Wisdom
Cattle die, kindred die,Every man is mortal:But the good name never diesOf one who has done well Havamal, stanza 76
Read More WisdomWhere Imagination Takes You
Cattle die, kindred die,Every man is mortal:But the good name never diesOf one who has done well Havamal, stanza 76
Read More Wisdom“Council plans to underwrite a £100,000 unveiling ceremony for a statue of Margaret Thatcher in her home town of Grantham have been approved.“ The statue itself cost £300,000.00 and they want to use £100,000.00 of public money for a ceremony to unveil it. In a time of austerity and poverty, with record numbers of homeless, […]
Read More Tempting FateI can’t believe it’s been two months or so since I last updated this blog. A lot has happened, or to be precise a lot has happened to many many people but very little has happened to me. Under the lockdown resultant from the pandemic I’ve been working from home since the end of March […]
Read More TonicMuch ink could be spilled, and has been, discussing the dichotomy between the Apollonian and Dionysian impulses.Or you could watch this.
Read More Garden PartyHe was a strange figure, a dull lumpish creature that the locals knew only as Trog. Whether that was the name his parents gave him or simply an unpleasant title dreamed up by the people around him nobody knew. It was the name he called himself though and his unfortunate neighbours would often hear him […]
Read More HS1098Alma Deutscher is now fourteen years old. She’s already been somewhat of a sensation for her musical talents and they show no signs of abating. In this new piece she takes inspiration from the discordant sounds of city life, including traffic noises, sirens and general cacophony and creates a series of waltzes. In the opening […]
Read More Sounds of the CityThis is probably going to be a pretty unfocussed post. I apologise in advance for that, but it’s a subject that annoys me so much that I get distracted by shield-biting rage every time I try to think my way through it. I’ll just jump in and swim to the far shore. I am fed […]
Read More Truth or ConsequencesA strange admission for someone of my long tenure in the worlds of fantasy and science fiction, but I’d never actually read Robert E Howard’s Conan stories before. I know they’re almost archetypal examples of the genre but for some reason I’d never got round to picking them up. That changed recently, when I bought […]
Read More Hither Came ConanAnd a lovely parable for the kiddies
Read More With a guard at every doorOriginally published on my defunct LiveJournal page, now with added thoughts I’ve always regarded Story as a powerful force, using that rather simplistic term as a catch-all for myth, metaphor, internal-dialogue and other aspects that I’ve rarely bothered to sit down and define. A while ago, when I first discovered this blogging business, I wrote an […]
Read More Joshua, Genocide and the General