Category Archives: life

From bitter searching of the heart

16 Jul

A villanelle has nineteen lines and just two rhyming sounds, in this case “ain” and “art”. Frank Scott’s Villanelle for Our Time was set to music by Leonard Cohen on one of his more unusual albums, Dear Heather. Years ago I heard Cohen tell BBC Front … Read More »

The man who turned into a sofa

22 Jun

Today on BBC Radio 4, told from the alternating perspectives of family members where dad is laid low by clinical depression: a moving and creative exploration in prose monologue and rhyming verse. It even ends well. One of those rarities … Read More »

Sex crime – can we ever get it right?

17 Jun

[ezcol_2third][/ezcol_2third] [ezcol_1third_end] “.. we had a job to do. I apologise to Sir Cliff if we were insensitive about the way we did it … our problem was an investigation compromised from the outset ..” [/ezcol_1third_end] Maybe Chief Constable David … Read More »

Indonesia to resume executions

14 Jun

Indonesia’s Attorney General’s Office announced today that in July, after Ramadan, sixteen unidentified death row inmates will be executed, ending a brief hiatus it bizarrely attributed to economic difficulties now resolved: We could not do it earlier because the government was trying … Read More »

Privatising the NHS

27 Apr

My sweetie looks worried. There’s blood in my pee. Oh. And what did we eat yesterday? Er, beetroot. Right, and plenty of it. That’ll be forty-three pounds-ninety please. Plus VAT. Actually and seriously, these days we have to go to … Read More »