Walking The Dog

When you're a parent you do anything, absolutely anything, to help and nurture and protect your children. This is seldom easy. Currently, it's even harder and we are left dreaming of the seldom easy days. I just read the lyrics to Paul Simon's song, Bridge Over Troubled Water and yes - that; all those words. That is exactly who I am. Those words, written 1969, encapsulate what I aspire to be, today, as a parent with every atom of my being. This  is me - I will dry your tears; I will comfort you; I am there when you need a friend. I don't want to breach copyright law so I thought it best not to print the whole song. It's easy to find on the internet though - search for it, read it, and see if you weep like I did. These days tears seem to be closer - lingering always nearby - ready to run at the smallest trigger. I observe a collective erosion of resilience in those around me at work, online and at home and in response, a steady growth of mindfulness, yog...

Lord Byron - that maverick, troubled thinker and poet - said If I do not write to empty my mind, I go mad I haven't written for a while. Perhaps I have gone mad. Indeed, perhaps I have ... Perhaps the whimsy that is the word jumble in my head resides in Aristophanes's  cloud-cuckoo land . Either there, or perhaps it has flown  away with the  Celtic  fairies  of my youth. Don't you just love a good idiom? Idiom  -  derivation : probably from the Greek idioma meaning private or peculiar phraseology (ref. Oxford Dictionaries online);  definition : a group of words that when presented in a particular order take on a meaning that is not obvious from the meanings of the individual words eg. over the moon, on the ball, piece of cake, hit the sack, let the cat out of the bag, and method in my madness ... which there is. But mine is innocent; not the murderous  method  of Hamlet's  madness . And if you'll give me the benefit of...

Sometimes, when I visit an art exhibition, it is enough to spend an hour or so getting lost in the paintings. Sometimes, the paintings are not to my taste and rather than getting lost in the art, it loses me and I leave feeling that I have walked through a sweetshop and failed to eat any of the sweets. I have been to art exhibitions where every picture is a wow - Turner, Lowry, the 2017 BP portrait award - and to some where none is - Rauschenberg at Tate Modern. And I have been to some unexpected gems - Ernest Shepherd's illustrations at the Winnie the Pooh exhibition at the V&A and a marine art exhibition in 2016, in a small maritime gallery in Mystic, USA. Special exhibitions or event exhibitions are expensive and I have devised a private, retrospective is-it-worth-it score. If there is one picture that makes me stop and stare. And stare again. That pauses time. And takes my breath away. If there is one of these - there only needs to be one - then the is-it-worth-it wor...

Discombobulation is fast becoming one of my favourite words; not least after someone who should have known better, asked a little sardonically "Discombobulation isn't a real word, is it?" and Littlest erupted in defence of one of her favourite words. She likes to utter it in full Blackadder fashion, with heavy emphasis on the central bob . And, before any doubters ask, she knows exactly what it means. Sadly, I think I may, soon, have to stop referring to her as Littlest. Unless, unless, ... unless I do continue, simply because she occupies that position in this family, but with the caveat that in age, if not stature, she is not particularly little any more and indeed, understands more than her affectionate moniker might suggest. There then lies the end of an era, perhaps, if childhood can be an era and is not too short to be era-worthy. I suspect (correctly as it turns out) she may appreciate the irony of being called Littlest. So until she asks me not to, she will for...

Early morning sun and a walk with Four-legged-friend and Bertie Baggins Frosty underfoot giving way to blue sky and long shadows and sunny boys Taking 'the path less travelled by' takes on a whole new meaning here - left, right or straight to heaven? But perhaps, this procrasti-rambler needs to forget heaven and see it as up . Stepping upwards and onwards. Taking the harder choice, the brave one, the one where challenges are met and tackled and overcome. Maybe, I should see it as a metaphor for ceasing to procrastinate and doing the things that are frightening and hard to face. When it comes to writing, criticism and rejections are hard to receive; praise is seldom fully believed and there is, ever present, the niggling doubt that the only person you write for is yourself. Being a writer can be immensely lonely. Sharing your writing risks increasing the loneliness, because, once it's out ther...

What do I remember of the year we spent in Australia? The heat; the long drives; long-striding lightning dancing across distant, dry plains; the gorillas at Melbourne zoo; an abundance of unfamiliar fruit and vegetables; kangaroo (and roo-burgers); trams; crisp slithers of eucalyptus leaves underfoot on forest trails; a little girl who didn't like sand between her toes; vertiginous peaks and plummeting shadows and cliffs where the earth had broken and fissured in the Blue Mountains; the Twelve Apostles of the Southern Ocean; spiders (lots of spiders); a relaxed cafe culture; Italian food on Lygon Street; earthy browns and creamy dots of aboriginal paintings; verandahs; snakes; public parks; wind, buffeting and forcing dry grit into your face round every pavement corner; and a distant city that sat on the palm of my hand - yes to all of those. But the sharpest memory is of the light: a fierce light, forcing a wash of white over everything burning in its glare. An unforgiving lig...

Whisper to the wind, ' This is how to write.' No, not these inexpertly assembled procrasti-rambles but words discovered in a book that I have been promising myself I would read for many, many months and have now started. My ascent so far has taken me to chapter 4. What a journey those first chapters have been! I am daily transported to India. All its scents, noises, lights, people, traffic, food, grime, poverty, politics, fabrics, fruits, spirits, humanity, hysteria, tragedy, faith, prostitution, drugs, hospitality, bribery, corruption, travel, cosmopolitan enlightenment, tolerances and intolerances in just four chapters; sixty or so pages. A portrait of a place so immersive and with characters so bright that they light up each page with the intense shine of their being. Reality is not merely being created for the reader - this setting and its characters live and breathe (even if some of them are fictional). What a lesson in how to write! I don't remember now ...

'Summer has o'er-brimmed' and we find ourselves in Keats' 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.' Of brambles, apples  and crumble. Of falling leaves. Long shadows And flaming sunsets 'Autumn settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favourite chair and fills the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he had done since he last saw you.' Stephen King  Stories ...  We find stories everywhere. And if we don't find them, we make them up. Stories for ourselves and stories for sharing. Usually, they are good stories.  But sometimes they are bad. Bad stories make me feel uncomfortable. And this autumn, I am a little uncomfortable. No, I don't mean a little uncomfortably shivery around the edges? It's not a the-nights-are-drawing-in-and-we're-holding-out-like-we-do-every-year-til-November-to-put-the-heating-on seasonally induced uncomfortable. Nor is it uncomfortably starting to co...

A life without stories would be impossible. Look for something that doesn't have a story and resign yourself to never finding it. A grain of sand on a beach; a petal on a flower; the broken handle on my cup; the rusted rivet in a metal bridge; and the gum stuck to the pavement, all have a story. Everything does - there's the how did it get there; where did it come from; who put it there; what happened to bring it in front of me at this precise time? What is a story? Story - definition: a true or fictitious account of a sequence of events and characters; its purpose being to entertain or inform. We constantly ask ourselves, what's the story? Or, what's in a story? Different questions, but essentially addressing the same thing: we like to know. And if we don't know, we like to make an attempt at explaining things - we pry, we wonder, we invent - who did that, why, where, what happened next? We fill in the gaps. Not always accurately. But we fill them anyway, ...

Once upon a time, there was a lady of some importance who went by a name that befitted her position. It was a good name. A name that everyone respected. A memorable name - one filled with fond memories, while at the same time being a name that could strike fear into the heart of anyone foolish enough to misbehave, not because they feared any punishment (that wasn't the lady's way) but they feared the disappointment that their behaviour had caused. One day, the lady decided she would sail for a new horizon; she had done everything and more for the people whose lives she had touched. It was time for new challenges and new beginnings and a new future. But she kept meeting the people who had known her previous name and who still looked up to her and revered her. How were they to address her now? Could they still use her old name? Should they? It was her opportunity - handed to her at the end of a croquet mallet; she was losing badly - to choose a new name. Something literary; c...