When I first read “From here to Eternity” I was devastated, wanted to read it again and discover that the ending had magically changed and that Prewitt lived. It just needed me to wish hard enough. A number of other books the same. But sadly, as I knew, really, the book is unchanging, fixed. But […]
Crossing the stream Read More »
In later life you are gardening not for yourself but for your successors.
Best time to plant a tree Read More »
Just as well the house I lived in as a child has been demolished, bulldozed, removed from the surface of the planet and replaced by two new houses with no history. Not that I would want it still standing but extensively remodeled and modernised. No point in that other than it representing the spot on
To have the last laugh you need to be the last one left standing. But who has the energy for laughing then?
Once upon a time the products of high technology – pottery, swords, carriages, furniture, bicycles, wireless sets – were valued and treasured; kept in good repair for many years, decades, passed on from generation to generation. Now mobile phones, ipads, tv sets, video games, cars, houses even, end up in landfill after months, days, hours
All of that effort to raise a young Magpie – sitting on eggs for weeks, backwards and forwards bringing beakfuls of juicy worms and beetles, ends as a sad bunch of feathers smeared across a busy road. Much like children in a war zone.
Old age comes, finally, like the turning on of a spotlight, when there is no one left alive who knew you as a child.
Those were the days my friend Read More »
When you look back on your long life it is as if every detail, every moment, was written on a great scroll, and then put through a shredder, so that you are reduced to picking up thin strips of paper, each with a phrase, a headline, an image, unconnected to anything else. Good luck putting
Just think what all those dead young men could have done in the years after 1918. Think of the advances in Art, Literature, Music, Science. Think of the leaders who might have steered their countries into a better new age. And think of the potential of their descendants, never born. Because politicians, and Generals, thought
Searching for your old teachers on the internet, brings to life partial histories of long forgotten teaching careers that once were of great importance to them and their families. Now just digitised fragments of dusty archives, but evoking memories of people who once changed your life and set it on its seventy year course.
