Yeats wrote the poem “The Wild Swans at Coole” (see Game of Swans) in 1916 /17 when he was staying with Lady Gregory at her home in Coole Park, Galway and feeling lovelorn. In 1919 he used the title for a collection of poems that he dedicated to her son – Major Robert Gregory – the Royal Flying Corps fighter…
Decomposition I have a picture I took in Bombay of a beggar asleep on the pavement: grey-haired, wearing shorts and a dirty shirt, his shadow thrown aside like a blanket. His arms and legs could be cracks in the stone, routes for the ants’ journeys, the flies’ descents, Brain-washed by the sun into exhaustion, he lies veined into stone, a…
A group of swans is a wedge when they’re in flight, likely because of the shape a group of swans takes in flight. And while we can call a group of swans a bevy, a herd, a game, or a flight, they can only be a bank when they’re on the ground. Merriam-Webster But there’s more: a gaggle of swans a whiteness of swans a herd of swans…
Scooterons-nous vite. It’s Back to School with Angela Brazil Long before Harry Potter – and indeed long before all those school story authors who gave us Malory Towers and St. Clare’s and the Chalet School and the Abbey School and Jennings and Billy Bunter – there was Angela Brazil. Brazil – rhymes with dazzle – didn’t invent the school story…
It’s always fun when someone you know – a friend – has a book published. Here’s Three Sheets to the Wind by Cynthia Barrett about the nautical origins of everyday expressions. This is not a compendium of sailing idioms – all that tacking, luffing, jibing and heeling language of the business of sailing. This is rather the expressions we use…
I love this poem by Hans Magnus Enzensberger. It’s a commentary on the fact that – even in the darkest times – simple acts of unexpected generosity and kindness have the capacity to remind us that not everything is bleak and hopeless even in a nasty, brutish, trumpian world. Optimistic Little Poem Now and then it happens that somebody shouts…
Mustn’t Grumble We mustn’t grumble We have wireless and cable And there’s food in the shops. Beyoncé had a birthday and the game is on tonight. We have work to do. And all the really bad things like weather and politics are a long way away so we don’t have to worry. And there’s always pizza delivery. We can still walk…
George Orwell had an interesting chance encounter with a blasé conspiracy theorist at the Café Royal in 1940. (See left). The young man is in the grip of a dangerous fallacy. As always with autocracy and totalitarianism, Orwell nails it. The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside. Quite a number of people console themselves…
Just over 20 years ago now a teacher walked into my office and said that he had just found a bag of books on the street and would I like them. Of course I said Yes and in the books came. Quick look at the top of the bag – looked like a whole load of pornesque pulp fiction from…
Friends in the UK who usually come to visit in August were prevented by an illness this year. Big disappointment, but there it is. On the visit last year we got into some rainy day playing with art – painting rocks and leaves and acorns and so on. I was looking forward to some more art fun this summer. (They…
There’s a drainage ditch runs alongside the rail trail where we often take our morning stroll. It runs with water after rain and provides an excellent damp environment for the cardinal flower (lobelia cardinalis). It’s a showy deep red spiky flower native to the US. Apparently most insects find it difficult to navigate the long tubular flowers so the cardinal…
The Background One evening in the spring of 1919 a soldier in his uniform appeared at the front door of 115, Strathyre Avenue, Norbury, London. Frances Sims knew who it was immediately. It was her husband – Lance Corporal Frank Herbert Sims, known as Bert. The only problem was that Lance Corporal Sims had died at Taranto, Italy in January. …
When intelligence officer Arthur Marshall was on the beach at Dunkirk in 1940 he turned to the work of Angela Brazil for psychological support. Wounded in the ankle, he encouraged his men to face enemy fire and so reach the awaiting ships with: “Come on, girls, who’s on for the Botany Walk?” In his autobiography he explained how he managed…
When I first became a head of school I had this daft idea that I would make personalized cut-and-paste greetings cards for every member the faculty and staff. It was daft on a number of levels including the sheer daunting nature of the task and the time it would take that I didn’t have. But I set to work that…