‘At that party’ … he paused, making sure I could remember.

‘It was only last week’

‘Well, at one point I was thinking isn’t it odd how one’s mother can suddenly be seen…

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Here I have learnt your views on politics, religion.

I know how and when you lost your virginity (and why you thought that they might laugh)

I know your doubts and fears, your favourite food.

I know when you are asleep and when here, reading too.

I’ve seen your face, shared a meal and certainly a hug.

But I have no idea of your capacity for human kindness.

Epic Fails 10.0

Perhaps it’s an epic fail to simply say that my failures are too many to fit on this page or on an acre of blackboard or into a gigabyte of computer space. But if forced to list the endless piles of heaping faults, it’s probably best to note that some are genetic and some are learned. My plate is full of shitastrophies I’ve brought upon myself simply because I am always inserting my foot into the depths of my mouth, or because I am in an un-wanted-advice…

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I keep thinking about deathbed conversations

The sort where you say “You know, I always ...”

Always wanted to tell you ...

Always wanted… Continue

Ooops - I go away for 36 hours and come back to find another challenge:  here's my contribution:

1. I have never done drugs

2. I have flown an aeroplane

3. I have never been further north than 60º latitude

4. I lost my engagement ring before I'd been married two years

5. I was lured onto a Trinity House vessel when I was fourteen

6. I borrowed 12/- from a school…

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After seven months I occasionally forgot that with everyone but him I had to watch my tongue, had to consider how my words might be misinterpreted. So when my mother said “We’ve been invited to spend christmas with them” my immediate response was to say, out loud, “Oh no!”



But before I could explain that one day with his parents and one day with mine would be preferable (which would have been acceptable, and was also the truth) she had worked herself into a fit of martyred fury and… Continue

I was pondering while chopping red cabbage, listening to Live’s ‘Throwing Copper’ and watch the stotting rain fall (a Northern term for straight down heavy).

And thinking about fiction.

And wondering why I am so much more nervous posting fiction than pieces based on fact.

And thinking maybe it’s because I fear to expose my ignorance.

Is this why (and I… Continue

He was a tall man, a former journalist, not given much to interviews but in his eighties he was tolerant towards the young and besides this was a press reception for the launch of his final book, so I put the question, "How do you get to the real truth about anyone?"

“Champagne,” he said, glancing down at the bubbles rising in his glass, “if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector.”



Relishing the chance to grill someone of his literary stature, I pushed…

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Call me naïve but I sort of thought stuff I put on my blog would probably only be found by anyone looking for it or else by a million to one chance browse. So I was surprised to get an email from the Pier Arts Centre just now pointing out that I’d mistakenly located it in Kirkwall. (I’d corrected it on 6S but the slip of the ... brain ... had passed me by when I later copied it into my lines of communication blog). Luckily I’d only said nice and truthful…

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His lonely songs blew like ghosts through the cemeteries at night, his tears gilding names on forgotten stones. I found him waiting for someone in an abandoned house. When he saw me he smiled, and his song became lyrical.

We walked past unburied corpses, through terrors in the blackest corners of his dungeons, crawled along the shifting floors of his oceans. He took me laughing through the glitter and nebulae of his heaven, one he'd worked hard - bled and died - to…

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The root of the anger I once felt was disappointment at the poor fit of religion, how incompatible too many of its teachings were with what made my soul feel most alive.

It was as if your mother, having just put you down to sleep after loving and rocking you in her arms all night, asked you to watch her - don't take your eyes off. So you watch her, wide-eyed, as her velvet skin melts into rivers of wax and heavy drapes of hair drop to the floor, knotted in dark confusion. Her…

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I understand the separations that promote order: calendars, branches of government, cellular membranes.



I don't understand the separations that cause harmful disorder: religions (too many), political parties (too few); surely these two examples which claim to exist "for the greater good" do not brandish discord to compete for our dollars, to make a few men rich, to pay someone else's bills, to pay for a personal agenda, to knock… Continue

As a family historian I deal in verifiable facts – no evidence, no can use (unless incontrovertible ‘gut feeling’ dictates otherwise!) And although I don’t believe in astrology, I recognise that the Sagittarian characteristic of ‘honesty’ applies to me in spades (despite the fact that I barely qualify, being only five minutes from Capricorn) – don’t come to me for tactful white lies because I can’t do them.



Consequently all attempts to write for family consumption tend towards the… Continue

~ from COLLECTIVE CELLULOID MEMORIES

( where a picture tells a thousand stories )

Yeah, they cracked the case open, worldwide open, truth be dancing-in-the-streets open. Ol' Ted Turner in his America's Cup winning days would rebel out, "Here's to gut feelings and those who still follow them." Woodward and Bernstein gut-level did. The truest writers always do ~ follow the voice within, the one that pushes, edges,… Continue

The Princess had started to lie.
To herself, to the Viking, to the Universe and she was paying the consequences.
The conspiracy of fantasy, maintaining an illusion, it was starting to make her feel queasy.
It was one thing to tackle the Monster of Attachment.
It was quite another to Conspire to Commit Fraud.
The Princess was unwilling to play.

All of us tell stories. The truth is - that every time you tell a lie, you're telling a story – it might not be the right thing to do, but it is still a story.



Let me give you an example: when we were young, most of us have lied [not all of us; not all the time and me: never] to our teachers regarding the homework – it wasn't always "I didn't do it." Sometimes, it was more like – "I did the homework on time and had only gone for a minute to open the front door for my… Continue