Normally I have little or no feeling for dead animals. While I have buried various pets and, on the insistence of my children delivered the necessary eulogies, these have been the exception. Apart from corpses displayed in the butcher’s shop or the ‘real thing’ stuffed in displays in museums, my nearest viewing of dead beasts…
Eye to eye
Last week I spotted Gordon across the street doing his weekend shopping. I announced myself, and conversation flowed. Gordon is blind, so conversation is a little different from that with my other friends because we cannot make eye contact (indeed I rarely look at his eyes) and he cannot read my body language. However with…
Watching the white wheat
Last week I received an unexpected email. "Dear Joe, I've recorded one of the Welsh folk songs that I've been singing recently. You can hear it via the link below..." I listened, and what a treat it was. Not just because of the beauty of the singer's unaccompanied voice (click here to listen to Bugeilio'r gwenith gwyn first…
Why bother?
As I was leaving a neighbour's house last week something sharp scratched my knuckle. The culprit was the head of screw. For such a commonplace thing, the humble screw comes in a rich variety of forms - length, width, head shape, drive form (slotted, Philips, Torx), thread geometry and in the material from which it…
Vanity fare
I was sitting in the underground reading a newspaper and minding my own business. It was rush hour with many passengers standing, leaving those seated in that strange, and somewhat childlike position of being in an underworld surrounded by anonymous legs, backpacks, handbags or perhaps an overgenerous coat. Identifying to whom they belonged was out…
Look back in Bognor
My tally for items lost in the last 12 months has just reached five. The outcomes have been varied - a mobile phone left on a bench was returned two weeks later after negotiating with an anonymous man and giving a ‘goodwill’ payment of £20. A cherished umbrella left hanging over a billboard in Oxford Street…
Just pretending
Right up to my teenage years reciting a poem out loud or acting in the school play were essentially impossible. Learning lines was difficult enough but even if the words were memorised, the presence of an audience would strike me dumb. Performance and I were incompatible. Similarly, pretence and deceit were an anathema. One of…
An unsettling holiday
Three weeks ago I lost the use of a word. Ask me how I felt about my recent holiday in Rajasthan [see Magic Carpet, greyhares blog, 22nd Jan, 2011] and out would come ‘fascinating’, ‘spellbinding’, ‘enriching’, ‘educative’; but ‘enjoyable’ – no! The problem was that any feelings I had of enjoyment had been drowned by those…
Magic carpet
Every other year we take a special holiday and this time it was to India. The star attraction was a 1,000 mile journey through Rajasthan travelling by rail at night in the "Palace on Wheels" and sightseeing by coach during the day. The sleeper carriages and restaurant cars had been renovated to recreate a velvety…
Seasonal cheer
At 7.40am on Tuesday 21 December the TV cameras turned once again to look at the moon. And, in keeping with predictions, it had disappeared - eclipsed by earth's shadow. Journalists and astro-pundits dwelt on it being the first full lunar eclipse on a winter solstice for almost 400 years. Although interesting, for me it was…
The Joe Collier Blog 