Reviews
The ensemble cast of three open and close The Boy Who Cried Wolf with the ‘clickety click’ of their knitting needles, and the story gradually weaves itself into being, framed by these little poetic and visual moments. Taking this small rural family of mother, son and grandfather as a starting
Reviews
“There’s one thing you must tell him – let him explore.” Josephine Peach’s advice to me for my 7 year old son, about to start his first piano lessons. What was joyful about Peach’s recital at Ripon Cathedral, the first in the new season of the cathedral’s
French
Stuck in my head today is France Gall's beautiful song "Ce soir je ne dors pas" so I thought I'd share it here. I'd be grateful for a French person's opinion on the translation query at the crucial part of
Thoughts
This was written when I moved my personal blog onto yorkshirewords.com. Attentive followers will have seen that I previously had two websites, a personal blog using my name, and a professional blog talking about my freelancing. I also had two distinct Twitter accounts, one personal and one professional. I
Thoughts
An open letter to James Rhodes, pianist (in reply to his article). James, on the off-chance you do read this (since I'm going to tweet you a link to it!) I don't know you at all, of course, and please forgive my direct way of addressing
Thoughts
The more I talk and think about actually, concretely starting to write creatively, the more it feels that I'm being dragged over a precipice. The more I feel the need to write, the more preoccupied by it I become and the more difficult it becomes not to start.
Thoughts
I'm going to stop being afraid of writing. Neil Gaiman, Rainer Maria Rilke and Gustav Holst are the specific heavyweight inspirations for this burst of courage. But explaining the initial reticence which has silenced me for more than a few months is a complicated one and comes down
Thoughts
Here's the full text of an opinion piece I've drafted for the Friends of Nidderdale AONB newsletter - where it did end up, albeit in edited down form. I thought I might as well archive it here. It was a bit of a spontaneous rant inspired
Thoughts
As an undergraduate in history of art at Cambridge, I remember struggling with the ‘feminist theory’ class. I found it hard to stomach what was being taught, which (it seemed) was concretely the rejection of all art which treated the female body as desirable. ‘Feminist’ art as it was presented
National Trust
I think that keeping myself and the children busy and active, doing lovely things and making lovely memories, is one of the best ways that I've dealt with the difficulties of the past eighteen months and helped myself and the children to settle and move on from the
French
Francis Cabrel is one of my favourite singer-songwriters, coming from the region of France where I lived for ten years. I learnt much of my French from his songs, as he writes with a great deal of intelligence and poetic sensibility and love for language and music - in the
Thoughts
Although it's poor style to start with an 'incidentally'... It was odd when I googled the above phrase to discover (having sung it as part of the Messiah but somehow omitted to properly pay attention) that the sheep are not those who blindly follow, but those