Fruit cage
Fieldfares flutter its fine netting maddened by the scented air, their hard eyes looking for holes to squeeze through into this open-air larder where currants and berries lie plump, bright as jewels under the green leaves.
Read More…The deepwater port at Piraeus
At Piraeus’s deepwater port ends Europe where Themistocles built his navy sheds and high walls against the Persians, walls to protect the precious Athenian way of life. Now Europe ends in concrete and quayside cranes made elsewhere, raised over the sea to process containers sat waiting in the sunshine. An international ship approaches slows and […]
Read More…Swimming for England (complete)
“And time passes, it is only life itself that never changes – when we are all gone the clouds, the gone the clouds, the stars, the cities will still bustle and hum with no thoughts at all for who lived for a bit and then disappeared.” John Hickman, 1960 Chapters The Bosphorus Page 3 Alcatraz […]
Read More…February morning / the 7.18 to London
A press of metal on metal, the simplest trick and yet the most important, so soft and true we might be starting on runners in the snow, leaning something heavy against a tree. Any man’s walk, his run, now a dash by a free horse, steady, incrementing around a bend and we are travelling. A […]
Read More…Swimming for England (extract)
One week before they flew to Turkey he met Eric for a final training swim. It was dusk and warm. As he waded into the cool water he was overwhelmed with despair. When he put his head down into the dark water and began a slow crawl towards the centre of the lake voices of […]
Read More…Notes on the Common Good & Community Organising
These notes describe what I learned during a day (23 March 2018) in London spent with the Labour peer Maurice Glasman and the American community organiser Arnie Graf. The day was convened by Maurice Glasman to discuss his Common Good philosophy and to hear Arnie describe how to build powerful community organisations. Maurice Glasman It […]
Read More…Notes on Narita Airport
Air-side in the Asian Café Bowl Bowl, a mug of creamed coffee and a madelaine for comfort for I am tired and Tokyo’s mass-produced pastry is wonderful, light as air this one, promising little but holding fat almonds sweet as butter. The café is crazy, there are waitresses yelling orders over the maddening tannoy announcements, […]
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