Broadway Elegy
When you’re a slightly star struck English tourist, Visiting NYC for the very first time (‘It’s that Broadway Melody!’), It’s easy to forget the Paris Situationists: ‘Underneath the paving stones, the beach!’ You might stare...
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Mocking Birds Don’t Do One Thing Except
We were walking the New York High Line,
The old freight line of lower Manhattan,
On the hottest October day since 1928 –
So Trish took a breather on a bench
Beneath some tangled autumn branches;
A mocking bird immediately began to sing
‘Melodious at the noontide of the day’,
A couple of feet right above her head:
“It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”…
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing
except make music for us to enjoy.”
The Black Boy Clock
There you stand, not so much a sentinel, Nor servant, but rather more a slave of time, Obeying the diktat of cog, wheel and pendulum, The mechanics of the hours and minutes, For every second, until the end of time. You have no name; identity obscured By a costume...
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Sapperton Manor and Hidden History
The church in Sapperton is dedicated to St.Kenhelm, A much venerated Anglo-Saxon saint, Whose shrine at Winchcombe Was thus extolled by William of Malmesbury: ‘There was no place in England to where more pilgrims travelled than to Winchcombe on Kenhelm’s feast day’....
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Bath Walks on the Legacies of Slavery
A message from Richard White: Greeting walkers, A good days walking on Sunday. Somewhat overwhelmed with stuff to think about and so many metaphors I am exhausted! Here is an instantblog posting for starters:...
read moreSlavery and a Cotswold Landscape
On re-reading The Country and the City by Raymond Williams It must be thirtyish years since I read this, when my responses were all about William Cobbett, John Clare, enclosure, industrialization, urbanization, the fate of the peasantry and the rise of an urban...
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