reflections on bereavement
This fine drawing is by the Netherlands-based artist Redmer Hoekstra - (see more of his work here: and his web-page here) As a friend of mine observed, the rhinoceros looks very sad - perhaps he is reflecting on the fact that being a boat and still having to walk seems the worst of both worlds. … Continue reading The saddest pachyderm?
The world is a different place when people you know are gone out of it: it is as if the roads and railways to familiar places had been closed, the towns themselves removed from the map, the landscape changed; the course you took for granted, always assumed would be available to you, is shut off, … Continue reading An altered landscape
Brendan John Goulding Ward 24 November 1946 - 6 January 2013 (photographed by his niece Kate at his niece Veronica's wedding) + Requiescat in Pace In happy remembrance: Being a Pantoum for my brother on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, commissioned at exceptional cost* and in several colours from the pen of Master Thomas … Continue reading FRATER AVE ATQUE VALE
Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. I first read Stevie Smith’s poem at school and could make neither head nor tail of it, yet this morning, lying in the dark, the lines above came to me and … Continue reading Not waving…
'Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint and heard great argument About it and about: but evermore Came out by that same door as in I went.' (however, let us keep Omar Khayyam for another day) Myself when young was much annoyed by David Hume, particularly his account of causality, so I am … Continue reading Elective Causality
Anodyne: it’s an interesting word. Strictly, it means a medicine that allays pain, as its etymology suggests, being from the Greek for ‘painless’, or ‘without pain’. A good thing, then, you would think; so it is interesting to consider how it has come to have a pejorative sense, particularly as applied to literature. Pain and … Continue reading Anodyne
Our beloved son Patrick, photographed by his big sister at his cousin's wedding. 'The king therefore being much moved, went up to the high chamber over the gate, and wept. And as he went he spoke in this manner: My son Absalom, Absalom my son: would to God that I might die for thee, Absalom … Continue reading Absalom, Absalom!
There are times when a word or expression we use all the time comes alive for us, and from being a worn pebble that we pass over without thinking turns to a jewel that holds the eye. Seamus Heaney has a fine poem about such a moment, called The Shipping Forecast. It is a sonnet, … Continue reading Missing you…
COMPLEAT TROWZER 