At Trowell Services on the M1 we stop and cross the covered footbridge over the motorway. Norman Richards is standing there carrying a pair of binoculars and looking for lorries.
Author archives: pasdelasbas
coriolanus
It befits me not to prate on Coriolanus, one so ennobled of spirit that he doth transform me beyond my citizenship by the simple mention of his name. The Great Leader! What piffle. The man at the insistence of the people was, the others to whom he needs must turn in foreign places banished, such …
being contrary
The site Gallery: Sheffield A time and a place Visit One. It is Saturday around 12.30 and I’ve left the Showroom with my two younger daughters in it. They are on a craft workshop before watching a film. I’ve gone to get a sandwich from the Site Gallery, just up the road and a bit …
’68 is a lovely name for a baby
A standard account of the events of ’68 in France might focus around the release of potential; there was no classic revolution but the emergence of a culture of self realisation, one with important ethical and political impact. These same events were criticised at the time and since as self-indulgent and a threat to social …
a crafting of practice
I was speaking with a group of asylum seekers and refugees this evening. I had brought along a tin of corned beef but the little thing you use to twist/turn the top off was missing. An Iranian man, Ali, used a knife to cut the top open. All the while I was thinking how difficult …
tolerating fascists
The daughter of a friend, 13 years old, was talking to me about history at the weekend. She has been studying the inter-war years and the rise of German fascism. She told me that she had made herself unpopular in an discussion with her friends afterwards because (she said something like) she had not found …
it’s certainly not essex
David Essex is appearing in a show at the Lyceum, Sheffield. I’ve not seen it and pretty sure I won’t. I assume it has some cheery dance scenes, young performers, period music and reflective voice of Now Old David. The poster announces that the show is “direct from London’s West End” which means what? That …
super 8 (2011)
Set in 1979, the film Super 8 can be read as an allegory of the American civil rights movement. The allegory is caught up in the web of a small time psychological drama. I am concerned at the way film offers grief and anger at slavery and racism as a subset of internal psychological issues.
being normal
For the past few months I’ve been accompanying a young man, originally from Zimbabwe, to the Borders Agency office in Vulcan House, near the river Don in Sheffield. It is an area that was redeveloped over the past ten years with a host of residential flats and offices being built with river frontage. It has …
southwold sheds
I visited Southwold, near my ex-parents-in-law last weekend. As I drove into the coastal area of northern Suffolk from the west I noticed two things: the appearance of Union Jacks in a couple of places and the presence in practically every village I passed of an independent butcher. The town itself is on the sea …