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Category Archives: Non-fictions

MILFs & Boon

Or; in the kitchen with my best mate’s mum . About mid-February last year, we were sitting around one afternoon, exchanging the usual disenchantments on the subject of St Valentine’s Day, when my best mate’s mum casually dropped into conversation the fact that in her younger days she once co-wrote a book for Mills & […]

My daughter conjugates the verb ‘to spy’

i.m. John le Carré (1931-2020) . I spy You spew He/she/Pierre Spies We (Graf) Spee You Spanx® They spunk .

Two thoughts – for Robert Twigger

. ‘A man on a straight path never got lost.’ — Idries Shah . ‘The trouble with the straight and the narrow ..Is it’s so thin, I keep sliding off to the side.’ — Jason Spaceman .

My father helps correct a Work In Progress

p6 aufroofs p15 febrew- wery p20 rub– brickredd p34a as a pious p34b ing the intimate nature of this, a first offence in vert or venison which was admittedly an incautious but, at its wildest, a partial ex- ing the intimate nature of this, a first offence in vert or venison p37 ildiot repeated p45 ………..[Balbaccio, […]

A biographical note on Duncan Grant (apropos one of those Facebook challenges that do the rounds occasionally)

A weapons-grade Bloomsburyist, Duncan Grant (1885-1978) spent much of his early childhood in India (natch), where his grandfather had been Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. He ‘became interested in Japanese prints’ while still at prep school. After attending St Paul’s, Westminster School of Art and the Slade School – interspersed with stints in Italy and France, of […]

Extracts from the letters of Gerald Spence Smyth, Capt., 1st South African Irish Regt., Abyssinian campaign, 1941

6.2.41 I am given to understand that this is the 6th day of Feb. but for the life of me I don’t know what day of the week it is. Anyhow it doesn’t make any difference here. Excuse the dirt. A.A.¹ has just spilt some tea on my pad. The journey from the forest² to these […]

Subterranean Homesick Baroque – after Dylan

Johnny’s in the basement, mixing up the medicine. I’m on the toilet, downloading Handel operas.

I heard, this morning, in the nursing home…

‘Struggling every day in scorching heat. Staggering under the burden of more than he should carry. The heavy load cruelly rubs his back until it’s raw and bleeding. He has sores on his legs, too, so that every step is agony. He’s desperately thirsty, and oh so very, very tired. . This is his life […]

An irony

South Africa is not on Zulu Time.

Chinese food (after Jung Chang)

. Ancient Chinese proverb The most capable woman cannot make a meal without food. Chinese Communist Party saying A capable woman can make a meal without food. .