oil Refinery where tankers plied from the Gulf; and innumerable sailing craft. The Royal… Continue reading Fog on the Solent (Norfolk House 5)
Early childhood
I suppose I was six months old in the photo but it might be good to start when I was four. Some of the biggest dramas of my life occurred then and in the next three years. So I have some vivid memories. In writing a memoir there’s a lot to be said for working… Continue reading Early childhood
Christmas Past
es, 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
Bleak Midwinter
Christmas is the most renowned of all the world’s festivals. It’s full of drama and contrast and potent symbols. Like many, I dread the tawdry commercialisation, sentimentality and ubiquity of this season’s trappings. But I see it differently now, having spent an entire year celebrating the daily advance and decline of Nature's rhythms in the… Continue reading Bleak Midwinter
Fragile
The eastern sky glowed golden yesterday morning, over the chimney pots and the tower of All Saints’ Parish Church. I saw the outline of a hundred wheeling birds, swallows I think, gathering for their departure to North Africa. Later as I went walking, some half-denuded shrubs were full of birds chirping and hopping excitedly from… Continue reading Fragile