New for 2020 – Podcasts!
From January 2020 I’m recording each post as a podcast, in addition to the written version which you can continue to read as usual. I’m also gradually adding selected posts from the archive (going back to 2009) as podcasts. Click here or on the Podcasts tab in the navigation bar.
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This blog is called A Few Kind Words because the word kindness originally meant being kin, or kindred, or of the same kind. And since we are all humankind, we should remember to be kinder to one another when we communicate. The alternative is to be unkind, to use language which fails to connect or even alienates. The choice isn't hard.Twitter Updates
- RT @GrahamJHolden: "when there’s fog all around, we need to believe that we’re being led by people who have a plan to get through..." Wise… 3 days ago
- @ThereseKieran @5coolthingsblog Me too - eventually! 5 days ago
- RT @5coolthingsblog: @ErikaSwyler The novelist Charlie Haas, the novelist @JNSim, the novelist @JamieJauncey, the poet @timrichlondon, @cor… 6 days ago
- Jamie Jauncey Throughout lockdown I’ve been recording a #RandyNewman song every week. Now its the turn of his broth… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 week ago
- RT @billykayscot: Scotland has changed but so has the British establishment. In the early 1980s I made an oral history series about working… 3 weeks ago
Tag Archives: storytelling
Curiouser and curiouser
A couple of times most weeks I take the train to Edinburgh. For several miles the line follows the Fife coast. There’s a long view south under huge skies across the Forth Estuary to Edinburgh and its acropolis, the Pentland … Continue reading →
Lingua franca
For the second year running we have been on a walking holiday in the Italian Alps with a couple who are among my wife’s oldest friends. Our relationship is that relative rarity – a foursome in which all members get … Continue reading →
Chinese medicine
Periodically I visit an acupuncturist for aches and pains. He’s a charming Chinese man who finds it a little hard to get his tongue round the English language, but he has a gentle manner, a lovely smile, and he fixes … Continue reading →
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Tagged acupuncture, chinese medicine, communist party, freedom, stories, storytelling, tiananmen square
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1 Comment
Tales from Wales
By odd coincidence I happen to have spent election night in the home of a former British Prime Minister. I am at Ty Newydd, the house to which Lloyd George retired from politics, now the Welsh National Writing Centre. It’s … Continue reading →
Gardening
Why did Nick Clegg ‘win’ last night’s prime ministerial debate? It may be an over-simplification to say it was because he sounded more human and believable than the other two, though that, I’m sure, was the essence of it. Of … Continue reading →
Writing elsewhere
While we continue to pay daily tribute to International PEN’s 50 imprisoned writers through 26:50, I find myself constantly trying to imagine how they managed to write; where they found and concealed their materials, how they avoided the scrutiny of … Continue reading →
Stories for life
If you’ve never been there, Llandudno is a charming, and at this time of year extremely bracing, Victorian seaside town on the north coast of Wales. It’s also home to Venue Cymru, the national conference centre of North Wales. We … Continue reading →
Sheep and goats
Tomorrow morning early I’m leaving for Geneva to see my 18 year-old son who’s working for the winter season at a French ski resort. I won’t pretend that I don’t envy him. Last time I flew to Geneva I was … Continue reading →
Reading for survival
Last week I learned that my young adult novel, The Reckoning, has made it onto a government-sponsored list of 250 books for teenagers. Every secondary school in England will receive their choice of 15 titles from the list, free, as … Continue reading →
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Tagged business language, business writing, gobbledegook, jargon, management speak, stories, storytelling
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3 Comments
Sob story
‘The sob is in the story. It mustn’t be in the voice.’ So said Antonia Fraser on Radio 4’s Front Row this week. She was speaking of her difficulty in reading aloud the love poem by her late husband, Harold … Continue reading →
