50 not out — why I’m perfectly happy about getting older
Today – 29 January – is my birthday. My 50th birthday. Fifty. The big five oh. This isn’t one of those...
29 January 2016
death
2014
A photo for August 2014
This cross stands on a hillside in rural France. I walked past it late one evening in August 2013. I...
1 August 2014
2012
RIP Isabel Joyce Fleming: b. 3 May 1924, d. 3 May 1997
Today would have been my mother’s 90th birthday. It’s also the 17th anniversary of her death. (updated 2014) Born in the 1920s...
3 May 2012
No place like home
The view from my childhood bedroom window is still there. A tower block, an open green space, gasometers in the...
15 March 2012
2011
In praise of the front page corpse shot
The Roman poet Horace said: “pale death beats equally at the poor man’s gate and at the palaces of kings.”...
21 October 2011
Lunching with the dead, baying for the rope and the wisdom of the crowd
When I was a young man death was my living. Determined, as I was back then, to eschew a traditional...
8 August 2011