About

A fifty-something, retired Celestial Travel Agent & Afterlife Preparation Specialist. Walked many paths; some good, lots bad. Meandering through a difficult past, plodding in the present, crawling toward the future. I’ve studied English Literature, and hold a BA (Hons) Hum. (History & Art History) & MA (Humanities with English Literature). Also have a particular interest in psychology, philosophy, sociology, and theology.

So, welcome to Wording – a space where the great muddle of human thought and folly is laid bare.

I’m Robert, and this blog is my attempt to wrestle with the world: its literature, art, and psychology, its philosophy, and religion, its myths, its politics, its absurdities, and its fleeting glimpses of humility. Some days you’ll find me with Dostoevsky or Dickens in hand; other days, chasing the echoes of folklore; and quite often railing at the everyday idiocy of our age, from Westminster down to the petty vanities of modern life.

Think of this less as a lecture hall and more as a wandering salon – a place where ideas, history, and stories cross paths, occasionally clash, and sometimes produce a spark of truth. I’m not here to offer tidy answers or fashionable slogans. I’m here to explore, to question, and to provoke, in the belief that books, myths, and even the political circus can still teach us something about who we are.

Alongside the blog, I’m also writing a book in much the same vein – a darkly comic and reflective account of my years in the funeral industry. It’s a world of solemn ritual and unintentional farce, of grief and gallows humour, and it continues to shape how I see life, death, and everything in between. I’m aiming to publish sometime in 2026.

So, if you enjoy literature without the footnotes, philosophy without the pomp, politics without the spin, and a dash of gallows humour to keep it honest – you’re in the right place.

“I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

Hamlet