You know that feeling you get when you’ve just done something incredibly difficult and un-doable? That sense of elation and accomplishment that settles into you like really good scotch? I have that feeling now.
Monthly Archives: January 2008
I’ve given away over a dozen copies of Gavin de Becker’s book, The Gift of Fear. If you know me, and I haven’t bought you one, I’ve probably lent you mine or told you to go get it. Now. I first fell upon The Gift in the late nineties as a postgraduate student at Manchester.
My sister’s birthday was last week. She wasn’t 30 – or anywhere near – but I sent her a huge card with a compromising photo of herself (think: ‘shower cap and wild game’) that said she was. I didn’t get a thank you, but I did get a there are no words, which I took
Death has a way of taking over a small town, where everyone knows everyone else, even when they don’t. Preachers come out and talk about God and the Devil and about how sometimes things just happen and they don’t know why. Men stare up at the sky and sit alone in the dark, behind four
Sister: “So I was watching American Idol last night and you know what? Simon Cowell really does remind me of him.” Me: “I did say.” Sister: “Except Him’s nicer.” Me: “No he isn’t. He just likes you. That’s all.” The very same ‘Him’ and I got in to it last night. Him: “Why did you
Each plate, each cup, even the little miniature saucers to sit the cups on, came separate in their own individual boxes. Bundled and wrapped in plastic bubbles and cardboard to show that they were special. Not like those cheap deals her neighbors got from the Dollar Mart that came all bunched up together and with
“Now the word symbol scares a good many people off, just as the word art does. They seem to feel that a symbol is some mysterious thing put in arbitrarily by the writer to frighten the common reader — sort of a literary Masonic grip that is only for the initiated …” – Flannery O’Connor
After watching Jane Austen’s finest (version 2005) and developing not a little crush on Matthew Macfadyen… I’ve spent hours-into-days staring slack jawed at the Painted Hall. Wanting to touch, but not touch, the Veiled Vestal. Wishing the huge yew maze was large enough to get lost in. (It really isn’t.) It’s this thing you do
Pa and his Snake Stick “How d’ya feel?” “Seventy-One.” He’s spent the last two days on top of the mountain. Chopping wood. Because the ten tonnes of coal he’s hauled in for the winter isn’t burning like it should. “Is it in your chest?” “Nah. I’m ok. I don’t feel old at all. I just
James Blunt makes us feel good about being depressed. (Not that I’m depressed, but his music almost makes me wish I were.) I realised this on my way home today. Listening to Radio1. People love him because they feel like he gives meaning to their misery. Adds a certain kind of celluloid romance to it
