Is yours the skin of a rhinoceros through which no harsh words can penetrate? Are you clad in waterproof feathers, the ones that adorn a duck’s back, so that criticism rolls from you, leaving you unaffected, rather than disaffected? Do you have a certain kinship with that thin film of Teflon on my frying pan, … Continue reading Sticks and Stones
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
Auden, Barrett-Browning, Cope, Dickinson, Eliot, Frost, Gallagher, Heaney, Ibsen, Jamie, Kinnell, Larkin, Mahon, Neruda, Owen, Plath, Qabbani, Rossetti, St Vincent Millay, Thomas, Updike, Vaughan, Wordsworth, Xenokleides, Yeats, Zephaniah. Who is your favourite? Feel free to reach beyond the 26 I’ve offered you; I was just playing the alphabet game, and, in doing so, left out … Continue reading Advent
My name rhymes with ‘beamer’. Sometimes they would call me that at school. They weren’t referring to a high end German make of luxury car when they used the word; no, ‘beamer’ referred to that rosy shade of blush-red one goes when embarrassed, mortified by some mild humiliation – a.k.a. ‘taking a beamer’. The funny … Continue reading Beamer
“Did you ever play the looky-likey game?” T. asked me this as we were sitting at the airport. I didn’t know what it was, but I should have guessed from the name. “Take yer man over there, he looks a bit like Declan Donnelly.” “Well I don't know whether I agree with you or not, … Continue reading You Look Just Like……
“What’s your name, please?” I hesitated, then hesitated further. I was wondering how many people when asked their name in Starbucks give one that isn't theirs. Petronella, I think to myself “Mary” I end up saying, giving him my middle name. I wasn’t being ‘Mary, Mary quite contrary’, just the opposite; I was saving the … Continue reading Name
My Edinburgh Press 