There is a whole lot of baloney talked about how failure is the new success, and, as far as I can make out, the only people who spout it are those who succeed in the end: the ‘it makes me stronger, wiser, more determined’ brigade. The learning that comes from failure is lauded as something … Continue reading Keeping The Dream Alive
What difference would it have made to Tarry Flynn had he got himself onto a dating app? That is the question I keep turning over in my mind. Tarry is the main character of the eponymously titled Patrick Kavanagh novel that I am re-reading after twenty-five years. Published in 1948, it was banned for fourteen … Continue reading Meet Me at the Crossroads
Apparently, over these last few strange weeks, more people than ever are dreaming and remembering their dreams. Some say it’s because we are sleeping longer in the days of lockdown; that we’re dropping into deeper REM sleep when we would otherwise be getting up with the alarm. Others say it’s the psyche flushing out silos of … Continue reading I See In My Dreams
Social isolation – no difference there then! C. said that to me last month when we were teetering on the edge of the lockdown and we laughed in mutual understanding, each of us paid up members of the Loner’s Club; that not so exclusive band of members who spend too much of the week hanging … Continue reading Few and Simple Pleasures
‘At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon.’ My book group has just finished reading Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Insights such as this into … Continue reading Far Off Fields
I’m better. Pretty much. The fire in my head has been doused. T. told me to drink hot whiskey. I didn’t. Not because it wasn’t a good idea, I just forgot to uncork the bottle of Bush each evening. Y. suggested I gently tap below my eyes, from the bridge of my nose to my temples, tracing the … Continue reading Dream Angus
What archetype are you living out? You will be embodying one, whacky as it might sound. Probably more than one, and you’ll outgrow it and grow into a new one, like a snake shedding its skin. We all do. We recognise archetypes in other people, but it’s harder to recognise our own. When we use phrases like: … Continue reading If The Shoe Fits
“When we lose that sense of the possible, we lose it fast.” Joan Didion, Blue Nights. I understand what she’s saying. For me it’s like the tide coming in on a sandcastle: one minute it is standing firm and the next its foundations have been eaten away and down it goes in one a lurching collapse. … Continue reading Possibility
‘The path to your heart’s desire is never overgrown’, so says an old Ugandan proverb – according to a greetings card that I bought a few weeks ago. I bought it thinking it would be the perfect card with the perfect words for someone, someday. Then, as often happens with impulse buys (both big and … Continue reading Your Heart’s Desire
I like to bake. They say, nowadays, that commercial flour is so fine that there’s no longer any need to sift it like we were taught to do. Nonetheless, I sift on. I like the ritual of sifting. Watching the tiny, milled particles separate and drift, being left with a fine dusting on the work … Continue reading Sifting
My Edinburgh Press 