Category Archives: Writing

An honest opinion

In the mail last week I received a parcel from France. It contained a paperback novel with an attractive jacket featuring bands of medieval illumination enclosing the image of a lone fortress on a hilltop. I knew at once what … Continue reading

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September

September is a month of renewal. People are back from their summer holidays. A new academic year is starting. Autumn is in the air. And it’s the month of my birth. In September I always have a strong feeling of … Continue reading

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Close encounters

I spent last night with a friend in Edinburgh. This morning, boarding a bus into the west end, I spotted a vacant seat next to an attractive young black woman with a cloud of hair. As I sat down I … Continue reading

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Spanish Crossings

A couple of years ago, on our advanced course in Spain, my Dark Angels partner John Simmons woke up one morning with a line in his head. It stayed with him and today, in summer 2017, it’s the opening sentence … Continue reading

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The Gutenbergs

No one would deny that Gutenberg is a name with which to conjure. Johannes Gutenberg transformed society with his invention of mechanical printing in the 1440s. Half a millenium later, in 1971, Michael Hart, an American student, wangled himself time … Continue reading

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Fair wabbit

Had I posted last week it would have been the 301st post since I started writing this blog, nearly seven years ago. As it was I was undone by a trip south, via a monastery in Yorkshire, to run a … Continue reading

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Tread softly

This story is just one of a trillion reasons why Tim Berners-Lee deserves to stand alongside William Caxton and James Watt in the history of human connectivity. A little over five years ago, on 9 March 2011, an email arrived … Continue reading

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Poetry path

In the hills a few miles outside our village of Birnam is a Camphill community. Here, on the Corbenic estate, 27 adults with learning difficulties live with their carers and a number of volunteers in 50 acres of agricultural land, … Continue reading

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Feet of clay

Last night I finished reading H is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald’s extraordinary and much-fêted memoir about how she worked through her grief at her father’s death by training a goshawk. I loved the book for the luminosity of the writing, … Continue reading

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Untold stories

If one is asked the same question often enough, no matter how difficult, one sooner or later comes up with an answer that can be given without too much further thought. It may not be precisely the right one, but … Continue reading

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