You know how some people don’t seem to have any doubts about things? They seem to see the world in black and white.
Or do they?
Although those grapes are destined to be eaten unfermented, I have an idea that seeing the world in shades of wine might improve it.
Continue reading “black & white”
The theme for this year’s National Poetry Day in the UK is stars. In conjunction with this, the Poetry Society ran a competition with the theme stripes for Stanza members. 
I often wonder how judges can hope to choose ‘the best’ of a competition’s entries when all the poems are different styles and topics, so I definitely like competitions that either suggest a theme or demand a specific poetic form, as I feel there is then at least one identifiable point of comparison.
Continue reading “versification on a theme”
I don’t usually just point readers to another article elsewhere, but Michael Erard’s Escaping One’s Own Shadow over on the New York Times opinion pages strikes me as well worth reading and too complex to really do justice to here.
Continue reading “purging the purple”
I thought circuses with exotic animals had been banned.
It seems I must be mistaken, though, as this poor beast was sitting in the heat of the afternoon in a tiny cage just outside the village bull ring today.
There were several other white tigers, two ‘normal’ tan tigers and a lion, in other cages. Most of them were fast asleep, which is hardly surprising given the fact the sun was shining directly onto the metal trailers.
I suppose it will be a bit cooler this evening, when they perform, but I won’t be going to watch.
Continue reading “tiger, tiger”
Looking through the paints at the art shop the other day, I had to check the names closely as the plastic bottles made it hard to tell precisely which colour paint they might hold.
I found a ‘burnt sienna’, but the closest to ‘crimson lake’ was ‘berry wine’, and there was no ‘Prussian blue’ or ‘ochre’. I definitely think my childhood was the richer for having the old names – I don’t think I’d have liked to paint with ‘glazed carrot’ or ‘pumpkin’.
I was a bit taken aback, though, to find both the bottles in the photo labelled as “plaid”.
Having decided that they were actually black and white, I consulted the Scottish Register of Tartans, but still haven’t worked out which clan they might belong to.
don't confuse the narrator 