Drive carefully
You might think you know who your family are, and where you’re from, but a few days diddling about on the internet can turn what you knew, what you thought you knew, inside out.I...
Author: Ian Marchant
Why I’ve (re) joined the Greens.
UKIP are the face of exclusion. Because most people feel excluded from mainstream politics, fewer people participate in such limited democratic processes as remain. UKIP, appealing as they do to people who are frightened...
It’s only natural to feel awkward, Mr Farage.
For a few years now, I’ve been working away at a book about my friend Bob Rowberry, and how his life maps on to the history of the British counter-culture. For example, in...
Puppy shit
We have a puppy. Her name is Peggy.She is about 14 weeks old. She shits on the floor. Here is a picture of her on Wentes Meadow, Presteigne, where dogs are free to shit,...
Ras Tafari in Botolph St.Otto
Spume has just sent me this photo of His Imperial Majesty Haille Selassie visiting Botolph St Otto in 1939. Spume is on the far right, aged 16...
Mood Index album on You Tube
My lovely step-daughter, Miss Victoria Mason, has undertaken to upload the Mood Index album from 1997, ‘Lino Women and Song’ onto You Tube. This is the first track she did….
Ownership as trust
This is a policy idea; based on discussions with my friend and colleague at BCU, Gregory Leadbetter, who has done the heavy lifting. These days Greg is a fine poet and teacher of creative...
Why get your head together in the country?
My idea in renaming the blog bit of the website has root in my new (still in production) book, ‘A Hero For High Times’, and it is, at least in part, a reaction to...
How indeed…
This is a first pass in some haste to say hello to you, subscribers, regular visitors, victims of search engines (North/South divide? Tit-rub?) etc to the new look website. This is the fifth full...
Constitutionally odd
Last night, Friday night, my wife and I came back to Radnorshire from Brussels, via the Eurostar. I’d never been to Brussels before, and I guess I wasn’t quite prepared for how odd a...
How to Get Your Head Together in the Country
I’m having a meeting with old Perry Venus in Hay about updating the website. I think that the night thing has had its day. Something of the Night will stand or fall without my...
Migraine and the sense of smell.
It’s good, I always think, to have a picture at the top of a blog post. I looked online for ‘migraine aura’, and found some excellent pictures which very accurately capture the experience; so...
Teachers getting lost
When I’m teaching, I often tell my students not to worry about originality. ‘Originality,’ I tell ’em, ‘is a shibboleth. The only writer who we know for sure was original was Homer. After that,...
Lumb Bank week in the snow.
Just back from a wonderful week tutoring an Arvon course at Lumb Bank, in the hills above Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire. All week, the snow stayed about a foot deep, until Friday night, when...
What I am wearing
My hair shaven short, by design, though shaped by cruel circumstance. One of two pairs of bespoke Anglo-American spectacles, each identical in shape, but different in colour; a black frame for distance, and a...
