Buy Me a Coffee As I sit here in my lounge, nursing a cup of tea that’s gone rather tepid – much like the jackdaw’s ill-fated bid for freedom in Aesop’s timeless fable – I can’t help but chuckle at the sheer absurdity of it all. You see, I’ve always had a soft spot for … Continue reading Strings Attached: A Jackdaw’s Lament and Other Human Follies
Category: My Words
Thoughts and memories-a-plenty!
Cakes and Ale, or the Saints and the Sinners
I came to Cakes and Ale not with a sense of moral urgency, but with a cup of tea and a faint suspicion that I was about to be gently mocked. That suspicion, as it turns out, is the correct posture in which to approach W. Somerset Maugham. One doesn’t read Maugham expecting thunderbolts from … Continue reading Cakes and Ale, or the Saints and the Sinners
A Very English Form of Possession – de la Mare’s, Seaton’s Aunt
I’ve always thought that the most frightening people don’t slam doors, rattle chains, or float about moaning like an amateur operatic chorus. They make the tea properly. They keep the house tidy. They speak softly. And they watch you. That’s why Seaton’s Aunt by Walter de la Mare unsettles me far more than any amount … Continue reading A Very English Form of Possession – de la Mare’s, Seaton’s Aunt
When Heaven Knocked Softly: Merry Christmas
It began, as most life-altering things do, without warning. Mary wasn’t praying for revelation. She wasn’t prepared. She was simply living — and that, it seems, was enough. The angel didn’t descend with thunder or spectacle, but with words. A greeting, strangely formal, and yet weighted with eternity. She was told she was favoured, though … Continue reading When Heaven Knocked Softly: Merry Christmas
Not Bad: A Epitaph for Daisy Miller
In the end, they decided she was innocent — and that was all she was ever allowed to be. I’ve always felt that Daisy Miller is less a story about impropriety than about cowardice. Not Daisy’s — heaven forbid — but ours. Ours as readers, as observers, as members of those polite little tribunals that … Continue reading Not Bad: A Epitaph for Daisy Miller
Wording 