Haste You want to rush, get to the end work it out and have it solved. Who wouldn’t? But the cost, who pays the price of all this haste? A friend of mine knew Mirabehn Gandhi’s English companion. Her story; when the Mahatma found himself without a pencil she tore off to find it,
In 2012 I went to see the Royal Academy Exhibition called 'A Bigger Picture' by David Hockney. It had an accompanying DVD. It made a deep impression on me and I wrote this. I felt part of a wonderful and challenging BiggerPicture! A Bigger Picture I view
Last Wednesday my daughter Lara bought us all tickets to see Ken Loach's latest film 'Jimmy's Hall'. I have followed Ken's career in Film since I saw Kes as young man. I had never seen my South Yorkshire world portrayed so honestly on screen. His
I am on the way to London with my daughter. The dislocation of travelling always strikes me. Going from the quiet valley where I live to the hustling, siren wailing, constant traffic hub that is the capital. The speed that everyone walks at and the
Taking Stock There come moments in life when we are forced to take stock. A loss, a challenge a brokenness, a revelation, those frontiers that cause a disruption between life as it has been and the sudden flux we then find ourselves in. We are prone
I have been thinking about the need we all have for someone to listen to us, and enable us to make sense of our life story. In the wonderful story of the Road to Emmaus where two depressed friends of Jesus, depressed because he has
In today's Independent Ian Johnston makes a point that is becoming increasingly clear to me. 'Children are living in an “unprecedented toxic climate” in which they skip meals to stay thin, are bombarded by pornographic images and fear they will be failures amid a “continuous
The white, crisp pillowcase and freshly laundered school sock were the harbingers of Christmas magic when I was a boy. I would lay them out at the end of my bed on Christmas Eve and finally drift into the dark womb of a pregnant sleep.
As I walked today with a friend in the valley that I live in, the dogs chasing around our legs, we reflected on the time of year. Around us the detritus of autumn, mouldering leaves, trees rapidly becoming naked and muddied paths making our boots
Last week we had a visit from Lara's Godmother Barbara. Twenty years ago she was our midwife, she was involved in the birth of our first daughter Eva and became her Godmother and then she was present at the precarious and premature birth of Lara