Straight-backed
Harold and Glady called at the farm each Sunday evening. Friends of my grandparents they would sit in the farmhouse sitting room and talk about the events and news of the week. Glady’s name was presumably “Gladys,” but, if it was, it was never used. Names were not necessarily what you might have assumed. My grandmother was known by everyone … [continue reading …]
Without the will
The seminar in the Cheltenham hotel was followed by dinner. “It’s never a bad day when you get a free dinner,” I joked with a colleague. The remark recalled a farmer who had enjoyed free dinners every Sunday for thirty-seven years. He never have had to worry about cooking on Sundays. He would have gone to church and then gone … [continue reading …]
How the farce came to be
The opening lines of performance poet Kate Tempest’s People’s Faces express an undeniable truth about England: It’s coming to pass My country’s coming apart The whole thing’s becoming Such a bumbling farce Was that a pivotal historical moment We just went stumbling past? Here we are Dancing in the rumbling dark So come a little closer Give me something 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 …]