Shall I tell you a story?

What kind of a Fall is this?

5/12/2011

Once upon a time in Canada, driving through forest at the start of Autumn, got used to "Look! Fall colours!" every time we passed a tree that had gone early from green to the red-gold colours of the Fall. Saw the work of the Group of Seven artists at the gallery in Ottawa. Today, had a "Look! Winter colours!" moment, standing up the slope from a perspective of four apple trees, no apples, no leaves, gnarled, old, covered in lichen, shiny wet with the cloudburst of a moment before, blue-grey, reflecting the back-lit cloudy sky, beautiful. Would a camera get that? Don't think so. But a Group of Seven artist might have been inspired to switch from gold to silver. Some moments, you understand why painting endures in the age of cameras.
    The birds are hungry. They've emptied the feeders over the weekend; time for a refill. Been away in Bath - driving a vanload of furniture up on Saturday, empty van back Sunday. Curious town, Bath. Yes, the stone is lovely. Ramshackle corners, alleys and shops that reminded me of Rome. All the obvious chainstores on the main pedestrian ways, but a few more original, artisan, craft places in the narrow short cuts. Quantities of people and cars that went beyond any conception of overcrowding and all the way into the ridiculous; laugh-out-loud crowds. Seemed impossible to buy any item of clothing, or accessory, that wasn't - in a narrow sense - fashionable. As if we're all imitating something - but the original has no substance beyond its own advertisement.
    All I wanted was something to put on my (cold) head, but I didn't want it with a logo prominently displayed. Failure. Remained cold. A shopping town full of people indifferently, happily, reluctantly projecting a narrow set of brand identities rather than just being their own identity. Is this just an observation drawn from a very specific situation - Saturday afternoon, dusk, shopping town, early December - or is there a question to be asked: you've got the style; where's the substance? The saying in advertising used to be: if you're selling a burger, "sell the sizzle". Perhaps if you spend to long being sold and thus buying the sizzle, you eventually lose contact with the substance. Did you enjoy your burger? It sounded great. What about the taste? Don't understand the question.
    Enough. Hungry birds tapping at the putty holding my windows together. A sound with a meaning.

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In a desk diary scavenged from a house of the dead, a man records his own experiences of the end times: what he has to do to survive; how he came to be marooned where he is; how he reacts to the discovery that he is not alone.

Over coffee, a young journalist gets The Message.

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What happens here

This site is updated weekly, usually on a Friday although I might change that (again). I write it because (1) I like writing it and (2) I like having a deadline. More often than not, it works out as a commentary on the week just passed*.
There are no ads, no pop-ups and no tricky business with cookies. I don't take money for my own opinions. [Except when they come out in book form.] I write this for myself, without a set agenda, on any subject that catches my attention. If you're interested enough, it's not hard to work out my interests. Not impossible, anyway.
*Although I seem to have gone away from that recently. Normal service may or may not be resumed.

No data is kept on this website overnight. Blog posts are usually shared to my Facebook page. We can discuss them there if you feel so inclined.

There's a page for this, but maybe you'd like to see the cover here?

Where are we now? We're hurtling round the sun, held to the ground by a weak force that we don’t begin to understand, arguing about trade deals between the land masses on a planet mostly covered by water.
The dolphins must think us ridiculous. No wonder they only come to the shallow water to play with us, not to signal their most complex philosophies. More.

Riddle. It takes two to make me, but when I'm made, I'm only a memory. What am I? Scroll down to find out.

Is that a catastrophe I see before me? Could be. There was a clear sky earlier, but now clouds are encroaching from the North. We could be in for a storm. More.

You found me!
Welcome. Thank you for coming. But am I the right
William Essex? Click here
to meet some more.

Read My Shorts?

Here is yet another page of old blog posts and other writings. Sorry, but I need my metaphorical sock drawer for metaphorical socks. The link to the page is right at the end of the paragraph here.

A very green picture. I can't remember where I took this.

Roads without end

Here is a passage from a review of the book The Road to Somewhere by David Goodhart. I haven't read the book (yet), but the collected reviews would make a worthwhile set of political arguments in their own right. More.

Also available in English. Look further down.

State of the Union

Several commentators today saying that they've lost confidence in the US. Making their point by talking up the glories of the past. After two weeks of this administration, they're not going back.
Were they wrong, and they've seen the light? Or has the US changed? I guess the latter is the intended meaning. But we should at least acknowledge the possibility... More.

Categories
(Started 4th November 2017; forgotten shortly after that.)

Kitchen parenting

I have teenage children. When they're home, sooner or later one of them will come to me and say: "Dad! We're going to make a mess in the kitchen!
   "Great!" I will reply, picking up on the tone of voice. "What are you going to do?"
    "We thought we'd slice up some peppers and onion and bits of chicken and leave them glued to the bottom of the frying pan. Burn something in one of the saucepans and leave it floating in the sink."
    "Anything else?" More.

Variously available online, in a range of formats.

No pinpricks

Okay, so a certain President recently made a speech to his people, in which he told them that their country's military "don't do pinpricks". His intention was to get across that when those soldiers do a "limited" or even "targeted" strike, it hurts. But those of us in the cynical wing of the listening public took it the other way. More.

Ceased to exist. Sorry.

Making mistakes

We all make mistakes in our relationships. Some are mistakes that can be corrected with an apology. Sometimes - "if only I'd said that, and not that." Sometimes, they're mistakes that are incomprehensible even to ourselves, and sometimes, we do things that show us up as not quite the likeable hero of our own story that we want to think we are. More.

Man down?

There's a report by the Samaritans about men and suicide. It's titled Men, Suicide and Society, and it finds that men are more likely to take their own lives than women (in the UK and ROI). More.

Offending the status quo

Looking at both the US election and the revived Brexit debate in the UK, the question is not: who wins? but: how did we get here? More.

Thinks: populism

Bright, sunny morning. Breeze. Weather forecast said fog, but it's a blue sky overlaid with vapour trails. Windy season, drifts of Autumn-coloured leaves. Thinking, on this morning's walk, about populism. More.

Early morning, Church Street, Falmouth

9th May 2014

On the day that I wrote this, the early news told us of a parade in Moscow to celebrate Russia’s defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Crimea remained annexed, and the Russia/Ukraine crisis was not resolved. At around half eight, the BBC’s reporter in Moscow was cut off in mid-sentence summarising the military display; the Today programme on Radio 4 cut to the sports news. More.

Riddle. What are you? You're a conversation!