occasional effusions on every subject under the sun
(to enlarge any of the pictures below, just click on them) 'When a man says he'll do something, he'll do it - there's no need to remind him every six months' -The Madonna of the Yarnwinder by Leonardo da Vinci It is almost exactly six months since a conversation on the Slow Bicycle Movement … Continue reading A Silken Seat
When I was younger - more than quarter of a century younger - I did something that I now think was wrong, though I didn’t at the time. I was asked to cover someone’s Higher English evening class and found that they were studying Wordsworth’s poem that begins ‘Up! up! my friend, and quit your … Continue reading Switching sides: a confession
J Atkinson Grimshaw, 'Shipping on the Clyde' Is it still possible to write ghost stories or are they mere period curiosities? Let me start by saying that the period and the milieu from which MR James’s stories spring has a strong attraction for me. Things Edwardian afflict me with acute nostalgia (nostalgia, as its name … Continue reading ‘The sound must mean mischief’ : M R James and the Age of Uncertainty
('Young Shepherds at Evening Time' by Myles Birket Foster) The usual effect of seeing any film or TV adaptation of a book or story that I like is to send me back to the original, so on that ground alone (assuming I am not the only one so affected) I would say that such adaptations … Continue reading The perils and pitfalls of adaptation in the ghost stories of M R James
(this painting, which brilliantly captures the theme of this piece, is The Orator by the German expressionist Magnus Zeller - click to enlarge: it's worth a closer look)We live in querulous times: there is a lot of anger about; a lot to be angry about. The lines Yeats wrote in 1919 (about the same time Zeller made his … Continue reading Passionate intensity : ranting and advocacy
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?
Salvador Dali: 'The persistence of Memory' 'An Experiment with Time' is a book I have mentioned before by that interesting Irish inventor and pioneer aeronaut, JW Dunne. It was very popular once and for a time you could almost guarantee that you would find at least one copy in any second-hand book shop you cared to visit … Continue reading Experiments with Time
'Mind-forged manacles', as well as being one of Blake's most resonant phrases, also shows how well (and succinctly) poetry (and art in general) can express a complex idea that it is difficult to express by standard reasoning. At the heart of Blake's phrase is a contradiction, something that is anathema to conventional reason: 'forging' is … Continue reading Force of Habit
Even for those of us who have lived most of our lives without them, it is hard to imagine now how we ever lived without personal computers and all that stems from them - e-mail, the internet, social networks, smart phones and the like: they seem indispensable. Which is curious, since many of us still … Continue reading The Paradox of Elective Indispensability: a Faustian pact?
HAMLET My father!--methinks I see my father. HORATIO Where, my lord? HAMLET In my mind's eye, Horatio. From this we know that the ‘inward eye which is the bliss of solitude’ was a current notion in Shakespeare’s day, and doubtless it is a great deal older than that; yet a conversation I had today reminded … Continue reading The Mind’s Eye: Digital Camera or Camera Obscura?
COMPLEAT TROWZER 