Thoughts
Mike was a colleague I used to know a little when I worked at the library service in North Yorkshire, and I wrote this after his very untimely death. If people truly can outlive their physical lives through their writing then thank goodness for Mike's writing. It'
Thoughts
First question. Why would a person desire to kill a beautiful, majestic creature like this. Why would they spend £32,000 in order to be able to kill it. Why would skinning it and taking its head be important. How can we even begin to understand such behaviour from our
Thoughts
Some of the most annoyingly cliched advice that people prone to depressive thinking receive is to "think positively"; "just be positive"; "look on the bright side". As if optimism could be artifically made; as if you could somehow fake or whitewash your experiences and
Francis Cabrel
I wanted to share a song that I've been preoccupied by a little. It's a song by the French singer-songwriter Francis Cabrel and, when put prosaically, couldn't be more French. An adult looks back at a formative sexual experience of his adolescence, when he
My poems
The poem, distanced, courses through the blood My struggling language clamouring for air. These empty windows mock the stammering Of hitching speech, and words broken and bare. I'm wincing at the glowing laptop screen The wasted words that crowding weight my brow Flood, blackly voiding sense. The threatened
Thoughts
Read more about the challenge and about my reasons for taking it on. Below is my food diary that I updated all week - comments and thoughts are at the end. Day 1 - exactly £1 As much as anything keeping a diary will help me police myself and check
Thoughts
Click to read my diary and conclusions after Live Below The Line. I'm regularly troubled by my own privilege compared to people living on dramatically less. Although I am a single parent with a low income, because I live in the UK and have additional support from the
Thoughts
The #nomakeupselfie trend is in the news - here's coverage by the Independent and here's The Guardian, for a little background. I donated £10 to Breast Cancer Care yesterday, and since it's been troubling me, I decided to try to examine my own thought
Reviews
From the outset, the PuppetCraft cast encouraged a non-frontal and participatory style of theatre, asking children to sit on the floor close to the scenery. Special mention has to go straight away to the sound and music. Sounds were created live using sampling and mixing of the strange and mysterious
Reviews
Review originally published on DigYorkshire in October 2013. As seen at Harrogate Theatre as part of All Points North 2013. Sarah Wallis’ The Rain King presents depths of meaning; intensity of character; complicit and knowing humour keeping us on side; profound reserves of talent both in writing and acting; a
Reviews
Titus Andronicus was an absolute joy for anyone who likes their Shakespeare shaken up, electro-shocked à la Frankenstein – something rather beautiful and terrible jolted into vivid life, created painstakingly carefully out of pieces that centuries of critics and theatre directors have left for dead. Smooth Faced Gentlemen demonstrated superlative understanding
Reviews
Neil Simone’s art is both extremely complex, and extremely accessible. Not only are his natural landscapes light, aesthetically pleasing and clear, but each one is imbued with meaning. Gently curved trees enclose a secret garden; painted sand pours from a painted canvas onto a painted gallery floor; a wintry