“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.” The wind blew off the North Sea. The family had decided to camp in the shelter of the dunes. The husband and wife team put up their two tents and realised that it was almost impossible …
Anybody who trolls technology these days, does not totally understand what is true and what is not. I am a “Facebook” user, I watch TV. I try to be careful not to fall down the rabbit hole of believing nonsense. Sometimes I fail and spout rubbish to friends, stuff which I believe but which may …
“The best laid schemes o’mice and men gang aft agley.” ‘To a Mouse’ by Robert Burns. Sorry, Dear Friends, but anybody who knows Davidson must realise that at some point they are going to be hit by the poetry of Robert Burns. This occurred to me recently because I have just come across the Ancient …
It being Labour Day here in North America and the beginning of the School Year on September 2nd, I thought I would touch on the topic of ‘beginnings’. I don’t have these sort of beginnings any more. I retired seven years ago and since then, in the words of Ian Crichton Smith, have become “A …
The wind blew across the escarpment. Every so often the clouds scudded away from the hills above revealing the shark’s tooth of the rocky cliff, awesome in its magnificence, awful in its bleakness. The man shuddered when it appeared and yet was drawn forward, a siren luring him ever upwards. The peaty heather crunched underfoot, …
I guess, Dear Reader, that nobody who has reached their allotted three score and ten years on the planet , as I have, can fully understand what it is to be young at the present. I should note here that I am past it. In fact I am 3 years past it, sitting here at …
Several years ago I was visiting our daughter in Bath, Somerset where she then lived. It was inevitable in my roamings that I would find myself in a book shop, preferably one that served coffee and cake. But, I had said to myself, before I left Vancouver, there was no way I was going to …
“The clouds lifted and there it was. The mountain which had for so long hidden its majesty suddenly emerged”. “The kraken woke and emerged from the swamp, horrific in its ugliness, minatory from head to foot.” “His head throbbed, his tongue sandpapered, his keys under his pillow, Ian emerged from the bed struggling to recollect …
The abandoned ruins of the castle stood on the hill. The surrounds were an overgrown eclectic mixture of gorse bushes, broom, silver birch, a sea of bluebells in the season. A canopy above that was not too dense, space to move among the mixed woodland, nettled stingers to be avoided, muddied ditches in the wet. …
Life is a balancing act is it not, Dear Reader. And, to me, one of those seesaw balances is that between too much hubris and too little humility. We need to encourage confidence in people. Teachers need to praise children, boost them so that they will safely try new things. It has always seemed to …
