Category: Rites of Passage
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Theatres . . . great joys from past to present
Snapshots from the past are often very evocative, and our January visit to Taormina, thirteen years ago now, hoves back into the present as my mobile phone reminds me. Those days seem like a lifetime ago, but then life has a way of crescendoing into its climactic periods before or after it’s been more of…
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Storm at Sea
So the SongWave Choir have finished their weekend series of concerts, Singing up a Storm, and we exhausted but energised singers are recuperating. After presenting a huge accumulation of metaphors, relating to sea and sand, water and nurture, hearth and home and shelter from the storm, we’ve sung ourselves hoarse. I believe the concerts, which…
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The Taste of Summer
So . . . when you wipe out on water skisgliding across a placid lake in north Ontario —well! You let go of the rope. First.But not before half the lake’s been forceddown your throat and when you gasp up into airyou’re bobbing alone in the middlewhile the boat circles back and you wavecoz you’re…
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Sometimes, only work will do . . .
The garden is beginning to burst forth with blossom on every bush. The sun is shining, and the days are long. Perhaps I should be taking pleasure in this delightful ambience, but the truth is that just now I only feel like working. There have been only a few periods in my life when work…
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An opportunistic dawn
So I was out in my dressing gown at 7am yesterday morning, dropping a tray of cat litter into the bin before the dustmen arrived, and therefore I managed to catch a glorious sunrise which did indeed presage a brilliantly sunshiny day. But I’d not have seen it if it weren’t for the cat. How…
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Advice that makes sense . . .
I’ve borrowed a clipart image from the blog of fellow Canadian Mobashar Qureshi, who relates that two salient words of advice have kept him going: Keep Writing. Indeed. Through all the tribulations of searching for an agent, hunting down independent publishers, after having ventured into the murky realm of self-publishing on the big platforms (Amazon/KDP), and then…
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When a gate is not an entrance but a barrier . . .
The strong steel gate in our new-to-us driveway has served primarily as a barrier, to keep the friendly family dogs safely within the garden, over the past year. But it’s also been a barrier, or at least a huge hindrance even when fully open, to convenient entrance and egress by our ancient motorhome, Harry Hymer. And therein…
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In the face of death . . .
I was going to sit here, after our festive lights have come on in the dark late afternoon, and write about the joy of singing. Or the joy of participation — we’ve got tickets for the annual pantomime put on by the Youth Players at the CatStrand Arts Centre, just down the High Street from…
Roads to Joy 