Blog

  Today there has been a thaw but recently I have felt very cold. There was a freeze in the south of England that went on for almost a week and after hiding away in the house for a day or two I stepped gingerly onto the snowy pavements clad in several layers of warm … Read more

I am looking forward to the conclusion of my training as a therapist. The final residential session will have been completed this month and I will in all probability have amassed the required number of trainee hours with my clients by the end of the year. I have a sense of accomplishment but also of … Read more

I was able to get there at last. The small but elegant town of Onley in rural Buckinghamshire has beckoned to me ever since I knew that the 18th century poet William Cowper resided there, a refugee from a world whose hectic, jangling pace he could not abide. The town lived up to its promise … Read more

Last month, we went back to Norwich for an overnight stay in a city we love. However an unexpected highlight was a first ever stop-off in the town of Wymondham on the journey home. It was a vibrant place with a strong commercial life, a tangible sense of its own mid-Norfolk identity and the towering … Read more

A few days ago, I came back from Ireland on the midday Scottish ferry, then motored east towards Richmond in North Yorkshire where I stayed the night in a very nice, very central and doggy-friendly hotel before driving south to St Albans. I covered the same route that I traversed ten days before on my … Read more

Last month I discovered that an old colleague and friend had died. Brian was a mentor to me in my earliest days as a teacher and boarding master. In those far-off days when I had never yet owned a car, he would pick me up from the Shankill Road in Belfast where my parents lived … Read more

I’m not long back from North Devon. It was my first time there and I loved it. We stayed in a lodge just outside Braunton for a long weekend and we were blessed with late May sunshine and a cool breeze off the sea. The beach known as Saunton Sands is a three mile long … Read more

It’s May and so Spring is here. That’s why I was reminiscing with my partner yesterday about the May Queen. I told her how I was just a nipper back then, gazing out of the window of my Irish home in County Down in order to pick out a bunch of noisy children not much … Read more

It’s late April in 2022 and long since time to restore my blog and to think of renewing my website. The role of writer remains important for me (although lately it’s mainly been in the shape of essays for my counselling diploma) and you will soon see some updating to my drama column, noting the … Read more

It’s been a while – and this blog must perforce cover the autumn of 2021 and now, with the arrival of a light dusting of snow in Hertfordshire, the beginning of December and a true winter. I haven’t done a lot of writing of late, at least not the kind of drama and poetry that … Read more