I’ve long held a rather unfashionable view about dear Glinda the Good Witch, and it’s high time I set it down in ink – or pixels, as the modern fashion demands. To me, she isn’t merely a fluttering pink confection of benevolence; she’s the most insidious sort of villain, the one who smiles whilst sharpening … Continue reading Glinda’s Bubble: A Study in Benevolent Bastardry
Category: Places
Wankerism: A Field Guide to the Modern Fool
This afternoon I found myself once again wandering the countryside in the company of a dangerously attractive lady – the sort of woman who improves both the scenery and one’s vocabulary. There’s something about walking that encourages philosophical invention. The Greeks had the Peripatetics; we have the footpath and a thermos. And so it was … Continue reading Wankerism: A Field Guide to the Modern Fool
Sunset Over the Pennines
There are evenings when the world seems to exhale — slowly, like an old scholar closing a book he’s read a thousand times and loved each time a little differently. Tonight, the sun slipped behind the Pennines with the poise of a fading monarch, leaving behind a trembling rim of gold as though reluctant to … Continue reading Sunset Over the Pennines
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
A Ghost in the Glass: Charlotte Brontë and the Churchyard Photograph
Haworth Churchyard photograph, John Stewart, c.1856–57. © Brontë Society. Sourced via annebronte.org. There’s a photograph - albumen print, sepia-toned, crisp with the shadows of headstones - that has set imaginations aflame for more than a century. It shows Haworth churchyard, with its lichen-bitten tombs and overhanging sky, a place where the dead vastly outnumber the … Continue reading A Ghost in the Glass: Charlotte Brontë and the Churchyard Photograph
Wording 