Phobias and Fears

As a child, my biggest treat was to go to Chessington Zoo. I would look at the sky to see whether there was enough blue to make a pair of sailor’s trousers. If there was, we would board a train and then a bus to convey us to the promised treat. What was it that...

Hurly-Burly

A medley of tinny sounds. A babble of voices interspersed by screams of delight. Smells stinging one’s nostrils sweetly. Easter. The pier has sprung into life. The one at Hastings is new. The old one caught fire and burnt down. There is something special about a...

A Brush with History

EM Forster Isaiah Berlin I was playing ‘ducks and drakes’ on our local pond with two school friends when I felt a shiver of apprehension. A tall man appeared suddenly and stood silently watching us. He didn’t even greet us, just stood there and...

Snowdrops

Every year, whatever the weather, I go on a snowdrop walk. It is the most memorable winter one, as if there has been a woodland wedding with white confetti scattered willy-nilly under the trees, but they are delicate white petals shimmering like bells stroked by a...

Unbelievable

I’m perplexed. Not too many years ago it would have been thought unbelievable that the so-called ‘heart of modern democracy’ – the capitol building at the end of the Mall in Washington in the state of Columbia, U.S.A. – could be assaulted by a horde of irate...

Status

There is a strange stillness before the first frost dusts the mown grass white. In time past, before central heating, there was surprise and delight when one threw back the eiderdown into the freezing morning to find frost had painted delicate, spidery leaf patterns...