Category Archives: Misc.
Goodbye
Dear all, Having taken on a new role at The Reader Organisation, I will no longer have time to be your Reader-Not-Quite-In-Residence. From tomorrow, my colleague Amanda Brown will step into my slightly scuffed but sweetly smelling shoes, which is … Continue reading
Filed under Misc.
The Persistence of Memory
I saw this last night and just had to share. It’s from Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, the thirteen-part TV series by science-writer and astronomer Carl Sagan, originally broadcast in 1980 but recently re-mastered and re-released as a gorgeous DVD box-set. … Continue reading
Filed under Misc.
Food for Thought…
My previous post – ‘Bitesize Read’, ‘feast your eyes’, etc. – recalled a passage from a book I read recently, The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher: You will certainly have encountered many similar images that use food terms to … Continue reading
Filed under Misc.
An apology
I am writing to apologise for any offence caused by last week’s poems. The use of these was an attempt to encourage engagement with people in the company who appreciate that style of humour and writing. Indeed, several people have been in … Continue reading
Filed under Misc.
(A previously ambivalent) Ella Jolly encounters royalty
Yesterday, whilst dashing from Banbury train station to Marks and Spencer to buy some delicious treats for BLG reading groups (the cakes alone are a good reason to come to a reading group!), I stumbled across the Queen. … Continue reading
On work and winter
After a considerable absence from work, I feel as if I have been in hibernation for the last two weeks. Stumbling, bleary-eyed and clumsy, onto an early (very early) morning train, I curl up with my hot chocolate and books … Continue reading
Filed under Misc., Poetry, Roaming Reader
Poetic pyrotechnics
Tonight (or at some point over the next few days) you may be planning to wrap up warm against the bitter November chill to attend bonfire parties and firework displays. There is nothing quite like watching the flare … Continue reading
The times they are a-changin’
In his 1821 essay The Defence of Poetry, Percy Bysshe Shelley declared that ‘poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.’ For authors such as Shelley – writing just after the French Revolution – there was very little distinction between … Continue reading
Where does all the good news go?
Yesterday, whilst on a train rolling frustratingly leisurely to Liverpool, the lady sitting opposite me discarded her newspaper with a big old sigh and offered me a warning: “The news today is particularly depressing. Don’t bother reading it!” We … Continue reading
Filed under Misc., Poetry, Roaming Reader
The Two Roberts: Dylan and Burns
Flicking through a culture magazine recently, I discovered a striking and rather brilliant printed advertisement. Emblazoned across an iconic black and white image of Bob Dylan are the opening lines of Robbie Burns’ poem A Red Red Rose. Dylan … Continue reading
