When I was a teenager, I was fine with the idea of Heaven but refused to believe in Hell. I was quite happy that there might be good in people that I was incapable of seeing (after all, I had untold hidden depths and was understood by nobody outside of
Where else can I start today but in Aleppo? The news coming from Aleppo today is beyond horrific. Civilians are being killed in their homes. Those who have fled are finding that there is not enough food or shelter to receive them; some are even going back on the buses
I started these posts to try and get some answers. There was nothing at all ambitious or delusional about thinking that I could, in twenty-four posts, nail the answers to questions that have puzzled mankind for as long as there’s been mankind to be puzzled. But I’m half way through
Today we went to the pantomime. Oh yes we did. Even James, who has been slightly phobic about pantomimes ever since Cinderella at the Wycombe Swan in 2013, when one of the Ugly Sisters took a shine to him and flirted outrageously throughout, to the extent that we were stopped
I think I’m ok with death as a general principle. That’s easy for me to say, because the only death I’ve witnessed personally was my beloved Great Aunt Winifred’s. She died peacefully and beautifully, like the man in the John Donne poem, towards the end of the Christmas holidays when
‘So,’ said the purple winged angel, ‘shall we talk about the elephant in the room?’ There actually is an elephant in the room. I’ve borrowed it from child 3’s school for a concert, about which I will surely be writing in a future entry, and it’s making a curious addition
Today was a day I gave myself a few months ago. I booked something I really, really wanted to do. It was something for myself and I kept it secret, because I was frightened that other people would think it was silly. And it was something that I knew would
I have a friend who was diagnosed with terminal cancer recently. Compared to this, James’ autoimmune condition (which, for anyone interested, is called Wegener’s Granulomatosis) is a walk in the park. Not because it’s easy to deal with – indeed, when it decides to flare up, walks in the park
‘I think you might have something I want,’ the purple winged angel said, strolling into my dining room. ‘I’m not speaking to you. Really, I’m not. I’m doing a lot of thinking, and I am rapidly reaching the conclusion that you’ve got nothing to do with anything. You didn’t sort
So. Bertolucci said in an interview that he and Brando planned parts of the rape scene of Last Tango in Paris without telling Maria Schneider, because he wanted to film Schneider’s reaction ‘as a girl, not as an actress.’ There’s a simplicity about his statement that is relevant to this