Casinos, karaoke, making the deck of the ship throb with the lights and sounds of Ibiza…this was some of the “fun” promised to guests setting out on a Caribbean cruise by Carnival Cruise Director Felipe Curato this week. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have disembarked straightaway. Continue reading “Cruising for introverts”
Holy Sh*t: I understand swearing – at last
It was when my son was aged three that it started. “Bugger, bugger, bugger,” he would say when he was at nursery, at church and out and about on the bus. “I can’t think where he learnt it from,” I remember saying with exaggerated puzzlement when I regaled a friend with this tale. “It must be from his father.” Continue reading “Holy Sh*t: I understand swearing – at last”
Suspend your rational faculties
A word of advice on reading Jay Griffiths’ Kith, The Riddle of the Childscape – suspend your rational faculties. Surrender to the lyricism. Let nostalgia woo you. Be carried on the wings of your imagination. Allow yourself to spiral into your childhood (either the one you really had or the one about which you fantasise) and go with Griffiths into a secret garden of faerie, forests, daemon and metaphor. Roam free. Continue reading “Suspend your rational faculties”
If I can’t remember it, is it still a part of me?
I went up to my study last week and screamed. For reasons, that perhaps only a five-year-old can understand, Arch had pulled every one of my books from my shelves and hurled them in a spine-bent, cover-ripped pile on the floor. Continue reading “If I can’t remember it, is it still a part of me?”
Can you be a feminist if you can’t think?
Are you still a feminist?’ – that was a question asked of me last week by a young woman who had read one of my books.
‘Now there’s a question,’ I thought as I stood at the bus stop tapping a reply into my Blackberry. ‘I was a feminist when I last thought about it – about four years ago – but I don’t know if I still am because what would involve thinking and I haven’t got time for that.’ Continue reading “Can you be a feminist if you can’t think?”