Jungle Bugs
From a distance, it looked like a rotten stick, covered in white lichen, such as you might see in Derbyshire, but no! The lichen was moving. I looked more closely. The stick was covered with hundreds of bright white insects, each one decorated with appendages resembling flower parts, tiny stamens, bifurcate stamens, delicate microscopic petals. A wonderful mimicry, but where were the flowers? There were none, just a stick covered in insects. And what kind of insects were they? I later found out they were the larvae of leafhoppers, the same... Read more »
A Muse on Fruit
Alfred Russel Wallace, who nearly beat Darwin to the discovery of evolution, described it like this. “It is like buttery custard, flavoured with almonds intermingled with wafts of flavour that call to mind cream cheese, onion sauce, ground cherries [sherry wine?] and other incongruities. It is neither acid nor sweet... Read more »
Security Regulations for Guests at Tuol Sleng
A poem and instructions written on the wall of Tuol Sleng internment centre, Phnom Penh. No chatting No laughing No discussion No answering back No opinions No theatre No music No poems No Literature No Religion No priests No doctors No lawyers. No study No glasses No football No games No playing No running No schools No parents No children No brothers No sisters No house No friendship No flirting No sex No love. No life Instructions. You must answer according to... Read more »
They burn money here.
It is 7 o'clock in the evening just a few days after the new year; the year of the tiger. Any baby born this year will be strong and fierce, like the tiger. A man is squatting in the gutter tending a little bonfire. I make as if to take... Read more »
When the orchestra is mad, who can be sane?
Tom Stoppard is of my generation. Although, of course, I never knew him personally, he has been part of my growing up. I took Marion to see ‘Jumpers’ in the nineteen seventies. It was the play that I remember best. I still have the script somewhere. It inspired a love... Read more »
Lost
‘Oh, dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’ It was like a metronome, every second. Simon worked out that at this rate, she would say oh dear, 3600 times an hour, up to 50,000 times a day, 15 million times a year. But the mantra had some more intense... Read more »
Discovery! With a frozen grape.
Frozen grapes are delicious served with chocolate truffles and cream. If you let them warm up a bit, you can bite through them and feel the cold juice squirt around your mouth. But Roz found this difficult. ‘I can’t eat these. I have sensitive teeth.’ ‘Well just try swallowing them and... Read more »
Summoned for Christmas
Getting a summons for driving without due care and attention just added insult to injury, I had been knocked unconscious, fractured ribs, vertebrae, punctured my lung and my left kidney. But my letter advised me that it would go better for me if I admitted culpability. I felt hurt and... Read more »
Possession; on stage and off it.
Good actors, declared Sir Richard Eyre, speaking last week at The Guild of Psychotherapists annual lecture, have to be possessed by the characters they are playing. They have to immerse themselves in their character’s world, feel what it is like to be them, experience the passion and then act it... Read more »
Time and Tide
Time is the measure of things moving. It’s like history; one bloody thing after another, but if nothing happens there is no time, ho history, nothing. We know by determining the rate of decay of radioactivity in rocks that the earth came into being 4,558 million years ago. This sounds... Read more »
Tempus fugit.
Time flies, the old man cried, as the alarm clock struck him on the back of the head. For the elderly, time does indeed fly; not just the clock but the days, the weeks, the years. Time seems to shorten, to press in on itself, as we get older. But for... Read more »
The Shiver Spot
It was really too cold to go running this morning; just off freezing and pouring in rain. I slipped on the mud and was soaked through in seconds, losing any insulation afforded by my leggings. My hands soon felt like blocks of ice, but my back, which was covered with... Read more »
Mediobogdum; a rant!
By Jupiter, it’s grim here. Three months perched on a mountain at the edge of the empire with nothing to do, except watch the sheep and wait for those damned Brigantes to attack the fort again. Why? Why don’t we leave them to get on with it? We'll never beat... Read more »
A curious tale of butterflies, ants, wasps and the passage of thyme
The large blue butterfly is the largest and rarest of our blue butterflies. Clouds of them can be seen fluttering over heathland on a summer evening, but in the eighteenth century the passion of Victorian gentlemen for collecting butterflies nearly drove them into extinction. Conservationists tried to protect them by... Read more »
War without end; Amen.
Armies pursued each other around Europe; soldiers, little better than animals laid waste the countryside, taking what they wanted, burning, raping, killing, no longer knowing, if they ever did, the reason why. It had been a good war for Mother Courage, for a time. She became a camp follower, trailing... Read more »
Epitaph
Reader! If thou hast a heart famed for tenderness and pity, contemplate this spot. In which are deposited the remains of a young lady, whose artless beauty, innocence of mind and gentle manner obtained her the esteem of all who knew her. But when nerves were too delicately spun to bear the rude shakes and jostlings, which we meet in this transitory world, nature gave... Read more »
A Night-time Visit
It was half past nine in the evening and quite dark. The phone rang. It was dad. He was very agitated. ‘There are people in my house - lots of them; men and women. They’re sitting on my settee. I have told them to go but they won’t.’ ‘Who are they... Read more »
People watching; their lives in their faces.
A troupe of black musicians with southern accents and joyful, toothy grins were waiting to board the flight to Stockholm. They wore earphones and were jigging, jerking, twitching, beating out syncopated rhythms on their knees, table and the arms of their seats. In the restaurant, a conclave of heavy metal... Read more »
A Bridge too Far
Psychotherapy is a strange world. It claims to help people resolve conflict and change, yet the whole profession is deeply split. The psychoanalysts, humanists and behaviourists are all convinced their approach is only true one, but when it all boils down, there is more to connect different therapies than to... Read more »
Are accidents ever accidental?
A few years ago, while staying in London, I was coming down the stairs carrying an open suitcase, but there were more steps than there were at home, I couldn't see where I was putting my feet and I was preoccupied with anxieties about being away from home. Three steps... Read more »
Peer review or publicity; how to solve a problem like Ida.
Ida was no more than two feet in length, she had a cat-like face, a long tail and judging from the shape of her ankle, walked upright. Cladistic analysis might have suggested she was probably related to lemurs, but she was heralded as a missing link between other mammals to... Read more »
It only hurts when I laugh; living with an injured back.
When I was a physiologist, I used to ponder the cause of the sensations I felt in my body, the reactions of my gut, what is was about feeling sick that made me yawn or sweat, why a headache made he muscles on the back of my neck sore. I... Read more »
The dangers of going to bed.
It had been a long night. Although my hospital bed allowed me to adjust my position, the slightest movement of my back was agony, and I could not get comfortable. The plastic mattress was damp with sweat and my pyjama top was rucked up my back and impossible to adjust. I... Read more »
There’s a gap in my life.
I have absolutely no recollection of what happened. I stayed and wrote up my notes for a bit. Then I went into the basement, collected my keys and drove up through Broomhill and westwards out along the Fulwood Road towards the moors. I can't remember what I was thinking. Mum... Read more »
Decoys
I was running along the narrow track that threaded its way along the grassy slope. The deer were feeding far below me. The rain the previous night had made the mud slick and my feet slipped at every pace. I was concentrating on the way ahead when a faint hissing... Read more »
