Cold teaching
Built for the girls’ grammar school in the 1930s, the buildings were vacated in 1986 when the girls’ school merged with the boys’ grammar school. Fine sandstone structures around a double quad with extensive tree-bordered grounds, the buildings became a fine home for the new comprehensive school. Occupying a first storey room with a fine view across the playing fields … [continue reading …]
It’s been a long-time coming
RTÉ correspondent Tommie Gorman’s report on the Brexit agreement suggests the DUP must feel like someone who has been jilted at a disco. Tommie Gorman writes: If we are honest, we all experience the feeling at some stage in our lives. And it is an awful gunk. You go to a disco or function with someone. Things seem to be … [continue reading …]
Extinction Rebellion only hurt working people
One of the most surprising moments in A-level history was the tutor quoting statistics that, despite the French Revolution of 1789 claiming the slogans of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,” it was not the aristocracy who suffered the most deaths – the popular perception – but the ordinary French peasants. Upheavals of any sort seem invariably to favour the strong to … [continue reading …]
The old scams seem to work
There can be few people with email addresses who have not received at least an occasional email that seeks details that would allow the sender to defraud them. The “Spanish Hostage” scam is the oldest approach used (thus named because when it began two centuries ago people wrote letters claiming to be held hostage in Sapin and promising abundant reward … [continue reading …]
Morning light
There is a moment soon after dawn on a clear autumn morning when to be able to stop time would mean to capture light of a magical quality. The greyness of wispy mist and the watery blueness of the sky combine to paint impressionistic landscapes across the Gloucestershire countryside. Such mornings seemed special in childhood years, the times when the world … [continue reading …]
Sunday thoughts for 13th October 2019
“Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” Luke 17:19 The story of the healing of the ten lepers asks questions. It asks us about attitudes toward people of other religions, it asks about attitudes toward people of different social classes, and it asks about our attitudes towards those of a different race. It asks … [continue reading …]
Nobel wobbliness
In 2007, A.N. Wilson questioned the worth of Nobel prizes for literature. He suggested that if one was compelled to write a history of Twentieth Century referencing only Nobel laureates, it would be a challenge. The work of T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats has stood the test of time, but how many readers are there who still read the work … [continue reading …]
Unlikely villains
A listener to BBC Radio 6 requested a track by The Stranglers, it being the fortieth anniversary of them having been at a Stranglers concert for the first time. The Stranglers were on a UK tour that year, a fact remembered from having a ticket for the concert they had been scheduled to play at The Odeon in Taunton. Somerset … [continue reading …]
Settling the account
This story was expanded from a piece of flash fiction. It was entered for this year’s RTÉ Francis McManus Short Story Competition. The evening classes at the college gave her the opportunity. It was a computing class that had taught her to use the Internet, something of which she had been frightened. It had been the stories in the papers … [continue reading …]