Note on September 16th, 2025. When I wrote this I was still a staunch Conservative in politics and attitude. I shudder today at the very notion of having been "put in mind" of Mrs Alexander's hymn by "an oily yard where mechanics were repairing taxis". My elder son got his first job as a trainee… Continue reading Intimations of Immortality
The price of civilisation
While I was living in Jamaica, I managed to help earn a few pennies by typing and editing literary and academic texts. One such was a student’s philosophy dissertation. She was not an agile writer or an original thinker but she did put together some others’ work in a coherent way, to the effect that… Continue reading The price of civilisation
Personal working assumption
Though I am always ready to challenge religions and New Age therapies, I run my life on two working assumptions: 1) To get what I need, I send out a message to the Universe. 2) Unease is Nature’s way to get me to do something. Re (1): Time and again, I have found that as… Continue reading Personal working assumption
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
Dream lesson
A dream : I’ve started a new contract job, so the environment and people are all new to me. The lead consultant explains my task. He’s very bright, one of those impressive all-rounders with a “first-class brain”. I find myself speaking intelligently to him, so I feel it will go OK, despite the task being… Continue reading Dream lesson
The word “spiritual”
Darius commented on my previous post, thus: That response to nature is fascinating to me too. It seems as though while a lot of us have it, some don’t. You almost never hear the spiritual importance of nature brought up in discussions about preserving the environment. “Nor should the spiritual importance of nature be brought… Continue reading The word “spiritual”
Ducks and Drakes
There’s a kind of spring weather in England we call “April showers”, when the weather laughs and cries alternately, sometimes offering bursts of snow or hail, skittish as a lamb with blue sky and bright cloud Some of this can happen in May too, as on a morning where I braved its occasional tears and… Continue reading Ducks and Drakes
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
Reality is inchoate
An early April sky amid the Chiltern Hills Inchoate: not yet made complete, certain, or specific : not perfected: imperfectly formed or developed. What we are accustomed to call “reality” is an interpreted reality, one which accords with a culture, and can be communicated in words, and shared. Our culture may assure us that reality… Continue reading Reality is inchoate
Spring, or the talk that never was
26th April Spring is the most important thing happening here. I’ve been watching the progress of chestnut blossom at the back of our upstairs flat. There’s no garden, just a communal car park, then a fenced-off slope up to the railway. This young tree hangs over the fence, offering itself as a measure of the… Continue reading Spring, or the talk that never was
Is it just evolution?
Am I the only devotee of chestnut blossom in its close-up form? My interest started in about 1992, when I observed the phenomenon in Brent Lodge Park. After that, an illness prevented me from going out and about much. Walking the earth and admiring the handiwork of its creator (so to speak) became a defiant… Continue reading Is it just evolution?
Sacrifice and Conscience
updated on 6th December 2024 In an “utterly insane world ruled by a capricious and indifferent deity”*, the only thing we can keep swept clean and fresh is our own doorstep. To follow our own conscience is a tragi-comic defiance of the gods. It is the Absurd, symbolised by Albert Camus in his Myth of… Continue reading Sacrifice and Conscience
New Age Beliefs?
A blogging friend lists 21 characteristic beliefs defining that rather journalistic label “New Age”. Her question is, “How many of these do you agree with?” My answers are in italic. The following are some common — though by no means universal — beliefs found among New Agers:* All humanity, indeed all life, everything in the… Continue reading New Age Beliefs?
Last Temptation
I finally got to watch Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, after wanting to see it ever since it first came out in 1989. Wonderfully poetic fiction and superior to the official fictions so jealously guarded by the churches. As for the Da Vinci Code, I got as far as opening it in a bookshop a while… Continue reading Last Temptation
Learning How to Live
We don't learn how to live any more. So much has gone or is going. We are losing handwriting, spelling, grammar, walking as a mode of transport, playing on the streets. We are unwittingly performing experiments on our children, for we don’t know what the outcome will be, for them or the world. Does this… Continue reading Learning How to Live
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
Wet day
It's wonderfully rainy today and I want to get out there in boots and raincoat, investigating this brilliant yellow field of oilseed rape that we saw yesterday evening from Hughenden Park, whilst wandering through budding buttercups. I love that blue-green crop adjacent to the yellow of the rape, too. But I have to stay in… Continue reading Wet day
England in Spring
26th AprilSpring is the most important thing happening here. This is how far a chestnut blossom at the back of the house has progressed. I'll give you an update soon. I love Spring, this year particularly, because it mirrors my own joy. Someone offered me this link on cheerfulness. I can't decide if it's wise… Continue reading England in Spring
What I owe to Mr Dufeu
Looking that mackerel in the eye, doubting its immortality, accepting the procession of evolution from fish-like ancestors to me, was another step towards scepticism—as to any afterlife existence I might expect. Religion has no direct authority over my beliefs, but one absorbs vague assumptions from the culture one’s brought up in. For sixty years some… Continue reading What I owe to Mr Dufeu
Do I have an immortal soul?
Looking that mackerel in the eye, doubting its immortality, accepting the procession of evolution from fish-like ancestors to me, was another step towards scepticism—as to any afterlife existence I might expect. Religion has no direct authority over my beliefs, but one absorbs vague assumptions from the culture one’s brought up in. For sixty years some… Continue reading Do I have an immortal soul?
Do fish have souls?
The dead mackerel fixed me with one cold eye. I had it on the table to slit its belly, take out its guts. We had much in common: eye, heart, spine and entrails. Its gills equate to my lungs: alternative ways to put oxygen in the blood. When I die my corpse will be just… Continue reading Do fish have souls?
To the Reader
What you see started off as playing with the Blogger software, to see what it could do. So it’s an experiment, but not limited to technical stuff. What I write may be fact or fiction, anything I freely choose; until you add a comment, and it may be a dialogue. Who knows where it might… Continue reading To the Reader
From my Garden
addressed to a friend, Jacqui Ritchie, a counsellor in Wycombe Counselling Centre, written on 9th August, 2001. Some photos were included but I haven't found them yet As I write this in the garden, on the day that you and I met in Amersham at the ASK Italian restaurant, the sun shines and there's a… Continue reading From my Garden
kabir for many are the ways
oldagiousness
Started on Tuesday December 23rd, 2025. As ever. I look for illustrations to brighten the text, and discovered this of Oxford's "dreaming spires" on my computer This winter-eve is warm; Humid the air; leafless, yet soft as spring, The tender purple spray on copse and briers; And that sweet city with her dreaming spires. She… Continue reading oldagiousness
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
The Modern Encyclopaedia for Children
Around 1951, while I was at Merrion House Preparatory School at, I acquired this book. I never knew where my things came from. They might have been dropped off by my grandfather in his 1930s car. This one was mostly boring, told me things I had no context for, but these pages were fascinating me:… Continue reading The Modern Encyclopaedia for Children
Blurbs
My diary

a wayfarer’s notes 