I am a highly approachable Independent Expert Private English/English Literature Tutor located in Greater Manchester with over twenty years teaching and tutoring experience from Secondary to Postgraduate Degree level.
Yesterday I signed a text ‘Gertie’ because her name appeared in that front part of your head where you simply have to take notice. No obfuscation! So I signed ‘Gertie’… Read More »Gertie Lewison: Remembering someone I have never met!
Only a neat margin of moonlight there at the curtain’s edge. The room like a dark page. I lie in bed. Silence is ink. The sound of my breath dips… Read More »Rivington Walks and reads with Carol Ann Duffy's Night Writing
One of the less joyous aspects of aging is that our enthusiasms may exceed our bodily capability! My greyhound Betsy seemed progressively more careful as she made her way across… Read More »Wild Geese by Mary Oliver after a walk.
As a child I had a real aversion to grey stone walls and what might lie behind them. I was always looking out for despair rather like some sniper on loan… Read More »Before Gertie
Wild Geese You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have… Read More »Rivington Walks and Reads: Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese
If you think for a moment about very recent global events and dare steel yourself to imagine ‘the unimaginable’ in your own life, ask yourself this, are you living your… Read More »Thought for the day: Steeling yourself!
“I cannot think of leaving you, sir, at so late an hour, in this solitary lane, till I see you are fit to mount your horse.” He looked at me… Read More »Jane Eyre’s First meeting with Rochester: The Freedom of the Outside!
I love walking around Rivington with my three dogs. Three dogs on their three leads and the potential for a challenge is clear. Muddily apparent if you know Rivington near… Read More »Rivington Walks and Reads: Go Bolton!!
I have become accustomed to the darkness nowadays. At first it was difficult. Everything had to be negotiated by shape or smell or if I was lucky, the sound. Guess… Read More »The star upon my toe!
I read because I want to get to know myself better and being relatively stuck with being me for at least this span and dimension, It seems a good idea… Read More »A thought for today…………
There was once a scribe who lived in a small village just outside the coast whom was well liked and generally highly thought of in his home community. The scribe… Read More »A thought for the day two!
I’ll tell you, shall I, something I remember? Something that still means a great deal to me. It was long ago. A dusty road in summer I remember, A mountain,… Read More »A long ago by Eleanor farjeon
‘Everything is as it was, I discover when I reach my destination, and everything has changed. ‘ Michael Frayn, Spies.
Whenever writers are asked about their craft more often than not, they refer to the importance of reading. When you read, you absorb so much that is essential to the… Read More »Starting your story: Orientate your tale! Cornelia Funke's Thief Lord
Still on the theme of St Annes and spontaneous purchases from the blog on Agatha Christie and Miss Jane Marple, I also bought this book with this opening: ‘THe cold… Read More »Lorrie Moore: A Gate at the Stairs
‘I’m not going fishing yet!’ declared my daughter before the school run. ‘When are you going fishing then?’ I asked her curiously. ‘ When the salmon floats down the lane.’… Read More »Just go walking with your mind!
A short break in St Annes and a brief trip out to Cleveleys and The Works revealed the oddly comforting joys of reading once of the most successful and prolific… Read More »Agatha Christie: The Body in the Library, Nemesis and A Murder is Announced!
The bar at the Ritz-Carlton looks out on the Public Gardens and requires a tie. I’ve looked out on the Public Gardens from other vantage points before, without a tie,… Read More »Flow: Dennis Lehane and Raymond Chandler!
I have come back to life today, I have come back into the world of moons and suns And flowers and trees leaping into the light And all the Earth… Read More »A Return by Elizabeth Jennings
Going over it again brought Helen nearer, and in the white, soft light that steals upon half sleep near morning he found himself talking to her again. She said that… Read More »F Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon Revisited.
“What do you want to see most?” Orrison asked, as they sat down. Trimble considered. “Well — the back of people’s heads,” he suggested. “Their necks — how their heads… Read More »F Scott Fitzgerald: The Lost Decade
All day they had watched their feet toasting in the sunshine, breathing in the metallic heat of this small place where only the most dangerous prisoners were kept. Shoes were a… Read More »The Misty Hut
Who made the world?Who made the swan, and the black bear?Who made the grasshopper?This grasshopper, I mean–the one who has flung herself out of the grass,the one who is eating… Read More »Mary Oliver's Summer's day
“She lifted her head like the sun raised up the sky, everything moved, glowed, just shone. How long had they known that life was for changing, they’d known long before… Read More »Red
The Oven Bird (Robert Frost) There is a singer everyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again. He… Read More »Robert Frost:'What to make of a diminished thing.'
What if you were haunted by a pair of lovers whose desire for your destruction was so strong that it defied both death and time? A defiance whose ability to… Read More »The Lovers by John Connolly
”The wheel is come full circle: I am here.” How many of us would make such a declaration I wonder? Edmund’s insight here shows a tragic grandeur even if his… Read More »King Lear: Edmund Act V scene 3
It began with a light covering of dust. George didn’t stop writing that time but carried on for he had wanted a sign znd now that he had it, he… Read More »dusty answer
Snow, ice and then a hint of fog. Boxing Day a time for keeping warm and feeding off festive calories whilst dozing and sipping mugs of tea. I have had… Read More »Susan Hill's The Woman in Black: Seeping malignancy just under your door!
THE MAGI by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) OW as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and… Read More »The Magi by W B Yeats
