Blogs

Betsy Lerner has won a stack of awards. Since the publication of her book over twenty years ago, there’s more wood, more forest, more trees. She tells us this book is not a book about how to write. Anne Lamott (1994) Bird by Bird , one of my favourites, is listed in her bibliography. Rather, Lerner’s book is about pattern recognition. How writers can’t really see what they (we or I) write, but engage in magical thinking. To ad lib William...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000jb7t/climbing-blind ‘I’m not disabled, I’m blind able,’ said Jesse Dufton, the first blind man to climb the 440- foot sea stack the Old Man of Hoy in Orkney on the 4 th June 2019. A consultant’s diagnosis that you are going to be blind is akin to a diagnosis of terminal cancer. Of all our senses, sight is the most precious. Given a choice (we don’t get a choice, it’s more like fate) I’d take the terminal...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dvdpmq/murder-in-the-pacific-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dvdqvz/murder-in-the-pacific-series-1-episode-2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dvdrpx/murder-in-the-pacific-series-1-episode-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Warrior_%281955%29 ‘One death is a tragedy, a million death is a statistic.’ A quote perhaps wrongly attributed to the Georgian, and mass murderer...

I’ve been dipping into Andrew O’Hagan’s back catalogue. Be Near Me was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2006, but for me the book didn’t work. The title comes from an Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem, ‘In Memoriam, A.H.H.,’ preceding the beginning of the novel. ‘Be near me when the light is low, When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick And tingle: when the heart is sick, And all the wheels of Being slow.’ Who is it? What is it? We can expect...

Today the weather is an unusual temperature for my part of the world. I’m sure it was meant for a cooler clime but I’m not complaining, quite the opposite. The chill morning woke me up with an energetic burst of awareness and as I brewed the morning coffee, I opened the back door to my yard and was captured, stopped in my tracks, a complacent participant. The light wind on my arms and face was much better than a coffee for stimulation. I heard...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001k2z5/an-irish-goodbye An Irish Goodbye is an award-winning short film. The plot is simple. An Irish mammy dies and her two boys need to arrange her funeral. Turlough, the older brother, returns from London to sell the farm and to make sure Lorcan is taken care of. He assumes his younger brother will go and live with his Auntie because he’s got Down’s syndrome. An extra chromosome doesn’t stop Lorcan...