Category: Articles

• July 11, 2016

  Slow life in Catalonia

    (An edited version of the text above was first published in Catalonia Today magazine in February, 2013.)   Time. It is the one thing that many of us feel like we don’t have enough of. Generally, we move through our lives at a rapid pace with mobile phones permanently on and our attention fixed…
• June 3, 2016

  Review of Nathan Shepherdson’s “Sweeping the Light Back Into the Mirror”

  [A shorter version of this article was first published under the titled “A stretched agony” in Catalonia Today magazine, June 2016.] small children trade the world for distraction deal in statements with the grammar of a road sign they’re happy to put the sun in the top corner of the page count backwards from 9…
• May 8, 2016

  Poor But Sexy

  [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, May 2016.]   How little we know about the culture of that ‘area of darkness:’ Eastern Europe.  Living within a few hundred kilometres of this region, most of us would be hard pressed to give the names of more than a handful of directors, actors or…
• April 10, 2016

  Reaching out across the centuries (Shakespeare)

   [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, April 2016.]   One of the greatest things about Shakespeare – one of the things I love most about his writing – is his rare ability to have his characters speak for themselves but also somehow show a more universal state of mind. His fiction is…
• March 5, 2016

  The Wind-Water Sickness

  [This article was first published under the title “How do you get sick in Japan?” in Catalonia Today magazine, March 2016,]     How do you get sick in Japan?   According to one Japanese teacher that I once talked to, a Mr Shiroi, he caught a cold because the school that we both used…
• February 14, 2016

  Steinbeck, Scuppers and trains

  [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, February 2016.]     As a child, the great American author John Steinbeck was inspired by a scene with a bird in it: a stork. He cherished a toy ‘Easter looking-egg’ which he loved to peer into through a tiny hole, seeing “a lovely little farm,…
• January 6, 2016

  Lessons from Paris

  [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2016.]   The recent tragic terrorist murders in Paris (and sadly also elsewhere) can teach us plenty. And if we choose to not learn all that we can from these tragedies then we are as good as inviting further bloodshed and horror.   One of…
• December 27, 2015

  Conversus interruptus

  [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, December 2015.] Selective semi-listening. Fading in and out of the conversation. Attention-divided syndrome. Texting while talking. Missing the point. Ignorance-bliss. Even not paying attention to your own words when you are the one speaking them. "Is that my mobile ringing?" “Were you just saying saying something…
• November 14, 2015

  Badly chosen words

  [A version of this article (under the tittle "Carefully mischosen words") was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, November 2015.]   I’m a huge fan of the UK’s public broadcaster, the BBC. It still produces some of the best TV anywhere in the world but one thing it does tests my affection for it. Even…
• October 11, 2015

  Refugees in a strange land

  [A version of this article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, October 2015.]     Now even the Daily Mail’s editors have finally accepted that British Prime Minister David Cameron’s "swarms" of refugees need to be helped.   The next question has become one of where Europe’s newest asylum seekers and victims of war…