I missed the ‘blood moon’. A startling sight, I imagine, in the Azores where light pollution is minimal. But when a friend from the UK messaged me next day to ask how it was for us here, I couldn’t say. Had I not spotted it through the kitchen window, where I usually watch the moonrise…
Where have I been …? No blog for over six weeks – do I not care? I like what Louise Gluck, American poet and essayist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2020, said: ‘Anyone who writes is a seeker. You look at a blank page and you’re seeking.’ So perhaps I left this…
‘What do I really want?’ This enduring question of our lives may be the hardest – but answer it we must. Last blog, I urged that ‘the only time we have is now’ – with the wide consequential meaning of ‘seize the decade as well as the day’. It may therefore come as a surprise…
‘When was the best time of your life, the happiest so far?’ A new acquaintance is throwing a games afternoon one Sunday, and it’s a great icebreaker question. The joke (on me) – I thought we were playing Pictionary. Oh, for a breezy and original answer! Being third in the circle, going anticlockwise, I’m panicking…
On 25th May 2025, it will be the fifth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. None of us needs to be reminded what happened there. I’m White British. No getting around it. My DNA a mix of, in descending order percentagewise: English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and a pinch each of Swedish and – wow,…
Latest blog post Please dip into my second reflection. “The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; / Little we see in Nature that is ours; / We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!” Ouch! A contemporary lament for our materialism and…
According to Juliet, nothing at all. She’s besotted with Romeo for who he is, not what he’s called. But she’s in denial. She’s Capulet, he’s Montague, their names spell “enemy” to their feuding families, and this will be the young lovers’ undoing. Her philosophical premise, “That which we call a rose / By any other…