For years I tried to learn and perfect this song on my guitar, and then my piano. That is, until I realised just how useless this song is. It’s become something of a secular hymn, hasn’t it? Imagine — that soft, self-satisfied lullaby for the spiritually sedated. A song so sanctified by sentimentality that to … Continue reading Imagine: A Hymn to Nothingness
Month: October 2025
The Slag Heap of Forgetfulness
In memory of the children of Aberfan, 21st October 1966 Before the Bell Rang There are mornings that never end, only echo. Aberfan was one of them. The rain had fallen through the night — the kind of Welsh rain that softens the hills but sharpens the nerves. By half past nine, the children of … Continue reading The Slag Heap of Forgetfulness
The Woman in the Wall: Madness, Marriage, and the Myth of Care
‘I’ve got out at last,’ said the woman behind the wallpaper. ‘And you can’t put me back.’ It begins, as all good horrors do, with a husband who means well. John is a physician, a man of reason and gentle authority, and therefore utterly unfit to understand his wife’s soul. He prescribes what men have … Continue reading The Woman in the Wall: Madness, Marriage, and the Myth of Care
The Virus: A Parable of Power and Pathogens
Never thought I’d find myself reading this, but, curiosity got the better of me. It’s one of history’s tidier ironies that a man once wrote a novel about an incompetent government facing a deadly plague - only for his son to later preside over one. The Virus (originally The Marburg Virus, 1982) is Stanley Johnson’s … Continue reading The Virus: A Parable of Power and Pathogens
Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude: The Soul Beneath the Storm
Some days heaven seems undecided about whether to weep or pray. Chopin caught one of them. His Prelude in D-flat major, Op. 28 No. 15 - the so-called Raindrop Prelude - drips like eternity through a cracked roof, each note a soft reminder that beauty isn’t the absence of suffering, but its echo. The piece … Continue reading Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude: The Soul Beneath the Storm
Wording 