Must be a William Trevor sort of a day! – perhaps it’s the effect of the rain and the mood of remembrance day but this is a story which creeps… Read More »William Trevor: 'Timothy's Birthday' from After Rain
Demeter tried again to vary her tone. She wanted to have a voice that could stop buses. She wanted cloaks thrown down at her feet. She wanted recognition, sparkling blue eyes.… Read More »Savage two
There are short story writers and then there is William Trevor. A simple yet devastating truth. Reading his story ‘Friendship’ from his 1996 collection ‘After Rain’ just now, I just… Read More »William Trevor: 'Friendship' from After Rain
The house was filled with the sound of rummaging. It was as if the house was some ramshackle boat, leaking in water, whilst everyone tried to rescue their favourite possession… Read More »savage
NLP for Confidence, Motivation and Creativity! We all tell stories about ourselves and our world. Our words reflect our thoughts and sometimes our words and our stories confine us… Read More »NLP for Confidence, Motivation and Creativity!
Dear Mrs ….., Sorry about my homework. Did I mention I’m really really sorry? Here is a story of where my homework has gone. My dog chewed it… Read More »An apology !!
I read this book in the sun and found the lyricism and tenderness of its exploration of relationships, past and present, visible and invisible, beautifully represented through a language which… Read More »David Almond, Kit's Wilderness
The woman had tied her hair into a curious snake shape, to the right of her large head and had caught the bus to this beach because today she had… Read More »beach
In the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London–measuring from the Standard in Cornhill,’ or rather from the… Read More »Dickens : Barnaby Rudge Chapter One
When you sit over there, Any there, all wheres, I start to measure out the angles, the distance from you to me first sharp , now smudged between us, Wanting only… Read More »geometry
They talk of salamanders loving fire, but my love, my rage- for you , burns every cell, every atom of this person without you who is a mere stand in… Read More »Furnace
The last time he had seen her she was walking down the street whistling a song she had always claimed her father had taught her in India. George loved this… Read More »travel sickness
Tin wanted to love the woman with the whisper of liquorice about her neck but his in-box this morning had a new case of a missing person and his mother kept… Read More »Tin
Waking, with a dream of first love forming real words,as close to my lips as lipstick, I speak your name,after a silence of years, into the pillow, and the powerof… Read More »First Love
She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced… Read More »Mrs Dalloway by Viriginia Woolf
He arrives too late to tell him how it will be.Oscar is gone. Alone, he orders hock,sips in the style of an earlier centuryin glamorous mirrors under the clocks. He… Read More »Cafe Royal: Carol Ann Duffy in a tuxedo?!
With some surprise, I balance my small female skull in my hands.What is it like? An ocarina? Blow in its eye.It cannot cry, holds its breath only as long as… Read More »Small Female Skull
‘On November the 21st, the day of her forty-seventh birthday, and three weeks and two days before she was murdered, RhodaGradwyn went to Harley street to keep a first appointment… Read More »P D James: The Private Patient
Only there, the afternoons could suddenly pauseand when I looked up from lacing my shoea long road held no one, the gardens were empty,an ice-cream van chimed and dwindled away.… Read More »Anchors are everywhere! Carol Ann Duffy's Stafford Afternoons and Close
While settling this point, she was suddenly roused by the sound of the door bell, and her spirits were a little fluttered by the idea of its being Colonel Fitzwilliam… Read More »Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice Chapter 34
I want you and you are not here. I pausein this garden, breathing the colour thought isbefore language into still air. Even your nameis a pale ghost and, though I… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy: Miles Away
D’Urberville stopped the horse, withdrew his feet from the stirrups, turned sideways on the saddle, and enclosed her waist with his arm to support her. This immediately put her on… Read More »Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
The little hedge-row birds,That peck along the road, regard him not.He travels on, and in his face, his step,His gait, is one expression; every limb,His look and bending figure, all… Read More »Old man Travellling by Wordsworth
Before You Were Mine I’m ten years away from the corner you laugh on with your pals, Maggie McGeeney and Jean Duff. The three of you bend from the waist,… Read More »Before you were mine: Carol Ann Duffy
It was December—a bright frozen day in the early morning. Far out in the country there was an old Negro woman with her head tied red rag, coming along a… Read More »Eudora Welty: The Worn Path
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, Our deepest fear is that we are poweful beyond measure. It’s our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We… Read More »Thought for the day by Marianne Williamson
Bless air’s gift of sweetness, honeyfrom the bees, inspired by clover,marigold, eucalyptus, thyme,the hundred perfumes of the wind.Bless the beekeeper who chooses for her hivesa site near water, violet beds,… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy: Virgil's Bees
Your vowels – lava soul food always
Almodovar gave us a Russian doll of a film: Here Mateo Blanco’s cine-biography showcased the making of his ‘Cruz masterpiece;’ a clear homage to Hepburn and Monroe, an entire genre even. As the… Read More »Almodovar's Broken Embraces: by Moira Eribenne
I was walking in a wood somewhat delightfully finding that my hands were now become paws and that my hair had overgrown my back and ears so that the word pelt seemed… Read More »A Faun Dream
