Just your cup of tea, from ajft via flickr “Would you like a cup of tea?” “How nice, yes please. Just milk.” A perfectly ordinary exchange, like millions heard in offices up and down the country. But don’t be fooled – behind these 12 innocent words is a complex web of social obligation and potential […]
Poem: I come from …
I come from the north, From grey harling, drizzled crags and scree. Dandelion and burdock. Engage low gear now. Bacon for breakfast. Breaking in your boots. Passing places and bloody tourists. The library’s parquet gleam. Peewits and feral cats. Toasted arse against the Aga. Wellies and broken veins. Creosote on the fence. Shirt […]
The things that make me happy…
Guess what? I’m still not 50 yet which, evidently, entitles me to bump on about the passage of time and life’s rich tapestry until everyone is heartily sick of me. Then I saw this and – apart from the brownies bit (they’re just bits of short square cake, whatever way you look at it) – […]
On fighting against age and other wastes of time
It doesn’t matter how much imagination or empathy you’ve got, sometimes it’s hard to know what something feels like til you’re doing it. What I’m doing these days is being nearly 50. (Less than a fortnight, since you ask.) From the advantage of youth, you’d have thought that 50 was the end of the […]
This magical May
What’s been going on? I love May. Not just because it’s birthday month, but because of sunshine and sharp cool mornings. This May is shaping up to be a cracker with blue skies and freckles all over the place. Mayday, mayday, mayday. On May Day I was troubling the airwaves as the guest on a […]