Here I am at the seaside, again. Torquay this time. Home to Fawlty Towers, and the inimitable Manuel (Qué?). Maybe we’ve hit on a particularly good weekend but I get the feeling it is often like this in Torquay: hot and sunny with endless blue skies. Eternally tanned pensioners watch knots of youngsters crabbing at … Continue reading The Running Tide
In the town where I grew up, fishing and golf were the two local obsessions. Seldom did they go hand in hand, for the amount of time required to pursue either one with the devotion deserved rarely left enough time to practice the other. This weekend, that town is hosting the British Open golf championship. The media … Continue reading Golf or Fishing?
Welcome to the dawn of the summer holidays. C., a teacher, described to me her take on the summer holidays. The end of June, she says, is the equivalent of a Friday evening – it gives you that generous and spacious feeling of a weekend; time stretching ahead, filled with rest, adventure and possibility. Right … Continue reading Dry Your Eyes, Sunday Girl
To pursue whatever you set your mind to with the joy of a six year-old child: that’s said to be how we should seek to live. This supposes that every six-year old child embraces all of life joyfully, which they probably don’t, as personality and nature come into play. Largely, though, small children do seem … Continue reading Innocence
‘Life can only be understood backwards, but it can only be lived forwards.’ These are the words of Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher, theologian and poet. I was at a conference last week where one of the speakers, from Denmark, drew extensively from the work of Kierkegaard. When he told us he was going to delve … Continue reading Young and Old
“Your auntie loves a poem. Tell her the poem you learned this week at school.” On the other end of the phone, G. was being prompted by his father. Gorgeous child, I used to call him. To be fair, he’s not a child anymore; he’s a teenager (just), so I have to drop all that … Continue reading I Met A Child
I am of the generation where we ‘backed’ our books at the start of each new school year. Dog-eared and a bit tattered from use the year before (in fact, use over multiple years), a growing pile would be distributed by the teacher in September, leaning like the Tower of Pisa, in preparation for ten … Continue reading Change
I wonder about the point of writing letters to one’s younger self. Have you come across it? This fad of passing advice backwards down the years; bestowing the benefits of hindsight to the younger you, to the he or she who no longer exists? I came across a selection of snappy one-liners from a broadsheet newspaper … Continue reading Nostalgia
I’m beginning to see Edinburgh as my town. Beginning to. The crowds have descended for the festival, and, as I weave my way through them, I think: “I live here. I know where I’m going (geographically speaking), while most of these people don't. I’ll still be here on Tuesday 28thAugust, when they’ve all disappeared like … Continue reading Our Town
John Taylor Gatto devoted 30 years of his life to teaching. When he resigned, he ploughed his energy into writing books about modern education; books that weren’t always complimentary about the ideology, history, and consequences of western teaching practices. I’m not going to get into all that, but today, as many children break up for … Continue reading School’s Out For Summer
