Sunday 27 December 2020
Wednesday 23 December 2020
Monday 21 December 2020
Image on an Eggcup
I looked at it more closely this morning. I'd always assumed it was an image of St. George and the Dragon!
Friday 18 December 2020
Mark Allen, Life Term.
Mark Allen has just launched his author site:
My Wiltshire Life article about his forthcoming novel:
https://markallenauthor.com/marks-story-inspires-a-novel-launch/
Friday 27 November 2020
Saturday 21 November 2020
AA Survey, Email
The AA*, Survey
Questionnaire email,
20 November 2020
Thanks, AA, but what did you say?
“We know you’re no longer with us,
but your opinion still means a lot”.
The Ethiopian Crisis. Tigray Conflict.
Ethiopia Crisis: High stakes for Africa - Could the battle for Tigray end up destabilising the entire Horn of Africa? BBC World Service, The Real Story
Explaining Tigray, BBC World Service, The Fifth Floor - What is behind the conflict in Ethiopia's Tigray region?
Tuesday 17 November 2020
Sappho's Leap
I write at some length about Sappho's supposed (apocryphal) suicide leap in my book, The Ionian Islands and Epirus, A Cultural History (pages 3-10). I discuss a number of poems on the subject and this 'landscape of the imagination'.
At the time of writing the book, I had not discovered the poem by Edwin Muir:
Monday 9 November 2020
Cornwall with Simon Reeve, BBC TV
Episode 1 - an important programme to see, relevant to the whole of the UK . BBC iPlayer
Tragic in places.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000pb6s/cornwall-with-simon-reeve-series-1-episode-1
Saturday 7 November 2020
Adam Morse, Seeing Differently, BBC Radio 4
"Adam Morse, who is registered blind, explains how he directed an award winning film by seeing differently. When he was diagnosed at the age of nineteen with a rare eye condition, he feared at first that his ambitions to act and direct might be thwarted. A decade later, his dreams are being fulfilled and he hopes to blaze a trail for other artists with disabilities", BBC programme information.
Listen to this inspiring programme from Four Thought:
Monday 2 November 2020
Reading Preferences: On Novels and Non-Fiction
These days I rarely turn to a novel, out of choice. For many years (with very exceptional cases) I have found the essays, letters, non-fiction and autobiographical writings of novelists more interesting and absorbing than their fictional works.
Just for starters, here are some of my most-read works by noted novelists:
Alan Sillitoe:
Mountains and Caverns, selected essays by Alan Sillitoe
Life Without Armour, An Autobiography
Kingsley Amis:
The Amis Collection, Selected Non-Fiction 1954-1990
John Fowles:
Wormholes, Essays and Occasional Writings
The Journals, Volume 1 and 2
Lawrence Durrell:
Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller, A Private Correspondence
Prospero's Cell
William Golding:
The Hot Gates
A Moving Target
Anthony Burgess:
Little Wilson and Big God: Being the First Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess
You've Had Your Time: Being the Second Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess
Sunday 1 November 2020
Songs of the Seal
Thinking of Sammy the Seal, where is he now?
Two haunting songs:
Saturday 31 October 2020
How the World Sees the USA. Carnegie Endowment. Christiane Amanpour, Steven Erlanger, and David Rennie, with Aaron David Miller
From the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:
"Three veteran foreign correspondents, Christiane Amanpour, Steven Erlanger, and David Rennie, sit down with Aaron David Miller to discuss theWatch the Zoom discussion on YouTube:
Thursday 22 October 2020
Monday 12 October 2020
Ethiopia, BBC film, When Art Meets Power
African Renaissance: When Art Meets Power, Ethiopia
With Afua Hirsch, BBC iPlayer
Sunday 11 October 2020
Stolen Antique Garden Urns, West Bay Road, Bridport.
These beautiful, very heavy antique garden urns were stolen from my mother's garden near West Bay, Bridport, Dorset, around twenty-five years ago. I would be interested to find out if anyone recognizes them or can help me trace their whereabouts. Several thieves must have driven up the drive in the middle of the night, emptied out the soil and loaded them onto the back of a small pick-up truck. I was in Australia at the time. I'm still angry!
The first photo was taken in our Somerset garden, the second in West Bay Road, near Bridport.
Saturday 10 October 2020
Thursday 8 October 2020
The Fly on Mike Pence's Hair. Miroslav Holub, The Fly.
If Miroslav were still alive, he might have added another verse to his poem, The Fly (translation George Theiner):
https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/the-fly/
The (same?) fly lands on Mike Pence during the vice-presidential debate:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2020-54459544
Tuesday 6 October 2020
Status quo ante. Mojo. Front-door colours. Conservative Party Conference
There were three comments made by PM Boris Johnson in his keynote speech at the Conservative Party Conference which caught my attention and made me go back to the text to check them:
"We have been through too much frustration and hardship just to settle for the status quo ante".
"I have read a lot of nonsense recently, about how my own bout of Covid has somehow robbed me of my mojo".
"We will fix the long-term problems of this country not by endlessly expanding the power of the state, but by giving power back to the people - the fundamental life-affirming power of home-ownership, the power to decide which colour to paint your front door".
On the last point the PM might be well-advised to discuss the topic with HRH The Duke of Cornwall, since residents of Poundbury are expressly forbidden to decide which colours they can choose to paint their front doors. It is a breach of the stipulations to make external alterations such as painting front doors in anything than in "identical colours" to those originally selected by the Duchy.
https://www.poundburymanco.co.uk/home-alterations/
It is impressive that the PM can use such a wide range of words and registers, from the Latin (status quo ante) , to the Afro-American "mojo".
What was the status quo ante of his mojo?
Muddy Waters, live, Got my mojo workin':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-APvKTcUW9Y
Stereo version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gNs-29s-0Q&list=RD1gNs-29s-0Q&start_radio=1&t=44
All Mountains, H.D.
All Mountains, by H.D.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=27&issue=2&page=25
"Give me all mountains...
the unclaimed
bleak
wild stretches
of the mountain side...
give me the islands of the upper air,
all mountains
and the towering mountain trees".
Friday 2 October 2020
Colenso Books, Two Books by Jim Potts
This spinning world & Reading the signs
by Jim Potts
Order direct from the publisher: colensobooks@gmail.com
Also available to order from leading book suppliers such as WHSmith, The Guardian Bookshop, Waterstones and amazon.co.uk
Wednesday 30 September 2020
ΟΙ ΔΙΩΧΝΕΣ...the flowers that tell you it's time to leave
Diochnes - the flowers that send you packing!
Nikolaides:
