Last time I was in the UK I noticed a copy of the magazine Practical Reptile Keeping in W H Smiths. I’m not sure whether the reptile in the picture is practical, but I made no attempt to keep him other than as a photograph.
The photo is for anyone who thought it a pity that yesterday’s lizard came to such a dusty end. (If the cats found this one after the photo session, ‘dusty’ won’t have described the ending.)
I’m absolutely convinced, and have been since I first saw them six or seven years ago, that there’s a poem in the stacked logs in our greenhouse/shed. 
Continue reading “there’s a poem in the woodshed”
I remember a summer evening
when you brought me roses,
full-blown, blowzy,
stolen from a neighbour’s garden.I laughed,
and listened to your promises
as you crushed the falling petals
underfoot.
Originally published in The Coffee House, Issue 10, 2003.
The old poem is included mainly as accompaniment to the photo, which I wanted to include to add some colour to the page after a number of fairly wordy posts. However, now I’m here and on the subject of roses…
Continue reading “roses”
An email with the subject line ‘escultura censurada’ caught my attention a couple of days ago and had me wondering whether the sculpture in question had been censured or censored.
Reading on, I think both verbs were appropriate.
Continue reading “censorship, censure and nonsense”
castillos en el aire – ilusiones lisonjeras con poco o ningún fundamento
I wonder how many Spaniards realise that as well as building castles in the air, English speakers also build castles in Spain.
Perhaps more to the point, I wonder why we do.
Brewer tells me that
[…] air-castles were called by the French Châteaux d’Espagne because Spain has no châteaux.
I wonder who told him that yarn.
Continue reading “‘a tower to the sun’”
don't confuse the narrator 