Fool on the Hill

FOOL ON THE HILL FOOL ON THE HILL “Day after day, alone on a hill The man with a foolish grin Is keeping perfectly still…… ……….The fool on the hill sees the sun going down And the eyes in his head see the world spinning round” So sang Paul McCartney on the 1967 Beatles E.P. […] Continue reading →

Harvest

HARVEST “ Every one of us is now in the position of the indigenous Americans when the Europeans arrived with guns and smallpox; our world is poised to change vastly, unpredictably and for the worse.” (1) This statement by Jonathan Franzen on the consequences of global warming pulls no punches. Just how shockingly apt this […] Continue reading →

Sweet Successes

SWEET SUCCESSES In a recent book review, Alex Preston made this observation of the work:(1) “here there’s a rigorous honesty about the disappointment that so often lies at the heart of nature watching (and makes all the sweeter our fleeting successes.”) There is a lot of truth in this remark as I’ve discovered during some […] Continue reading →

New Horizons TWO

NEW HORIZONS TWO “I got my new horizons out to see” With the Moodies already in the back of my mind, it was no surprise that this lyric from a classic Hayward track hummed away as we drove down the M50 to mid Wales.There we were to spend a few days at Garddfady Farm home […] Continue reading →

New Horizons ONE

NEW HORIZONS ONE “The thing is”, writes Annie Dillard in her essay ‘the Weasel’ (1) “ to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse.” Reading this, as I went about my daily post hip-op exercise routine, spurred me on. […] Continue reading →

Metamorphoses

METAMORPHOSES From ‘singles’ to ‘albums’ From caterpillars to chrysalids And some lessons learned. Reflections on Metamorphoses With a little imagination metamorphosis can be applied to diverse forms of life from the obvious to the unlikely. Anyway that is what I will try and show. Let’s start with a reflection on the latter. Back in the […] Continue reading →

What’s Next?

WHAT’S NEXT Buttock scrunch times ten Ankle flex and knees depress, This is rehab.Yes. Many repetitions and chanting of my rehab mantra see me well placed five weeks after my hip-op. The downtime between each of the daily four sessions has been devoted to reading with the Dave Hepworth review of the music of 1971 […] Continue reading →