Janet Lewison

Whilst walking the dogs this morning I had a sudden glimpse of a time of my life when I did shyness very well!Exceptionally well in fact. Like an expert as… Read More »A shy memory!

In talking, shyness and timidity distort the very meaning of my words. I don’t pretend to know anybody well. People are like shadows to me and I am like a… Read More »Gwen John on Shyness!

I found this again as an earlier blog and his late poem, Aubade reminds me once more of Larkin’s enduring appeal. He is deeply attached to anxiety! Here the anxiety is… Read More »Larkin's 'Aubade': A a special way of being afraid?

I was wondering this morning about influence in writing and how such influence may allow for experiment and the space to become a writer with one’s own style or voice.… Read More »What the Dickens!

CHAPTER 1I AM BORN Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whetherthat station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.… Read More »David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

What I Regret By Nina Cassian . . . never having heard the voice of the Dodo bird . . . . . . never having smelled the Japanese cherry… Read More »What I regret by Nina Cassian

Chapter One How Nobody Came to the Graveyard There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. The knife had a handle of polished black bone, and… Read More »Neil Gaiman: The Graveyard Book

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared… Read More »Dylan Thomas: From A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. “Now they are all on their knees,” An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We… Read More »Thomas Hardy: The Oxen

”One day without really thinking about it, I put myself in the story for the first time..”   In Chapter four of David Almond’s graphic novel, The Savage, the young… Read More »Put yourself in your own story!

Especially when the October wind With frosty fingers punishes my hair, Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire And cast a shadow crab upon the land, By the… Read More »Dylan Thomas: Especially when the october Wind

Let this insight resonate DEEPLY and LIGHTLY too!    “Those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” Take this as an opportunity to discover who is really touching… Read More »Confidence with Dr Seuss!

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at… Read More »Dylan Thomas reposted here just ……

Your vowels       – lava      – soul food                      -always     www.confidence-for-life.co.uk

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.Love them anyway. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.Do good anyway. If you are successful, you win false friends… Read More »Kent Keith's Truly marvellous paradoxes via Michael Neill!

Felt physically sick at the end of this three and half hour version of Tennessee Williams most famous play. Blanche was terrfic: progressively feverish, wild eyed and gut wrenchingly terrfied… Read More »A Streetcar Named Desire at the Bolton Octagon. Directed by David Thacker.

1. Be authentic2. Do what you love, do only what you love, and don’t do what you don’t love3. Embrace whatever happens as a result!   How many of us… Read More »Michael Neill: Daily Advice

Peter McNab and his colleague Mario Sikora are editing an exciting new book on the Enneagram provisionally called The Ennagram from the Inside. The inspiration for the book emanted from… Read More »The Enneagram : Eights

This weekend I had the luxury of watching two fims at the cinema in Cine World’s very comfy seats I might add! Julia Roberts’ new film has the emotional repetoire… Read More »Eat, Pray and Love versus Diary of a Wimpy Kid: No contest!!

Seamus Heaney’s latest collection opens with an  admission which reminds us all of our cognitive  fragility : Had I not been awake I would have missed it, A wind that rose and… Read More »Seamus Heaney: ‘Had I not been awake’ in Human Chain

A long time agao, indeed so long ago, it feels like once upon a time, I read Virginia Woolf’s The Waves and even though I felt it slipped away from… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy, Virginia woolf and A L kennedy.

“Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?”  

    This living hand, now warm and capable Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb, So haunt thy days and… Read More »John Keats: This Living Hand

( Henry James) “I have been a child, but i have never been on a quest for buried treasure.” Here is, indeed, a wilful paradox; for if he has never… Read More »A Humble Remonstrance by Robert Louis Stevenson