I am bereft of belief in the uniqueness of the weft. I was sitting quietly at the back of the meeting looking at the sleeve of my sweatshirt top.The stitches were so fine, I was fascinated and started wondering how fine stitches might be made by hand? Could they be as small as this? Did …
Category archives: Uncategorized
iSiS?
Two things I want to write it down concerning ISIS. Firstly, I don’t find it particularly difficult to understand why young men and young women might choose to travel to fight with ISIS. Despite coming from a privileged background myself I was aggressively favourable towards the IR A in the late 1970s and early 1980s. …
ukraine
This I posted to facebook with trepidation – the situation is so unpleasant that it feels like a radical act to even publise an alternative point of view. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH35raTPVu8&w=560&h=315]
the Califano clan…
During our time in the Ardeche we visited Claude Califano and her parents Gaetan and Monique. How long is it since I have seen them? 30 years at least. What was strange about being with them again with their wayward daughter Claude is quite simply that nothing had changed in a sense. Everybody looked exactly …
dolmens, blood and pools
We went on a walk. A mythical walk. One of those wonderful meaningful and completely fortuitous series of events which are the very nature of embodied ritual, religious life and yet have no meaning at all. It’s just the story. Gaetan, Claude Califano’s father, who had been a keen walker on his retirement, had given …
Charles Henry Neal at Ypres
Charles Henry Neal was killed on the front line in Ypres on 21 January 1916. He was my paternal great-grandfather. I never heard anyone talk about him because nobody I have met even knew him. My grandfather would have been only four or five when he went off to war and never returned. My great …
Ukraine
The situation that is developing in the Ukraine is of course profoundly disturbing. What I am finding most disturbing however is the attitude not of Russia but of the Western powers and the European Union. The Ukraine is not a nation state like say for example France, with a very long history of struggle to …
palimpsest being
So – a few days here and there feeling depressed at not having achieved anything of note – nothing special there – and there’s the rub. Nothing special. I’ve always found it difficult accepting being like everyone else. So, in this instance, I rationalise myself, my view of myself as someone who’s not bad, as …
shh…
The terrible war in Gaza is taking place as I write with yet another cease fire ending with ceaseless fire. My question to myself is what is it not to take a position against Israel despite the clear case for one. Although the case is clear and there is a strong popular voice to support …
the beginning of the end
I found a mechanic to repair the brakes on a couple of the bikes we have with us on this extended visit to France. The man running the shop in Marignane was born in Brittany, near Rennes. He’d been living in Paris until 1969 when he moved down south following his father’s work. “You’re a …