Walking through the Sheffield I pass a man who is often busking in the town centre. He plays sometimes a guitar, today, I think, some sort of small stringed instrument, perhaps, or was it a small keyboard. He plays them like I might play them at times, just making noise using the machine on his …
Category archives: writing
last rites
Patrick Duggan is dead. Pat. Queen’s Scout. Moustached. Flat cap. Always in order. Ready. I’ve been over contemplating death these past few days and I seem to have landed one big like a fish. He was found by his friend Norma on the bathroom floor and Saskia rushed over and pumped his heart until the …
competitors, raptors and leeches…
So what I am about to write is best written when I am angry. Which I am not at the moment. But when I’m angry I don’t write things down. I have had quite a long association with academia and received funding myself to pursue research. Now I am no longer so closely associated with …
“you know they are Catholics not even real Christians”
Well I just had a properly depressing conversation. I went outside the building where I have an office and entered into conversation with two young men of Pakistani origin. The elder of them, 32 years old, had spent seven years in prison and was bitter and frustrated at not being able to find work. His …
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on not being stuck
I took my youngest child to school this morning and as I turned the car around in a small side street I saw a woman whose children attend the same school. This is somebody I have spoken to on and off for probably six or seven years now. She is a very nice person as …
clergy and heritage
Today I walked in to Sheffield Cathedral where extensive work has been done to remodel the entry and the interior of the nave. I was walking around and I could hear somebody reading from the Bible and was surprised to see that although there was no visible congregation other than one two people sitting reflectively …
volunteer missionaries
I have noticed over the last 10 years when I have been involved in increasing amounts of voluntary work that I encountered a number of people who have been brought up in families where parents or grandparents were missionary workers. Statistically such people do not account for the large numbers but nevertheless it is quite …
Circuses and Sochi
The idea of bread and circuses. What does that mean always works in my mind. There is the idea that it was wrong to offer bread and circuses, to dupe a population by letting blood. Somehow also we just don’t really understood the blood lust and sit with the notion that it was also something …