Tag: children

  • Naivety of an online evangelist

    Naivety of an online evangelist

    Looking back over a career isn’t something I waste time much on.  But sometimes my mind drifts back.  And sometimes I wonder at how I spent so much time and effort, all those years ago, in the aid of a cause that would seem to have ended so badly.  I was one of many who…

  • Edward Thomas in Gower

    Edward Thomas in Gower

    At last some warmth returned with the sun, and I took the rough path along the top of the cliff between Rotherslade and Limeslade.  The sea was calm, empty and quiet, except for one thing: the bell of a floating buoy, its clear sound carried over the water by a light onshore breeze.  I’ve been…

  • Hints and helps for every-day emergencies

    Hints and helps for every-day emergencies

    On the book table in the RISW coffee morning I find a drab, battered paperback.  It looks much older than the other books around it.  The faded cover has three overlapping circular pictures featuring a housewife, a small child and a man digging with a spade.  What takes my eye is the title, Hints and…

  • ‘A kestrel for a knave’: in memoriam Barry Hines

    ‘A kestrel for a knave’: in memoriam Barry Hines

    In March the news came that Barry Hines had died. My mind flashed back to the time when I went with my mother to a cinema in Barnsley to see Kes, Ken Loach’s second feature film that was based on Hines’s short novel, A kestrel for a knave, published in 1968. It was late 1969…