These days, a growing number of people are coming up with rude names for Mr Johnson, the UK Prime Minster. I too have a name for him which could be described as rude. But, in my case, I would argue that the reason I use this name is not just to vent my exasperation or express my contempt, although I… continue reading
Category Language
Mr Johnson’s True Name
In Search of Good Faith
I have been carrying a little string of thoughts in my head for several weeks. They make a point I haven’t seen being made elsewhere and which might be worth adding to the mix. Maybe it would be of interest to someone passing, even throw some further light, however dim and peripheral, on what’s happening around us, or at least… continue reading
How to Speak in Times of Clamour
A long time ago, I went away to Greece and spent three months there alone in a hut, facing the rock pictured above. By now, I had lived a youth and much of an adulthood and this was a time for reflection, in case I could make some sense of all that living, never to be repeated or recaptured, all… continue reading
A Severed Edge
In the rush and flood of falsity and ill-doing that enter and surround our everyday lives, among all the mis-steps and momentous errors born of that rush and that falsity, I keep returning to certain physical landmarks that at least give the appearance of standing firm and of meaning something worth standing for.
One such landmark is St Aldhelm’s chapel.… continue reading
Across the Way
“The Reader” is a national charity.
“From its global Shared Reading movement, to its Calderstones Park home in Liverpool… “The Reader” builds lively communities that bring people together and books to life.” And my project “Poems for…the wall” and “The Reader” are exploring ways we might collaborate a bit.
In the meantime, one of “The Reader’s many projects is to… continue reading
… Words for an Earthquake
The United Kingdom has left the EU. We have vacated our seat at the high table and it is laid now for just 27 places. We’ve “got it done.”
Or “gone and done it.”
In recognition of the significance of this momentous step we’ve taken, whatever it may mean, I am uploading here a selection of 53 stand-alone short rhyming… continue reading
What does Great Britain Stand for, these Days ?
What do we Brits stand for, these days, now that we have “taken back control” ?
Judging by our government’s grossly inadequate management of Corvid-19 – we stand for incompetence, incoherence and dishonesty.
Judging by Mr Johnson’s recent conduct over the Brexit negotiations – we are represented by the fatuous and delusional bravado of a juvenile hoodlum ; and again… continue reading